Yukio Mishima

A band of savage thirteen-year-old boys reject the adult world as illusory, hypocritical, and sentimental, and train themselves in a brutal callousness they call 'objectivity'. When the mother of one of them begins an affair with a ship's officer, he and his friends idealise the man at first; but it is not long before they conclude that he is in fact soft and romantic. They regard this disallusionment as an act of betrayal on his part - and the retribution is deliberate and horrifying.

The Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea

'Life for sale. Use me as you wish. I am a twenty-seven-year-old male. Discretion guaranteed. Will cause no bother at all.' When Hanio Yamada realises the future holds little of worth to him, he puts his life for sale in a Tokyo newspaper, thus unleashing a series of unimaginable exploits. A world of murderous mobsters, hidden cameras, a vampire woman, poisoned carrots, code-breaking, a hopeless junkie heiress and makeshift explosives reveals itself to the unwitting hero. Is there nothing he can do to stop it? Resolving to follow the orders of his would-be purchasers, he comes to understand what life is worth, and whether we can indeed name our price.

Life for Sale

The second book in Mishima's landmark The Sea of Fertility sequence, this is the chronicle of a conspiracy, a novel about the roots and nature of Japanese fanaticism in the years that led to war.

Runaway Horses

Donald Keene

Pseud

Mishima Yukio

Professor Yukio Mishima

Ivan Morris

Geoffrey Sargent

Nine short stories by the Japanese literary genius provide insights into the struggles and problems of his contemporary countrymen

Death in Midsummer, and Other Stories

As the dramatic climax of The Sea of Fertility, The Decay of the Angel brings together the dominant themes of the three previous novels- the meaning and decay of Japan's courtly tradition and samurai ideal; the essence and value of Buddhist philosophy and aesthetics; and, underlying all, Mishima's apocalyptic vision of the modern era, which saw the dissolution of the moral and cultural forces that throughout the ages nourished a people and a world.The time is the late 1960s. Honda, now an aged and wealthy man, discovers and adopts a sixteen-year-old orphan, Toru, as his heir, identifying him with the tragic protagonists of the three previous novels, each of whom died at the age of twenty. Honda raises and educates the boy, yet watches him, waiting.

The Decay of the Angel

All eyes are upon Rikio. And he likes it, mostly. His fans cheer from a roped-off section, screaming and yelling to attract his attention--they would kill for a moment alone with him. Finally the director sets up the shot, the camera begins to roll, someone yells "action"; Rikio, for a moment, transforms into another being, a hardened young yakuza, but as soon as the shot is finished, he slumps back into his own anxieties and obsessions. Being a star, constantly performing, being watched and scrutinized as if under a microscope, is often a drag. But so is life. Written shortly after Yukio Mishima himself had acted in the film "Afraid to Die," this novella is a rich and unflinching psychological portrait of a celebrity coming apart at the seams. With exquisite, vivid prose, Star begs the question: is there any escape from how we are seen by others?

Star

The story of one mans obsessive pursuit of a beautiful woman and his equally passionate search for enlightenment, THE TEMPLE OF DAWN powerfully dramatises the Japanese experience form the eve of World War II through the postwar era. Honda, a brilliant lawyer and man of reason, is called to Bangkok on legal business, where he is granted an audience with a young Thai princess - an encounter that radically alters the course of his life. In spite of all reason, he is convinced she is a reincarnated spirit, and undertakes a long, arduous pilgrimage to the holy places of India, where, in the climatic scene, he encounters her once more, only to have his newfound beliefs shattered and his life bereft of all meaning.

The Temple of Dawn

Etsuko, a young widow living in postwar Osaka, Japan, falls prey to the sexual advances of her father-in-law and becomes the victim of her compulsion to both love and hurt a young farm worker. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

Thirst for Love

Translated into English for the first time, a gripping short novel about an affair gone wrong, from the acclaimed Japanese author, Yukio Mishima. Set in rural Japan shortly after World War II, The Frolic of the Beasts tells the story of a strange and utterly absorbing love triangle between a former university student, Kōji; his would-be mentor, the eminent literary critic Ippei Kusakado; and Ippei's beautiful, enigmatic wife, Yūko. When brought face-to-face with one of Ippei's many marital indiscretions, Kōji finds his growing desire for Yūko compels him to action in a way that changes all three of their lives profoundly. Originally published in 1961 and now available in English for the first time, The Frolic of the Beasts is a haunting examination of the various guises we assume throughout our lives, and a tale of psychological self-entrapment, seduction, and murder.

The Frolic of the Beasts

Seeking revenge on the women who betrayed him, Shunsuke, an aging misogynist, enlists the help of Yuichi, a young homosexual, whose experiences in the gay underworld vividly depict the corruption of postwar Tokyo. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

Forbidden Colors

The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea

'There is in this world a kind of desire like stinging pain' A Japanese teenager is overcome with longing for his male classmate. He imagines his body punctured with arrows, like the body of St Sebastian in the painting that obsesses him. Over and over again, each night in his private fantasies, the objects of his lust are tortured, killed and maimed. But, in the rigid world of imperial wartime Japan there is no place for such transgressive desires. He must wear a false mask and hide his true nature, whatever the cost. 'A terrific and astringent work of beauty' The Times Literary Supplement 'Mishima is lucid in the midst of emotional confusion, funny in the midst of despair' Christopher Isherwood 'Never has a "confession" been freer from self-pity' Sunday Times

Confessions of a Mask

'Was it death he was now waiting for? Or a wild ecstasy of the senses?' For the young army officer of Yukio Mishima's seminal story, 'Patriotism, ' death and ecstasy become elementally intertwined. With his unique rigor and passion, Mishima hones in on the body as the great tragic stage for all we call social, ritual, political.

Patriotism

With vast psychological acuity and an unblinking insight into the nature of political and domestic warfare, Yukio Mishima creates a portrait of a marriage in which lofty principles clash fatally with appetite and ambition. For years Kazu has run her fashionable restaurant with a combination of charm and shrewdness. But when the middle-aged entrepreneur falls in love with one of her clients, an aristocratic retired politician, she renounces her business in order to become his wife.In time, however, the restless Kazu decides to resurrect her husband's political career. In doing so, she embarks on a series of compromises and evasions that will force her to choose between her marriage and the demands of her irrepressible vitality. With its subtle ambiguities and its complex, vibrant heroine, After the Banquet is a magnificent novel.

After the Banquet

Kiyoaki Matsugae's passionate and ill-fated love for the betrothed daughter of a Tokyo aristocrat brings him into disfavor at the Imperial Court

Spring Snow

In this fascinating document, one of Japan's best known-and controversial-writers created what might be termed a new literary form. It is new because it combines elements of many existing types of writing, yet in the end fits into none of them. At one level, it may be read as an account of how a puny, bookish boy discovered the importance of his own physical being; the "sun and steel" of the title are themselves symbols respectively of the cult of the open air and the weights used in bodybuilding. At another level, it is a discussion by a major novelist of the relation between action and art, and his own highly polished art in particular. More personally, it is an account of one individual's search for identity and self-integration. Or again, the work could be seen as a demonstration of how an intensely individual preoccupation can be developed into a profound philosophy of life. All these elements are woven together by Mishima's complex yet polished and supple style. The confession and the self-analysis, the philosophy and the poetry combine in the end to create something that is in itself perfect and self-sufficient. It is a piece of literature that is as carefully fashioned as Mishima's novels, and at the same time provides an indispensable key to the understanding of them as art. The road Mishima took to salvation is a highly personal one. Yet here, ultimately, one detects the unmistakable tones of a self transcending the particular and attaining to a poetic vision of the universal. The book is therefore a moving document, and is highly significant as a pointer to the future development of one of the most interesting novelists of modern times.

Sun and Steel

The Sea of Fertility. [Tetralogy]. [Part 1.] Spring Snow. [Part 2.] Run-away Horses. [Part 3.] The Temple of Dawn. [Part 4.] The Decay of the Angel. (Novels. Transl. by Michael Gallagher, E. Dale Saunders Etc.).

Written when Mishima was only twentysix, Forbidden Colors is a depiction of a male homosexual relationship, in which a rich older man buys the love of a young man who is stunningly handsome but who lacks the ability to love. As in Mann's Death in Venice, the older man's longing for the beauty of youth is associated with aestheticism and death.

Forbidden Colours

Beautiful Star is a 1962 tale of family, love, nuclear war and UFOs, and was considered by Mishima to be one of his very best books. 

Translated into English for the first time, this atmospheric black comedy tells the story of the Osugi family, who come to the sudden realization that each of them hails from a different planet: Father from Mars, mother from Jupiter, son from Mercury and daughter from Venus. This extra-terrestrial knowledge brings them closer together, and convinces them that they have a mission: to find others of their kind, and save humanity from the imminent threat of the atomic bomb...

Yukio Mishima

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