Vintage, 2000. 108 pages. ISBN: 9780099282785. For years Kazu has run her fashionable restaurant with a combination of charm and shrewdness. But when the she falls in love with one of her clients, an aristocratic retired politician, she renounces her business in order to become his wife. But it is not so easy to renounce her independent spirit, and eventually Kazu must choose...
New Directions, 1958. 125 pages. ISBN: 9780811201186. Translator: Meredith Weatherby. 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.
Translated by Meredith Weatherby.— New York: New Directions Books, 1958. — 254 p. — ISBN: 58-12637. 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...
Penguin Books, 1977. 95 pages. ISBN: 9780140033229.
Translator: Ivan Morris.
Recognized throughout the world for his brilliance as a novelist and playwright, Yukio Mishima is also noted as a master of the short story in his native Japan. Here nine of his finest stories, selected by Mishima himself, represent his extraordinary ability to depict a wide variety of human beings in...
Vintage Int., 2020. — 365 p. — ISBN 978-0525-56514-7 Yukio Mishima was born in Tokyo in 1925. He graduated from Tokyo Imperial University’s School of Jurisprudence in 1947. His first published book, The Forest in Full Bloom, appeared in 1944, and he established himself as a major author with Confessions of a Mask (1949). From then until his death, he continued to publish...
New Directions, 1995. 24 pages. ISBN: 9780811213127.
Translator: Geoffrey W. Sargent.
One of the most powerful short stories ever written: Yukio Mishima’s masterpiece about the erotics of patriotism and honor, love and suicide.
By now, Yukio Mishima’s (1925-1970) dramatic demise through an act of seppuku after an inflammatory public speech has become the stuff of literary...
Kodansha International, 2003. 99 pages. ISBN: 4770029039.
Translator: John Bester.
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...
Penguin Books, 1970. 143 pages. ISBN: 9780399504891.
Translator: John Nathan.
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea tells the tale of a band of savage thirteen-year-old boys who 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...
Vintage, 2000. 267 pages. ISBN: 9780099282990.
Translator: Michael Gallagher.
Tokyo, 1912. The closed world of the ancient aristocracy is being breached for the first time by outsiders - rich provincial families, a new and powerful political and social elite.
Kiyoaki has been raised among the elegant Ayakura family - members of the waning aristocracy - but he is not one of...
Vintage, 2000. 259 pages. ISBN: 9780099282891.
Translator: Michael Gallagher.
Isao is a young, engaging patriot, and a fanatical believer in the ancient samurai ethos. He turns terrorist, organising a violent plot against the new industrialists, who he believes are threatening the integrity of Japan and usurping the Emperor’s rightful power. As the conspiracy unfolds and...
Vintage, 2001. 208 pages. ISBN: 9780099282792.
Translator: E. Dale Saunders, Cecilia Segawa Seigle.
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. He is convinced she is a reincarnated spirit, and undertakes a long, arduous...
Vintage, 2001. 138 pages. ISBN: 9780099284574.
Translator: Edward G. Seidensticker.
The dramatic climax of The Sea of Fertility tetraology takes place in 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...
Vintage, 2000. 107 pages. ISBN: 9781407053851. Translator: Meredith Weatherby. Set in a remote fishing village in Japan, The Sound of Waves is a timeless story of first love. A young fisherman is entranced at the sight of the beautiful daughter of the wealthiest man in the village. They fall in love, but must then endure the calumny and gossip of the villagers.
Tuttle Publishing, 2008. 211 pages. ISBN: 978-1-4629-0276-7. Translator: Ivan Morris. Because of the boyhood trauma of seeing his mother make love to another man in the presence of his dying father, Mizoguchi becomes a hopeless stutterer. Taunted by his schoolmates, he feels utterly alone until he becomes an acolyte at a famous temple in Kyoto. He quickly becomes obsessed with...
Vintage, 2009. 95 pages. ISBN: 9780099530275. Translator: Alfred H. Marks. After the early death of her philandering husband, Etsuko moves into her father-in-law's house, where she numbly submits to the old man's advances. But soon she finds herself in love with the young servant Saburo. Tormented by his indifference, yet invigorated by her desire, she makes her move, with...
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