Vintage, 2000. 108 p. 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 p. 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.
Penguin Books, 1977. 95 p. 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...
New Directions, 1995. 24 p. 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 legend....
Kodansha International, 2003. 99 p. 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 p. 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 p. 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 them....
Vintage, 2000. 259 p. 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 unravels,...
Vintage, 2001. 208 p. 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 p. 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 p. 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 p. 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 the...
Vintage, 2009. 95 p. 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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