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Reading lists

6 Japanese classics to read in Spring

The Temple of Dawn

The four novels remain one of the outstanding works of 20th-Century literature and a summary of the author's life and work... Like the Divine Comedy and Remembrance of Things Past, "The Sea of Fertility" gives the reader the sensation of being carried to a great height...but Mishima abandons the reader at the edge of the precipice, revealing the abyss beneath the degraded life of the post-war world

Yukio Mishima was born into a samurai family and imbued with the code of complete control over mind and body, and loyalty to the Emperor - the same code that produced the austerity and self-sacrifice of Zen. He wrote countless stories and thirty-three plays, in some of which he performed. Several films have been made from his novels, including The Sound of Waves, Enjo which was based on The Temple of the Golden Pavilion and The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea. Among his other works are the novels Confessions of a Mask and Thirst for Love and the short story collections Death in Midsummer and Acts of Worship. The Sea of Fertility tetralogy, however, is his masterpiece. After Mishima conceived the idea of The Sea of Fertility in 1964, he frequently said he would die when it was completed. On 25 November 1970, the day he completed The Decay of the Angel, the last novel of the cycle, Mishima committed seppuku (ritual suicide) at the age of forty-five. 
 
The Sea of Fertility tetralogy, however, is his masterpiece. After Mishima conceived the idea of The Sea of Fertility in 1964, he frequently said he would die when it was completed. On November 25th, 1970, the day he completed The Decay of the Angel, the last novel of the cycle, Mishima committed seppuku (ritual suicide) at the age of 45.

Mishima&rsquo;s literary powers are on full display in his penultimate novel, a meditation on reincarnation and Buddhist philosophy. 
 
Honda, a brilliant lawyer and man of reason, is called to Bangkok on legal business. He is granted an audience with a young Thai princess known as 'Moonlight', an encounter that radically alters the course of his life. Convinced she is a reincarnated spirit, he undertakes a long, arduous pilgrimage to the holy places of India. There he encounters her again. But the princess has become one more embodiment of all that Honda cannot possess. 
 
'An elegy to the loss of pureness in the Japanese national spirit' Japan Times

After the Banquet

Kazu is the biggest and most profound thing Mishima has done so far in an already distinguished career

His most novelistic work, with a degree of earthiness and warmth rare in his fiction

Direct yet allusive, poetic...an amazing feat

Yukio Mishima was born into a samurai family and imbued with the code of complete control over mind and body, and loyalty to the Emperor - the same code that produced the austerity and self-sacrifice of Zen. He wrote countless stories and thirty-three plays, in some of which he performed. Several films have been made from his novels, including The Sound of Waves, Enjo which was based on The Temple of the Golden Pavilion and The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea. Among his other works are the novels Confessions of a Mask and Thirst for Love and the short story collections Death in Midsummer and Acts of Worship. The Sea of Fertility tetralogy, however, is his masterpiece. After Mishima conceived the idea of The Sea of Fertility in 1964, he frequently said he would die when it was completed. On 25 November 1970, the day he completed The Decay of the Angel, the last novel of the cycle, Mishima committed seppuku (ritual suicide) at the age of forty-five.

For years Kazu has run her fashionable restaurant with a combination of charm and shrewdness - then she falls in love. 
 
The man is one of her clients, an aristocratic retired politician, and she renounces her business in order to become his wife. But it is not so easy to renounce her independent spirit. Eventually Kazu must choose between her marriage and the demands of her irrepressible vitality. After the Banquet is a magnificent portrait of political and domestic warfare and love in later life. 
 
'An exquisitely paced high comedy at once characterized by humor and restraint...features a magnificently ebullient heroine as she embarks upon one more adventure in love' Kirkus 
 
&lsquo;[Mishima's] most novelistic work, with a degree of earthiness and warmth rare in his fiction&rsquo; New York Times

Thirst for Love

Thirst for Love contains all of the elements that make Mishima a compelling, disturbing writer

Yukio Mishima was born into a samurai family and imbued with the code of complete control over mind and body, and loyalty to the Emperor - the same code that produced the austerity and self-sacrifice of Zen. He wrote countless stories and thirty-three plays, in some of which he performed. Several films have been made from his novels, including The Sound of Waves, Enjo which was based on The Temple of the Golden Pavilion and The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea. Among his other works are the novels Confessions of a Mask and Thirst for Love and the short story collections Death in Midsummer and Acts of Worship. The Sea of Fertility tetralogy, however, is his masterpiece. After Mishima conceived the idea of The Sea of Fertility in 1964, he frequently said he would die when it was completed. On 25 November 1970, the day he completed The Decay of the Angel, the last novel of the cycle, Mishima committed seppuku (ritual suicide) at the age of forty-five.

Etsuko is a trapped woman who lays traps for others... 
 
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. Meanwhile she develops feelings for the handsome eighteen-year-old servant Saburo. Tormented by his indifference, yet invigorated by her desire, she makes one last, catastrophic bid for his attention. 
 
'A sensuous, absorbing study of overriding obsession' Kirkus 
 
'One of the outstanding writers of the world' New York Times

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

A dark vision...a beautiful, disturbing novel

Mishima writes with a fury that seldom flags

Glitters with images of beauty and destruction, cruelty and sacrifice, dedication and betrayal

I adore Mishima's prose and vivid descriptions. They pull me out of my daily reality

Yukio Mishima was born into a samurai family and imbued with the code of complete control over mind and body, and loyalty to the Emperor - the same code that produced the austerity and self-sacrifice of Zen. He wrote countless stories and thirty-three plays, in some of which he performed. Several films have been made from his novels, including The Sound of Waves, Enjo which was based on The Temple of the Golden Pavilion and The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea. Among his other works are the novels Confessions of a Mask and Thirst for Love and the short story collections Death in Midsummer and Acts of Worship. The Sea of Fertility tetralogy, however, is his masterpiece. After Mishima conceived the idea of The Sea of Fertility in 1964, he frequently said he would die when it was completed. On 25 November 1970, the day he completed The Decay of the Angel, the last novel of the cycle, Mishima committed seppuku (ritual suicide) at the age of forty-five.

This is Mishima's novel about the pressure of living an idealised life. It tells a fictionalised account of real events - the lonely acolyte who destroyed a famous Kyoto temple. 
 
Mizoguchi grows up a lonely boy in a poor family, a hopeless and frustrated stutterer. Only tales of the beauty of a famous temple in Kyoto, told by his dying father, sustain him. Taunted by his schoolmates, he eventually escapes to become an acolyte at the temple. But there, witness to acts of callous violence and terrified by the bombing of the war, Mizoguchi develops an all-consuming obsession with the temple's preservation - until the beauty of the place itself starts to feel like his deadliest enemy. 
 
This powerful story of sacrifice and unattainable ideals brings together Mishima's preoccupations with violence, desire, religion and national history to dazzling effect. 
 
'One of the outstanding writers of the world' New York Times

Spring Snow

Romantic obsession and sexual intrigue meet in the sumptuous historical melodrama

This tetralogy is considered one of Yukio Mishima's greatest works. It could also be considered a catalogue of Mishima's obsessions with death, sexuality and the samurai ethic. Spanning much of the 20th century, the tetralogy begins in 1912 when Shigekuni Honda is a young man and ends in the 1960s with Honda old and unable to distinguish reality from illusion. En route, the books chronicle the changes in Japan that meant the devaluation of the samurai tradition and the waning of the aristocracy.

Mishima's novels exude a monstrous and compulsive weirdness, and seem to take place in a kind of purgatory for the depraved

Perfect beauty&hellip;. A classic of Japanese literature

Mishima was one of literature&rsquo;s great romantics, a tragedian with a heroic sensibility, an intellectual, an esthete, a man steeped in Western letters who toward the end of his life became a militant Japanese nationalist

We read Spring Snow for its marvelous incidentals, graphic and philosophic, and for its scene-gazing, in whose emotional alliance with nature...Mishima remains most consistently Japanese

Yukio Mishima was born into a samurai family and imbued with the code of complete control over mind and body, and loyalty to the Emperor - the same code that produced the austerity and self-sacrifice of Zen. He wrote countless stories and thirty-three plays, in some of which he performed. Several films have been made from his novels, including The Sound of Waves, Enjo which was based on The Temple of the Golden Pavilion and The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea. Among his other works are the novels Confessions of a Mask and Thirst for Love and the short story collections Death in Midsummer and Acts of Worship. The Sea of Fertility tetralogy, however, is his masterpiece. After Mishima conceived the idea of The Sea of Fertility in 1964, he frequently said he would die when it was completed. On 25 November 1970, the day he completed The Decay of the Angel, the last novel of the cycle, Mishima committed seppuku (ritual suicide) at the age of forty-five.

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 elite. 
 
Kiyoaki has been raised among the elegant Ayakura family &ndash; members of the waning aristocracy &ndash; but he is not one of them. Coming of age, he is caught up in the tensions between old and new, and his feelings for the exquisite, spirited Satoko. His devoted friend Honda watches from the sidelines. It is only when Satoko is engaged to a royal prince that Kiyoaki realises the magnitude of his passion. 
 
'An austere love story, probably my favourite of his novels' David Mitchell, Independent on Sunday 
 
'[Mishima's] best work, unnerving as it may be, still casts a spell; and I suspect it will retain its dark radiance' Guardian

Runaway Horses

In Runaway Horses Mishima writes of a desire to destroy or subvert beauty at its height, thus strengthening its appeal and preventing its slow decay

One of the great writers of the twentieth century

This tetralogy is considered one of Yukio Mishima's greatest works. It could also be considered a catalogue of Mishima's obsessions with death, sexuality and the samurai ethic. Spanning much of the 20th century, the tetralogy begins in 1912 when Shigekuni Honda is a young man and ends in the 1960s with Honda old and unable to distinguish reality from illusion. En route, the books chronicle the changes in Japan that meant the devaluation of the samurai tradition and the waning of the aristocracy

Mishima succeeded, unlike any other writer before him, in creating a glittering alloy of Eastern and Western traditions, classical and contemporary forms

Yukio Mishima was born into a samurai family and imbued with the code of complete control over mind and body, and loyalty to the Emperor - the same code that produced the austerity and self-sacrifice of Zen. He wrote countless stories and thirty-three plays, in some of which he performed. Several films have been made from his novels, including The Sound of Waves, Enjo which was based on The Temple of the Golden Pavilion and The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea. Among his other works are the novels Confessions of a Mask and Thirst for Love and the short story collections Death in Midsummer and Acts of Worship. The Sea of Fertility tetralogy, however, is his masterpiece. After Mishima conceived the idea of The Sea of Fertility in 1964, he frequently said he would die when it was completed. On 25 November 1970, the day he completed The Decay of the Angel, the last novel of the cycle, Mishima committed seppuku (ritual suicide) at the age of forty-five.

The second book in Mishima's Sea of Fertility tetraology - this is a story of political violence, traditional samurai values and nihilism. 
 
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 unravels, Mishima brilliantly chronicles the conflicts of a decade that saw the fabric of Japanese life torn apart. 
 
'Runaway Horses is disturbing material, also a harbinger of Mishima's own act of 'patriotic' self-slaughter... Strange, elegant, erotic' Guardian

Yukio Mishima

Stephen Dodd

Various

And Other Stories

A writer is seized by apocalyptic visions; a voyeuristic marquis commits a brutal act; and a trio of beatniks dance to modern jazz in the ruins of an abandoned church. Here, stark autobiography contrasts with pure horror, and the tenderness of first love cedes to obsession, heartbreak and deathly beauty. A new selection of Mishima’s short stories from the 1960s, Voices of the Fallen Heroes traces the final decade of Mishima’s career and offers a unique glimpse into the mind of one of Japan’s greatest writers. 
 
In the title story, a séance brings forth the spirits of young officers in the Imperial Army and the kamikaze pilots of the Second World War, who reproach the Emperor and mourn Japan’s modern decline. In another, Mishima recounts the true story of the time a deranged fan broke into his home at dawn, insisting on meeting the author and imploring him to ‘tell the truth’. Elsewhere, a beautiful youth achieves eternal life through violent murder, and an ill-matched couple seal their fate with a pack of cards, tangled in the web of time and unfulfilled desire. 
 
Available in English for the first time, and carefully selected by expert translators, these captivating stories are the perfect introduction to Mishima's work, on the 100th anniversary of his birth.

Yukio Mishima

Voices of the Fallen Heroes

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