Synopses & Reviews
By now, Yukio Mishima's (1925-1970) dramatic demise through an act of after an inflammatory public speech has become the stuff of literary legend. With , Mishima was able to give his heartwrenching patriotic idealism an immortal vessel. A lieutenant in the Japanese army comes home to his wife and informs her that his closest friends have become mutineers. He and his beautiful loyal wife decide to end their lives together. In unwavering detail Mishima describes Shinji and Reiko making love for the last time and the couple's that follows.
Review
"A direct yet lyrical style devoted entirely to bringing out the elevated emotions of its two characters." Trevor Berrett
Review
"The violence we are facing with such difficulty in our daily lives, he gives us simply in all its subcutaneous horror and myth." The Mookse and the Gripes
Synopsis
One of the most powerful short stories ever written: Yukio Mishima's masterpiece about the erotics of patriotism and honor, love and suicide.
Synopsis
One of the most powerful short stories ever written, this work discusses the dynamics of patriotism and honor, love and suicide.
About the Author
Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) 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.