Synopses & Reviews
Confessions of a Mask is the story of an adolescent who must learn to live with the painful fact that he is unlike other young men. Mishima's protagonist discovers that he is becoming a homosexual in polite, post-war Japan. To survive, he must live behind a mask of propriety.
Christopher Isherwood comments—"One might say, 'Here is a Japanese Gide,'....But no, Mishima is himself—a very Japanese Mishima; lucid in the midst of emotional confusion, funny in the midst of despair, quite without pomposity, sentimentality or self-pity. His book, like no other, has made me understand a little of how it feels to be Japanese. I think it is greatly superior, as art and as a human document to his deservedly praised novel, The Sound of Waves."
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"Mishima's Mask continues to speak to the terrors that come when sexualities are pressed underground." Emily Drabinski
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""Yukio Mishima was one of the greatest avant-garde Japanese writers of the twentieth century."" Judith Thurman
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""We read the bloody details with wonder...such is the power of his writing."" New Yorker
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"" follows in the spirit of Oscar Wilde's dictum that 'man is least himself when he talks in his own person. 'Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.'"
Synopsis
Confessions of a Mask tells the story of Kochan, an adolescent boy tormented by his burgeoning attraction to men: he wants to be normal. Kochan is meek-bodied, and unable to participate in the more athletic activities of his classmates. He begins to notice his growing attraction to some of the boys in his class, particularly the pubescent body of his friend Omi. To hide his homosexuality, he courts a woman, Sonoko, but this exacerbates his feelings for men. As news of the War reaches Tokyo, Kochan considers the fate of Japan and his place within its deeply rooted propriety. Confessions of a Mask reflects Mishima s own coming of age in post-war Japan. Its publication in English praised by Gore Vidal, James Baldwin, and Christopher Isherwood propelled the young Yukio Mishima to international fame. "
Synopsis
Confessions of a Mask is one of the classics of modern Japanese fiction. It is the story of an adolescent who must learn to live with the painful fact that he is unlike other young men. Mishima's protagonist discovers that he is becoming a homosexual in polite, post-war Japan. To survive, he must live behind a mask of propriety.
Synopsis
One of the classics of modern Japanese fiction.
Synopsis
The story of a man coming to terms with his homosexuality in traditional Japanese society has become a modern classic.
Synopsis
tells the story of Kochan, an adolescent boy tormented by his burgeoning attraction to men: he wants to be "normal."
About the Author
Yukio Mishima was many people. The best known in Japan of the writers to emerge there after World War II, he was by far the most published abroad. Mishima completed his first novel the year he entered the University of Tokyo. More followed (some twenty-three, the last completed the day of his death in November, 1970), along with more than forty play, over ninety short stories, several poetry and travel volumes and hundreds of essays. Influenced by European literature, in which he was exceptionally well read, he was an interpreter to his own people of Japan's ancient virtues, to which he urged a return. He had sung on the stage, starred in and directed movies and was a noted practitioner of Japan's traditional martial arts. He seemed at the height of his career and vitality at the age of forty-five, when after a demonstration in the public interest he committed suicide by ceremonial seppuku.