Name: Sun & Steel
Rating: 3.769230769230769 (13 reviews)

Yukio Mishima

Sun & Steel

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

A bit hard to understand, but a very interesting look into the mind of Mishima. I appreciated reading his reflections about his own self, and the world around him.

eryc

A bit hard to understand, but a very interesting look into the mind of Mishima. I appreciated reading his reflections about his own self, and the world around him.

Will read it again sometime soon.

The imperious Sun remains unconcerned with the trifles of men. It came to be associated with defeat, death and pervasive corruption. Streaming down light, it highlighted the dead and dying in their agony and morbidity. An attempted shunning and retreat from the Sun leads to disgust. The Sun encourages the offensive, dragging upwards. Felt directly on the skin, it goes beyond, imbuing the body and blood below with the warmth of strength and glow of vitality. This celebration of life occurs at the limits of our corporeal existence, at the boundary of us and the world, coalescing the two. The Sun coaxes and lifts thoughts up and away from their base material and projects them into that realm where they can dazzle and shine. 

Anas A

Simon Elliott Stegall

Yukio Mishima committed ritual suicide with his "Suicide Squad" in 1970. Far from being an act of despair or desperation, it was a premeditated culmination of his philosophy. This is his manifesto, sort of.



I can't pretend to really have understood this book, since I can't see how a "Noble Death" is actually noble when undergone for merely its own sake, and not for a cause-- or at least, I think I can understand the idea, but only how I understand how an arithmetic error could occur-- but I do admire Mishima's conviction and depth of thought. His desire for transcendence was far above what most of us are capable of, even if his ultimate apotheosis was nihilistic, narssicistic, and too stupidly heroic for most of us to endorse. So I admire his single-mindedness, his lust for transcendence, and his will; but not his nostalgic (and frankly silly) attempts to incarnate in himself the samurai of legend.



I can't help but wonder if he would have thought differently if he had read fewer books, lifted weights less, and had a beer every now and then... maybe a lust for bodily perfection and otherworldly transcendence is a form of despair.

So why 5 stars? Because Mishima's writing is consistently 5-star, and because of the epilogue: an incandescent paean to transcendence in which Mishima is taken for a supersonic flight in an F107. This final chapter of the book is a truly phenomenal essay in religious ecstasy, and paints Mishima as a modern Icarus, who knew full well that the highest flight must terminate in a fall.

soiled plants

himitsu

由紀夫·三島

This is the personal testament of Japan's greatest novelist, written shorty before his public suicide in 1970. Through Mishima's finely wrought and emphatic prose, the mind and motivation behind his agonized search for personal identity is revealed. 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

Sun & Steel

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