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, where the form is practiced as a major art. Nine of yukio mishima’s finest stories were selected by Mishima himself for translation in this book; they represent his extraordinary ability to depict a wide variety of human beings in moments of significance.

. Used book in Good Condition. Often his characters are sophisticated modern Japanese who turn out to be not so liberated from the past as they had thought.

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

Used book in Good Condition. But his admiration soon turns to hatred, as Ryuji forsakes life onboard the ship for marriage, rejecting everything Noboru holds sacred. When noboru’s widowed mother is romanced by Ryuji, a sailor, Noboru is thrilled. Upset and appalled, he and his friends respond to this apparent betrayal with a terrible ferocity.

Yukio mishima’s the sailor who fell From Grace With the Sea explores the vicious nature of youth that is sometimes mistaken for innocence. He idolizes this rugged man of the sea as a hero. Thirteen-year-old noboru is a member of a gang of highly philosophical teenage boys who reject the tenets of the adult world — to them, hypocritical, adult life is illusory, and sentimental.

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Spring Snow: The Sea of Fertility, 1

Shigekuni honda, kiyoaki Matsugae, an aspiring lawyer and his childhood friend, are the sons of two such families. It is 1912 in tokyo, and the hermetic world of the ancient aristocracy is being breached for the first time by outsiders — rich provincial families unburdened by tradition, whose money and vitality make them formidable contenders for social and political power.

As they come of age amidst the growing tensions between old and new, Kiyoaki is plagued by his simultaneous love for and loathing of the spirited young woman Ayakura Satoko. But kiyoaki’s true feelings only become apparent when her sudden engagement to a royal prince shows him the magnitude of his passion — and leads to a love affair both doomed and inevitable.

Here we meet shigekuni honda, who narrates this epic tale of what he believes are the successive reincarnations of his friend, Kiyoaki Matsugae. Used book in Good Condition. Used book in Good Condition. Yukio mishima’s spring snow is the first novel in his masterful tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility.

Confessions of a Mask

Used book in Good Condition. As news of the war reaches Tokyo, Kochan considers the fate of Japan and his place within its deeply rooted propriety. The story of a man coming to terms with his homosexuality in traditional Japanese society has become a modern classic. 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. Its publication in english―praised by Gore Vidal, James Baldwin, and Christopher Isherwood― propelled the young Yukio Mishima to international fame. Confessions of a mask reflects Mishima’s own coming of age in post-war Japan.

To hide his homosexuality, Sonoko, he courts a woman, but this exacerbates his feelings for men. He begins to notice his growing attraction to some of the boys in his class, particularly the pubescent body of his friend Omi. Used book in Good Condition.

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

Taunted by his schoolmates, he feels utterly alone until he becomes an acolyte at a famous temple in Kyoto. In the novel's soaring climax, he tries desperately to free himself from his fixation. He quickly becomes obsessed with the beauty of the temple. Used book in Good Condition. Used book in Good Condition.

. Even when tempted by a friend into exploring the geisha district, he cannot escape its image. 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.

Snow Country

Used book in Good Condition. Nobel prize winner yasunari kawabata’s snow Country is widely considered to be the writer’s masterpiece: a powerful tale of wasted love set amid the desolate beauty of western Japan. Used book in Good Condition. In chronicling the course of this doomed romance, Kawabata has created a story for the ages — a stunning novel dense in implication and exalting in its sadness.

. She gives herself to him fully and without remorse, despite knowing that their passion cannot last and that the affair can have only one outcome. At an isolated mountain hot spring, a wealthy dilettante meets Komako, with snow blanketing every surface, Shimamura, a lowly geisha.

The Sound of Waves

Used book in Good Condition. They fall in love, but must then endure the calumny and gossip of the villagers. Set in a remote fishing village in Japan, The Sound of Waves is a timeless story of first love. Vintage. A young fisherman is entranced at the sight of the beautiful daughter of the wealthiest man in the village.

Used book in Good Condition.

Runaway Horses: The Sea of Fertility, 2

Used book in Good Condition. Runaway horses is the chronicle of a conspiracy — a novel about the roots and nature of Japanese fanaticism in the years that led to war. Yukio mishima’s runaway Horses is the second novel in his masterful tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility. In 1932, shigeuki Honda has become a judge in Osaka.

Convinced that a young rightist revolutionary, is the reincarnation of his friend Kiyoaki, Isao, Honda commits himself to saving the youth from an untimely death. Again we encounter shigekuni Honda, who narrates this epic tale of what he believes are the successive reincarnations of his childhood friend Kiyoaki Matsugae.

Vintage. Used book in Good Condition. Isao, driven to patriotic fanaticism by a father who instilled in him the ethos of the ancient samurai, organizes a violent plot against the new industrialists who he believes are usurping the Emperor’s rightful power and threatening the very integrity of the nation.

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The Decay of the Angel Sea of Fertility, Book 4

It is the late 1960s and honda, kiyoaki — this time restored to life as a teenage orphan, once more encounters a person he believes to be a reincarnation of his friend, now an aged and wealthy man, Tōru. Adopting the boy as his heir, Honda quickly finds that Tōru is a force to be reckoned with. Vintage.

Yukio mishima’s the decay of the Angel is the final novel in his masterful tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility. Used book in Good Condition. Used book in Good Condition. It is the last installment of Shigekuni Honda’s pursuit of the successive reincarnations of his childhood friend Kiyoaki Matsugae. The final novel of this celebrated tetralogy weaves together the dominant themes of the previous three novels in the series: the decay of Japan’s courtly tradition; the essence and value of Buddhist philosophy and aesthetics; and, underlying all, Mishima’s apocalyptic vision of the modern era.

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Kokoro

The novel sustains throughout its length something approaching poetry, and it is rich in understanding and insight. Vintage. In the course of this exploration, Soseki brilliantly describes different levels of friendship, family relationships, and the devices by which men attempt to escape from their fundamental loneliness.

Used book in Good Condition. The translation, by Edwin McClellan, is extremely good. Anthony west, the New Yorker Used book in Good Condition. The subject of 'kokoro, ' which can be translated as 'the heart of things' or as 'feeling, ' is the delicate matter of the contrast between the meanings the various parties of a relationship attach to it.

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Star

With exquisite, vivid prose, star begs the question: is there any escape from how we are seen by others? Used book in Good Condition. And he likes it, mostly. For the first time in english, a glittering novella about stardom from “one of the greatest avant-garde Japanese writers of the twentieth century” Judith Thurman, The New YorkerAll eyes are on Rikio.

Used book in Good Condition. But so is life. Finally the director sets up the shot, but as soon as the shot is finished, transforms into another being, a hardened young yakuza, for a moment, the camera begins to roll, someone yells “action”; Rikio, he slumps back into his own anxieties and obsessions.

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. Being a star, being watched and scrutinized as if under a microscope, constantly performing, is often a drag. His fans cheer, screaming and yelling to attract his attention―they would kill for a moment alone with him.

Vintage.