Yukio Mishima

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima explores the dark and complex psyches of a group of disillusioned adolescents and the tragic consequences of their discontent. This haunting novel delves into the tension between idealism and reality, revealing the often brutal nature of human desires. The story centres around Noboru, a thirteen-year-old boy who, along...

Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima is an introspective and vividly descriptive exploration of a young man's struggle with his concealed identity in post-war Japan. The protagonist, Kochan, a Japanese teenager, grapples with the awakening of his homosexual and sadistic desires in an acutely homophobic and conservative society. Each night, Kochan is haunted by intense fantasies in which he...

Ten tales of loss and longing, from one of Japan's greatest writers. Bringing together Yukio Mishima's finest stories, this selection showcases his extraordinary ability to depict a wide variety of human beings in moments of significance. A moonlit journey to fulfil a wish; a mother lost in mourning; a night of infidelity; and a young lieutenant who ends his life....

Spring Snow is the first novel in Mishima's masterful Sea of Fertility tetralogy. Set in 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—members of the waning aristocracy—but he is not one of them. Coming...

A Japanese masterpiece, reissued in Modern Classics. Written when Mishima was only twenty-six, Forbidden Colours is a depiction of a male homosexual relationship, in which a rich older man buys the love of a young man who is stunningly handsome but lacks the ability to love. As in Mann's Death in Venice, the older man's longing for the beauty of...

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace With the Sea by Yukio Mishima delves into the intersecting lives of a disenchanted adolescent and a weather-beaten sailor, set against the backdrop of post-war Japan. The novel explores themes of innocence corrupted by disillusionment and the brutal clash between youthful idealism and adult sentimentality. The story follows a group of thirteen-year-old boys who...

New in Penguin Japanese Classics - a gripping novel about a love affair gone wrong. Introducing Penguin Japanese Classics - a collection of some of Japan's most celebrated and ground-breaking 20th-century writers, with covers inspired by Japanese art and design. Taking us from a sun-drenched affair in a seaside town to an underground 'ark' full of shadows and eccentrics, with...

The fourth and final book in Mishima's landmark tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility. The dramatic climax of The Sea of Fertility tetralogy. It is the 1960s, and Honda, now an aged and wealthy man, discovers and adopts a sixteen-year-old orphan, Toru. Honda believes that the boy is the reincarnation of the tragic protagonists of the three previous novels, each of...

The second novel in Mishima's masterful Sea of Fertility tetralogy. Runaway Horses is the second book in Mishima's Sea of Fertility tetralogy. It 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,...

Little Clothbound Classics - irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas, and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. Filled with rich description and luxurious beauty, these ten tales of loss and longing from one of Japan's greatest writers show the pull between duty and desire, ecstasy and death. Experience stories of a mother lost...

The Sound of Waves is a classic, elegant romance set in a Japanese fishing village. In a remote fishing village in Japan, two very different young people fall in love. Shinji is a hard-working fisherman, while Hatsue is the beautiful daughter of the wealthiest man in the village. She is also a diver for pearls and seaweed alongside the other...

VINTAGE QUARTERBOUND CLASSICS- Bound to be beautiful A beautiful hardback edition of the great Japanese classic. 'Mishima's greatest novel, and one of the greatest of the past century' - The Times A band of savage thirteen-year-old boys reject the adult world as illusory, hypocritical, and sentimental, and train themselves in a brutal callousness they call 'objectivity'. When the mother of...

A story of a frustrated, confined woman who becomes lost in a psychological maze of her own creation—a labyrinth of jealousy, loneliness, and longing. 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...

Considered one of Mishima's masterpieces, this novel is a fictionalised version of real events - the torching of a Kyoto temple by a disturbed Buddhist acolyte in 1950. 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...

The third novel in Mishima's masterful Sea of Fertility tetralogy, The Temple of Dawn showcases Mishima's literary powers in 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...

After the Banquet, Mishima's 1960 novel, is a portrait of love and marriage in later life, featuring his best female character - the irrepressible Kazu. 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...

Beautiful Star is the novel Yukio Mishima considered to be one of his best works— a tale of family, nuclear war, love, and UFOs. The Osugi family have come to a realization. Each of them hails from a different planet: Father from Mars, Mother from Jupiter, Son from Mercury, and Daughter from Venus. Already seen as oddballs in their small...

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. With Patriotism, 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...

A new selection of lyrically haunting 1960s short stories from a Japanese literary icon. A writer is seized by apocalyptic visions, a trio of beatniks dance to modern jazz in the ruins of an abandoned church, and a séance brings forth the reproachful spirits of the military dead. In Voices of the Fallen Heroes, stark autobiography contrasts with pure horror,...

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 puny, bookish boy discovered the importance...

As long ago as 1916, William Butler Yeats and Ezra Pound were excitedly discovering Noh plays. In 1922, Aurthur Waley's fine translations appeared in a collection titled The Noh Plays of Japan. Since then, interest has grown steadily in this unique art form. The emotion of these plays is so communicable that one can imagine them staged anywhere in the...

Death in Midsummer by Yukio Mishima presents nine of Mishima's finest stories, handpicked by the author himself for translation in this compilation. These stories showcase his extraordinary ability to depict a wide variety of human beings in moments of significance. Often, Mishima's characters are sophisticated modern Japanese who discover they are not as liberated from the past as they had...

A new selection of lyrically haunting short stories from a Japanese literary icon. 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...

For the first time in English, a glittering novella about stardom and disillusionment. All eyes are upon Rikio. And he likes it, mostly. His fans cheer from a roped-off section, screaming and yelling to attract his attention. They would kill for a moment alone with him. Finally the director sets up the shot, the camera begins to roll, someone yells...