Yukio Mishima (1925–1970)
Author of The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
About the Author
Yukio Mishima, the pseudonym for Hiraoka Kimitake, was born in Tokyo in 1925. His work covers many styles: poetry, essays, modern Kabuki ja Noh drama, and novels. Among his masterpieces are The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, and the four-volume novel Sea of Fertility, which outlines the Japanese show more experience in the 20th century. Each of the four volumes in this series has a distinct title--Spring Snow, Runaway Horses, The Temple of Dawn, and Five Signs of a God's Decay--and they were published over a six-year period, from 1965-1970. Mishima's plays include Tenth Day Chrysanthemum, and the Kabuki piece The Moon Like a Drawn Bow. Although Mishima was been nominated three times for the Nobel Prize for Literature, he never received it. Nevertheless, he is considered by many critics as one of the most important Japanese novelists of the 20th century. Yukio Mishima died by his own hand in 1970, committing seppuku (ritual disembowelment). (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Yukio Mishima, 1963
Series
Works by Yukio Mishima
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea / The Temple of the Golden Pavilion / Confessions of a Mask (1990) 83 copies
Le palais des fetes: Drame en quatre actes (Collection UNESCO d'oeuvres representatives) (French Edition) (1983) 8 copies
Templul zorilor 2 copies
春の雪 2 copies
By Yukio Mishima - The Decay of the Angel (Sea of Fertility, Book 4) (Reissue) (1990-04-29) [Paperback] (1990) 2 copies
Ο Ναός του Χρυσού Περιπτέρου 2 copies
The lady Aoi 2 copies
Aya no tsuzumi 2 copies
頭文字 2 copies
獅子・孔雀 2 copies
Melegin rys 2 copies
Chieu Hom Lo Chuyen 2 copies
الجياد الهاربة 1 copy
همس الأمواج 1 copy
معبد الفجر 1 copy
حب محرم 1 copy
Zakázané barvy 1 copy
Decline of the Suzaku family 1 copy
سقوط الملاك 1 copy
Altı Çağdaş No Oyunu 1 copy
Senandung Ombak 1 copy
Cai în galop 1 copy
بعد الوليمة 1 copy
Le temple d’or 1 copy
℗Il ℗tempo dell'alba 1 copy
永すぎた春 1 copy
THE BIG PICTURE BRND ED A2 E 1 copy
Confesiunile unei m♯¿ti 1 copy
Tiếng triều dâng 1 copy
Past banketti : romaan 1 copy
禁色 (新潮文庫) 1 copy
Na uwięzi. Ballada o miłości 1 copy
ثلج الربيع 1 copy
Εξομολογήσεις μιας Μάσκας 1 copy
癩王のテラス 1 copy
Εξομολογήσεις μια Μάσκας 1 copy
Vite in vendita 1 copy
In punta di piedi 1 copy
la voce delle donne 1 copy
La perla y otros cuentos 1 copy
Yaban Oynaşması 1 copy
サド侯爵夫人・わが友ヒットラー (新潮文庫) 1 copy
Dupa banchet 1 copy
A RUÍNA DO ANJO 1 copy
Chết Giữa Mùa Hè 1 copy
Fountains in the Rain 1 copy
The choice Yukio Mishima Complete Works novel (2) (2001) ISBN: 4106425424 [Japanese Import] (2001) 1 copy
The choice Yukio Mishima Complete Works novel (3) (2001) ISBN: 4106425432 [Japanese Import] (2001) 1 copy
The choice Yukio Mishima Complete Works novels (10) (2001) ISBN: 4106425505 [Japanese Import] 1 copy
The choice Yukio Mishima Complete Works novels (12) (2001) ISBN: 4106425521 [Japanese Import] 1 copy
Şölenden Sonra 1 copy
The Boy Who Wrote Poetry 1 copy
The choice Yukio Mishima Complete Works short story (2) (2002) ISBN: 4106425564 [Japanese Import] 1 copy
Il pazzo morire 1 copy
Tri priče o ljubavi i smrti 1 copy
Hanjo 1 copy
Kantan 1 copy
Kamen kokuhaku (仮面の告白) 1 copy
三熊野詣 Mikumano mōde 1 copy
Nyanyian Laut 1 copy
Shósetsuka no kyúka (小説家の休暇) 1 copy
The choice Yukio Mishima Complete Works short story (1) (2002) ISBN: 4106425556 [Japanese Import] 1 copy
The choice Yukio Mishima Complete Works short stories (3) (2002) ISBN: 4106425572 [Japanese Import] 1 copy
Mishima (1985) (Ost) (CD) 1 copy
Thermos Bottles 1 copy
Dōjōji 1 copy
Onnagata 1 copy
Swaddling Clothes 1 copy
The Flower Hat 1 copy
The Seven Bridges 1 copy
More plodnosti 1-4 1 copy
午後の曳航 (1968年) (新潮文庫) 1 copy
Patriotismo 1 copy
Η κυρία Αόι 1 copy
真夏の死: 自選短編集 (新潮文庫) 1 copy
[Nouvelles japonaises] 1 copy
Εξομολογήσεις μιάς μάσκας 1 copy
සිඳු ලෝලී සේලරුවා 1 copy
The choice Yukio Mishima Complete Works short stories (4) (2002) ISBN: 4106425580 [Japanese Import] 1 copy
The choice Yukio Mishima Complete Works short stories (6) (2002) ISBN: 4106425602 [Japanese Import] (2002) 1 copy
決定版 三島由紀夫全集〈21〉戯曲(1) 1 copy
決定版 三島由紀夫全集〈23〉戯曲(3) 1 copy
決定版 三島由紀夫全集〈27〉評論(2) 1 copy
決定版 三島由紀夫全集〈28〉評論(3) 1 copy
決定版 三島由紀夫全集〈30〉評論(5) 1 copy
決定版 三島由紀夫全集〈32〉評論(7) 1 copy
決定版 三島由紀夫全集〈33〉評論(8) 1 copy
三島由紀夫全集―決定版 (37) 1 copy
Associated Works
House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories (1969) — Introduction, some editions — 613 copies, 17 reviews
The World of the Short Story: A 20th Century Collection (1986) — Contributor — 513 copies, 4 reviews
The Art of the Tale: An International Anthology of Short Stories (1986) — Contributor — 383 copies, 3 reviews
Other Voices, Other Vistas: Short Stories from Africa, China, India, Japan, and Latin America (1992) — Contributor — 213 copies, 2 reviews
In Another Part of the Forest: An Anthology of Gay Short Fiction (1994) — Contributor — 193 copies, 2 reviews
Partings at Dawn: An Anthology of Japanese Gay Literature (12th - 20th Century) (1996) — Contributor — 75 copies
The Graphic Canon of Crime & Mystery, Vol. 2: From Salome to Edgar Allan Poe to The Silence of the Lambs (2021) — Contributor — 14 copies
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea [1976 film] (1976) — Original author — 6 copies, 1 review
Meesters der vertelkunst : zevenendertig verhalen uit de moderne wereldliteratuur (1975) — Contributor — 2 copies
三島由紀夫の死―高校生の発言 1 copy
星の文学館 銀河も彗星も — Contributor — 1 copy
リテラリーゴシック・イン・ジャパン 文学的ゴシック作品選 — Contributor — 1 copy
バージンラブ — Contributor — 1 copy
新潮 1971年 02 月号 [雑誌] 三島由紀夫追悼特集 — Contributor — 1 copy
構造と美文 山尾悠子偏愛アンソロジー — Contributor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- 三島由紀夫
- Other names
- Hiraoka, Kimitake (English real name)
Shobuin Bunkan Koi Koji (kaimyo) - Birthdate
- 1925-01-14
- Date of death
- 1970-11-25
- Gender
- male
- Education
- Gakushuin
University of Tokyo (LLB | 1947 | German Law) - Occupations
- novelist
playwright
actor
translator
poet
stage director (show all 8)
stage designer
short story writer - Organizations
- Shirakabaha (1939)
Ministry of Finance, Banking Bureau, National Savings Section (1948)
Hachi no Ki Kai / the Potted Cherry Tree Club
Bungakuza theatre company
Japan Self-Defense Forces
Tatenokai (show all 7)
Nissay Theatre - Awards and honors
- Emperor's Award (1944)
Shincho Prize (1954)
Kishida Prize for Drama (1955)
Yomiuri Prize (1956, 1958, 1961)
Mainichi Art Prize (1964)
Art Festival Prize (1965) (show all 9)
Participant in the 1st World Kendo Championships (1970)
AJKF Kendo Godan / 5th Dan (1968)
Iaido Shodan / 1st Dan (1967) - Agent
- Audrey Wood (New York)
- Relationships
- Sugiyama, Yoko (wife)
Tomita, Noriko (daughter)
Hiraoka, Iichiro (son)
Hiraoka, Azusa (father)
Hiraoka, Shizue (mother)
Hiraoka, Mitsuko (sister) (show all 17)
Hiraoka, Chiyuki (brother)
Kawabata, Yasunari (patron)
Ishihara, Shintarō (friend)
Ishikawa, Jun (acquaintance)
Mayuzumi, Toshiro (collaborator)
Abe, Kobo (friend)
Azuma, Fumihiko (friend)
Weatherby, Meredith (friend, translator)
Morris, Ivan (friend, translator)
Stokes, Henry Scott (friend)
Nathan, John (friend, translator) - Short biography
- Three-time winner of the Yomiuri Prize (1956 in literature, 1958 and 1961 in drama), winner of the Shinchosha Prize (1954), the Kunio Kishida Award (1956), the Mainichi Art Award (1964), and the Ministry of Education's Arts Festival Award (1965), "Mishima Yukio was probably the most prodigiously endowed Japanese writer of the twentieth century. Although he was only forty-five when he died, under spectacular circumstances that brought him worldwide fame, he had already completed a more voluminous oeuvre than most writers who live twice that long. His writings extended to every genre. Although he was best known as a novelist, he excelled also as a short-story writer. His works of fiction ranged from the philosophic to the farcical; he could write in whatever style was appropriate to each. He published numerous essays on literary, political, cultural and purely journalistic topics. He was also the most successful playwright of his generation." (Donald Keene. “Forward: Mishima’s Kabuki Plays” in “Mishima on Stage.” Ed. Laurence Kominz. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies 2007, viii–x.)
- Cause of death
- seppuku
suicide - Nationality
- Japan
- Birthplace
- Tokyo, Japan
- Places of residence
- Tokyo, Japan
- Place of death
- Tokyo, Japan
- Burial location
- Tama Reien, Tama-cho, Fuchu City, Tokyo, Japan
- Map Location
- Japan
Members
Discussions
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea (Bowie's Top 100) in 75 Books Challenge for 2016 (April 2016)
Mishima: The Decay of the Angel. The Sea of Fertility finally ends. in Le Salon Littéraire du Peuple pour le Peuple (October 2013)
NEW MISHIMA THREAD in Le Salon Littéraire du Peuple pour le Peuple (August 2013)
Mishima, tetralogy, by god, the whole fucking thing! in Le Salon Littéraire du Peuple pour le Peuple (May 2013)
Mishima : The Samurai ethic and modern Japan in Author Theme Reads (January 2013)
Mishima : The Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea in Author Theme Reads (October 2012)
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima in Author Theme Reads (October 2012)
Reviews
Vos leés este libro y decís "ajá, interesante. Un poco nazi, pero interesante cómo reelabora con pasión ese dualismo entre la intelectualidad y el cuerpo (quizá demasiaaaaada pasión)", hasta que por fin decís "esto solo puede terminar de una manera: con un intento de golpe de Estado seguido de seppuku".
My first read for #januaryinjapan. I'd been meaning to read some more Mishima for a while now — ever since reading and loving [book:Spring Snow|62793] — and this challenge gave me the perfect reason to do so.
I so enjoy Mishima's style of writing — somehow spare and yet poetic all at once. That said, no one warned me that perhaps as the mother of a fourteen-year-old son, this book might be extra troubling. It really was. This is not a fun or light or easy book to read. There were two show more parts that were troubling enough that I almost stopped reading. By the way, if you are thinking of reading this book, content warnings for voyeurism, animal abuse, and violence.
BUT. Like I said, the atmosphere of Mishima's writing is so magnetic. As are his themes of masculinity, identity, and purpose. His books exist in that transitory space of Japan after WWII, as it was being opened to the West, and the tension between those two cultures. And specifically in this book, add a group of highly intelligent teenage boys under the sway of a budding psychopath.
This dark little book, while upsetting, is quite compelling. An enthralling read. show less
I so enjoy Mishima's style of writing — somehow spare and yet poetic all at once. That said, no one warned me that perhaps as the mother of a fourteen-year-old son, this book might be extra troubling. It really was. This is not a fun or light or easy book to read. There were two show more parts that were troubling enough that I almost stopped reading. By the way, if you are thinking of reading this book, content warnings for voyeurism, animal abuse, and violence.
BUT. Like I said, the atmosphere of Mishima's writing is so magnetic. As are his themes of masculinity, identity, and purpose. His books exist in that transitory space of Japan after WWII, as it was being opened to the West, and the tension between those two cultures. And specifically in this book, add a group of highly intelligent teenage boys under the sway of a budding psychopath.
This dark little book, while upsetting, is quite compelling. An enthralling read. show less
Disturbing and dreary, Yukio Mishima’s The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea throbs with anger. As turbulent as the waves that hit the rock by a cliff in a stormy night, every slap of seawater intensifies, the debris fall then drown, until it calms with a brief gentleness only to pick up again.
Thirteen-year old Noburo is a member of a teen gang driven by radical nihilistic convictions. Cold-blooded acts of violence, unending brain conditioning by peers in competitive and complicit show more huddles, and almost an irrationally intense hatred are intensified by an arrival of an intruder in his seemingly ordinary home life. This intruder is a sailor who ultimately falls in love with Noburo’s widowed mother. As the months come and go and the seasons change, what seems to be an Oedipal element that rusts Noburo’s relationship with both his mother and her lover, a deeper internal revolt against this relationship stems from the problematic structure and system of society; school as one of its smallest unit is an example of confining children, stifling their freedom, disciplining them akin to robots. When they turn into adults they lose the essence of innocence, imagination, and continue to let themselves be eaten by this system; blindly; willingly; and this, unfortunately emanates from his mother’s lover. The gang’s convictions then becomes more rigid and there may only be one solution.
I don’t really buy the almost excessive, subjectively unreasonable brutality of this novel most particularly with animals. The teenagers can be irritating and whiny which of course is how most of them are in real life but I at least expected a strong introspection to accompany their convictions. Beyond this flaw, there is an interesting bit about Japanese juvenile laws that turn some tables around. If not for a certain paragraph I would have rated this lower and it was, I think, the saving grace of Mishima’s too bitter and acidic The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea: “There is no such thing as a good father because the role itself is bad. Strict fathers, soft fathers, nice moderate fathers—one's as bad as another. They stand in the way of our progress while they try to burden us with their inferiority complexes, and their unrealized aspirations, and their resentments, and their ideals, and the weaknesses they've never told anyone about, and their sins, and their sweeter-than-honey dreams, and the maxims they've never had the courage to live by—they'd like to unload all that silly crap on us, all of it!“
I look forward to reading more of his works particularly Forbidden Colours. And after a lot of reading, he also had an intriguing life and controversial death that made this novel all the more horrifying. show less
Thirteen-year old Noburo is a member of a teen gang driven by radical nihilistic convictions. Cold-blooded acts of violence, unending brain conditioning by peers in competitive and complicit show more huddles, and almost an irrationally intense hatred are intensified by an arrival of an intruder in his seemingly ordinary home life. This intruder is a sailor who ultimately falls in love with Noburo’s widowed mother. As the months come and go and the seasons change, what seems to be an Oedipal element that rusts Noburo’s relationship with both his mother and her lover, a deeper internal revolt against this relationship stems from the problematic structure and system of society; school as one of its smallest unit is an example of confining children, stifling their freedom, disciplining them akin to robots. When they turn into adults they lose the essence of innocence, imagination, and continue to let themselves be eaten by this system; blindly; willingly; and this, unfortunately emanates from his mother’s lover. The gang’s convictions then becomes more rigid and there may only be one solution.
I don’t really buy the almost excessive, subjectively unreasonable brutality of this novel most particularly with animals. The teenagers can be irritating and whiny which of course is how most of them are in real life but I at least expected a strong introspection to accompany their convictions. Beyond this flaw, there is an interesting bit about Japanese juvenile laws that turn some tables around. If not for a certain paragraph I would have rated this lower and it was, I think, the saving grace of Mishima’s too bitter and acidic The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea: “There is no such thing as a good father because the role itself is bad. Strict fathers, soft fathers, nice moderate fathers—one's as bad as another. They stand in the way of our progress while they try to burden us with their inferiority complexes, and their unrealized aspirations, and their resentments, and their ideals, and the weaknesses they've never told anyone about, and their sins, and their sweeter-than-honey dreams, and the maxims they've never had the courage to live by—they'd like to unload all that silly crap on us, all of it!“
I look forward to reading more of his works particularly Forbidden Colours. And after a lot of reading, he also had an intriguing life and controversial death that made this novel all the more horrifying. show less
This is a book written by a man in his mid-twenties looking back on adolescence. To read it as an adolescent without experience (as I did first) is very different from reading it as an experienced adult nearly two decades older than the age at the author's death (as I have just done).
At the age of 19, it had a powerful effect on me for its apparent sexual honesty - a high art Japanese 'Portnoy's Complaint' perhaps. Today, the claim of honesty looks less secure. Is it a fictionalised memoire show more or a fiction deluding us into thinking it is a memoire?
Mishima refers in passing to Augustine and the comparison with the author of the fourth century 'Confessions' is deliberate. He is writing as a Japanese but paradoxically so since it is equally clear that the Japan of his youth had already been highly Westernised.
His girlfriend is Christian and refers to Jesus. Western clothes, even if militarised, are general. A young German boy rides by on a bicycle without it being anything other than normal. The literary references are essentially Western at every turn, notably to Saint Sebastian.
Although there are references to traditional attitudes, the girlfriend Sonoko and her family may be conservative but they are quite Westernised too. One enlightening aspect of this is that Macarthur's occupation was perhaps not such a break with the recent past as we might believe.
Unlike Germany in the last months of its war, the ordinary Japanese in 1945 were already mentally preparing for defeat while also preparing for sudden death at any time. Even Hiroshima seems less of a shock after the Tokyo fire bombings which are part of the background of the central section.
Whereas Germany in 1945 seems to have been imbued with an atmosphere of terror, Japan in the same period seems to have inclined to fatalism. Whereas the German State brutalised its people, the Japanese State appeared to be giving up the ghost long before it surrendered.
The book starts in the 1930s and moves into the immediate occupation period but the central section is very much that of a teenager not yet old enough to fight and yet too old not to be militarised and be integrated into the war effort albeit in a desultory way.
The book gives us a picture of a country which was suffering shortages and death from the sky but which was also conducting itself (as far as most people were concerned) with an air of normality without the full-on totalitarian systems of the West. The edge had gone off Japanese militarism.
The death instinct of Mishima (if the book is reliable as to his own mentality) preceded the war and cannot be assigned to it but his young hero has a dialectic in relation to war that reconciles the constant possibility of radical loss with a very human desire to keep death theoretical and romantic.
Mishima in 1948/9 is a highly educated young man conscious that he is writing literature, referential literature, and not history and his 'confessions' must be seen in that light - as an ambiguous account of Mishima's own sexual ambiguity in which history is just the back drop.
The core of the book plays out the young man's 'true nature' as a sado-masochistic homosexual in terms of desire for gratification and his undoubted capability, despite his doubts, for the sort of non-sexual love for a girl that most heterosexual men of any sensitivity would recognise.
His 'true nature' is clearly both aspects but the first is not permitted in society (at least overtly) and the second is defined by cultural expectations. The book is the working out of the balance between the two, the acceptance of the first as fact and the containment of the second as secondary.
Mishima's young hero (alter-Mishima) allows himself to become what he is in terms of his sexuality in stages, another dialectical process, so that the final scene, a rather sad scene in many ways, provides a form of resolution where the two sides of him are permitted a shared reality.
His homosexuality is actually not central to the argument - this is not a 'gay' coming out story - and the fact that it is hidden sexuality rather than a specific sexuality would have been the appeal to this reader in his earlier 19-year old incarnation.
This is a book about any sexuality that is not spoken of or made available in polite society set against conventional sexuality as it appears to the young male of a certain type who wants both to be free without feelings and to feel without being obliged to follow through as society expects.
In that struggle, in this book, the social (while being respected as reality) loses out in the scaling of values. What happens next to Mishima is clearer in his third novel 'Forbidden Colours' which we have reviewed elsewhere on GoodReads - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/252185847
One might think that a later fetishisation of Japanese traditionalism (a little odd in relation to his debt to Western culture) is an attempt to try to contain the local social in order to limit its emotional claims on him where quasi-Western mores might be intrusive on his 'true nature'.
Male Samurai mysticism might also later have given him cover for the expression of that 'true nature'. If so, he is involved in a lifelong appropriation of his own culture (often to the puzzlement of other Japanese) to meet personal goals that owe far more to Western decadence than Japan.
The genius of the book lies in his clever use of apparent honesty to cover up what may lie beneath. The social environment is not romanticised but played straight. It is an ordinary life and he does not even try to be extraordinary either in his behaviour or even in his assessment of himself.
It is his hero's desires that are extraordinary. The 'mask' of the title is a mask of being ordinary because, well, he is actually very ordinary other than his psycho-sexual torment and periodic or incipient unrecognised depression and fully recognised alienation.
As to the book itself, remembering the young age of the writer, it is an odd mix of extremely evocative realist writing based on locale and incident interspersed with quasi-philosophical bouts of self-reflective torment.
The first is remarkable, undoubted descriptive genius. There is no flummery. What happens is described so precisely that the incident is pictured with exquisite clarity - most famously in his first masturbation experience over a Renaissance picture of St. Sebastian.
The second is more problematic. He is struggling to get across feelings and complexities that are not easy to describe. I suspect that translators (we saw this in 'Forbidden Colours') struggle to deal with the connotative aspects of Japanese when dealing with local emotional colour.
As a result there are lines and passages that are close to incomprehensible and sometimes contradictory in a way that does not look as if it was intended. This aspect of the book is less successful - the attempt to make feeling literary and not always succeeding.
All in all, a classic first 'novel' by a genius who is never to be analysed simply. His dishonest authorial voice still shows someone whose most central attribute is a refusal to lie about himself or his motivations and yet to try to push shame aside in order to 'become' what he is.
This 'shame' aspect is also interesting because we see no Western 'guilt' but only an awareness of being driven to inappropriate shameful action or feelings without intending harm. Even his vicious fantasies are 'fantastic', works of imagination, and not the actual intent of the sadistic killer.
It is as if he simply wants another reality where all reality can be concentrated into a moment of death that wipes out the pain of living and where sexual excitation is a fantastic outgrowth of that sentiment.
There is no torturing of animals or deliberate cruelty to persons, just a fear of emotional engagement and a psychology of detachment which becomes more evident in the psychological cruelties of 'Forbidden Colours'. The young hero is depressed far more than he shows anxiety. show less
At the age of 19, it had a powerful effect on me for its apparent sexual honesty - a high art Japanese 'Portnoy's Complaint' perhaps. Today, the claim of honesty looks less secure. Is it a fictionalised memoire show more or a fiction deluding us into thinking it is a memoire?
Mishima refers in passing to Augustine and the comparison with the author of the fourth century 'Confessions' is deliberate. He is writing as a Japanese but paradoxically so since it is equally clear that the Japan of his youth had already been highly Westernised.
His girlfriend is Christian and refers to Jesus. Western clothes, even if militarised, are general. A young German boy rides by on a bicycle without it being anything other than normal. The literary references are essentially Western at every turn, notably to Saint Sebastian.
Although there are references to traditional attitudes, the girlfriend Sonoko and her family may be conservative but they are quite Westernised too. One enlightening aspect of this is that Macarthur's occupation was perhaps not such a break with the recent past as we might believe.
Unlike Germany in the last months of its war, the ordinary Japanese in 1945 were already mentally preparing for defeat while also preparing for sudden death at any time. Even Hiroshima seems less of a shock after the Tokyo fire bombings which are part of the background of the central section.
Whereas Germany in 1945 seems to have been imbued with an atmosphere of terror, Japan in the same period seems to have inclined to fatalism. Whereas the German State brutalised its people, the Japanese State appeared to be giving up the ghost long before it surrendered.
The book starts in the 1930s and moves into the immediate occupation period but the central section is very much that of a teenager not yet old enough to fight and yet too old not to be militarised and be integrated into the war effort albeit in a desultory way.
The book gives us a picture of a country which was suffering shortages and death from the sky but which was also conducting itself (as far as most people were concerned) with an air of normality without the full-on totalitarian systems of the West. The edge had gone off Japanese militarism.
The death instinct of Mishima (if the book is reliable as to his own mentality) preceded the war and cannot be assigned to it but his young hero has a dialectic in relation to war that reconciles the constant possibility of radical loss with a very human desire to keep death theoretical and romantic.
Mishima in 1948/9 is a highly educated young man conscious that he is writing literature, referential literature, and not history and his 'confessions' must be seen in that light - as an ambiguous account of Mishima's own sexual ambiguity in which history is just the back drop.
The core of the book plays out the young man's 'true nature' as a sado-masochistic homosexual in terms of desire for gratification and his undoubted capability, despite his doubts, for the sort of non-sexual love for a girl that most heterosexual men of any sensitivity would recognise.
His 'true nature' is clearly both aspects but the first is not permitted in society (at least overtly) and the second is defined by cultural expectations. The book is the working out of the balance between the two, the acceptance of the first as fact and the containment of the second as secondary.
Mishima's young hero (alter-Mishima) allows himself to become what he is in terms of his sexuality in stages, another dialectical process, so that the final scene, a rather sad scene in many ways, provides a form of resolution where the two sides of him are permitted a shared reality.
His homosexuality is actually not central to the argument - this is not a 'gay' coming out story - and the fact that it is hidden sexuality rather than a specific sexuality would have been the appeal to this reader in his earlier 19-year old incarnation.
This is a book about any sexuality that is not spoken of or made available in polite society set against conventional sexuality as it appears to the young male of a certain type who wants both to be free without feelings and to feel without being obliged to follow through as society expects.
In that struggle, in this book, the social (while being respected as reality) loses out in the scaling of values. What happens next to Mishima is clearer in his third novel 'Forbidden Colours' which we have reviewed elsewhere on GoodReads - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/252185847
One might think that a later fetishisation of Japanese traditionalism (a little odd in relation to his debt to Western culture) is an attempt to try to contain the local social in order to limit its emotional claims on him where quasi-Western mores might be intrusive on his 'true nature'.
Male Samurai mysticism might also later have given him cover for the expression of that 'true nature'. If so, he is involved in a lifelong appropriation of his own culture (often to the puzzlement of other Japanese) to meet personal goals that owe far more to Western decadence than Japan.
The genius of the book lies in his clever use of apparent honesty to cover up what may lie beneath. The social environment is not romanticised but played straight. It is an ordinary life and he does not even try to be extraordinary either in his behaviour or even in his assessment of himself.
It is his hero's desires that are extraordinary. The 'mask' of the title is a mask of being ordinary because, well, he is actually very ordinary other than his psycho-sexual torment and periodic or incipient unrecognised depression and fully recognised alienation.
As to the book itself, remembering the young age of the writer, it is an odd mix of extremely evocative realist writing based on locale and incident interspersed with quasi-philosophical bouts of self-reflective torment.
The first is remarkable, undoubted descriptive genius. There is no flummery. What happens is described so precisely that the incident is pictured with exquisite clarity - most famously in his first masturbation experience over a Renaissance picture of St. Sebastian.
The second is more problematic. He is struggling to get across feelings and complexities that are not easy to describe. I suspect that translators (we saw this in 'Forbidden Colours') struggle to deal with the connotative aspects of Japanese when dealing with local emotional colour.
As a result there are lines and passages that are close to incomprehensible and sometimes contradictory in a way that does not look as if it was intended. This aspect of the book is less successful - the attempt to make feeling literary and not always succeeding.
All in all, a classic first 'novel' by a genius who is never to be analysed simply. His dishonest authorial voice still shows someone whose most central attribute is a refusal to lie about himself or his motivations and yet to try to push shame aside in order to 'become' what he is.
This 'shame' aspect is also interesting because we see no Western 'guilt' but only an awareness of being driven to inappropriate shameful action or feelings without intending harm. Even his vicious fantasies are 'fantastic', works of imagination, and not the actual intent of the sadistic killer.
It is as if he simply wants another reality where all reality can be concentrated into a moment of death that wipes out the pain of living and where sexual excitation is a fantastic outgrowth of that sentiment.
There is no torturing of animals or deliberate cruelty to persons, just a fear of emotional engagement and a psychology of detachment which becomes more evident in the psychological cruelties of 'Forbidden Colours'. The young hero is depressed far more than he shows anxiety. show less
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