Yukio Mishima, anyone?

[Art]

Has anyone read anything by Yukio Mishima, and if so then what did you think?

So far I have Confessions of a Mask, Forbidden Colours and The Sound of Waves, and think that they are absolutley amazing!

Does anyone know whether he wrote an autobiography or if a biography has been written about him? He led such an interesting life, and had an equally interesting (bad choice of word, i know) death.

[Isagel]

Not a biography´, but perhaps you might find this book interesting? I don´t really know how to describe it - so I´ll just copy information from a bookstore.

Ba Ra Kei
Ordeal by Roses
Cloth. Aperture,N.Y., New York, USA, 2002 (ISBN 0893811696).
Photographs of the famous Japanese novelist create surreal images of creativity, eroticism, and death.

'....Mr Hosoe, a pioneer in a grittily expressionistic form of photography in Japan, rejected conventions and saw tantalizing stories before his camera, some dark, some exuberant....A powerful blend of memory and desire...' -The New York Times 'As the author of the text and the subject of the photographs, Mishima almost tenderly exploits his most intimate obsessions: his erotic desires, his creativity, his body, his premeditated death. Hosoe's work mirrors Mishima's complexity and contradictions in photographs whose images melt into superimposed layers of symbol and meaning.' -

[Art]

Wow, thanks very much, I will have a look out for it!

[simon]

Is he the guy that killed himself publicly with a sword and grew up under the rule of his possessive and insane grandmother who locked him in the house?

[Art]

Yes, he commited seppuku after seizing control of a military headquaters in Tokyo, trying to revive the partiotism of Imperial Japan and the spirit of the Samurai and Bushido.

[simon]

Yeah I read a biography of him, I can't remember what it was called, but it was absolutely facinating, his life and how he was obsessed with death and the glory of dying as a man and a hero. And how he became infatuated with it and how he killed himself and how it was reflected in his books. He wrote great books in my opinion, I distinctly remember in one of them that he had a group of boys killing and torturing a cat, and he wanted the descriptions of it to be accurate, so I killed and disected a cat according to the vicious way his character did, makes you wonder about his sanity.

[amuse]

that's just wrong.

[Isagel]

so I killed and disected a cat according to the vicious way his character did, makes you wonder about his sanity.
Nope, that makes me wonder about your sanity. :-)

(Sorry just couldn´t help it.)

[den]

You're referring to the semi-atuobiographical The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea . They also made a movie of that story. It's very disturbing, much like Lord of the Flies with the boys' fraternity they form and things they get up to.

I've often read it's very hard to translate to english certain subtle aspects of Japanese culture where there is no equivalent in western culture. Hence the movie is set on the coast of England.

[Tabac]

I believe the cat-killing incident if in Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea . I also found Forbidden Colors to be a fascinating novel.

[simon]

Oh no, no no no no, I shall beat myself with a club as penance, never ever ever would I inflict sick perversions and torturings on an animal of any kind, not even an insect, I make that very clear, humans are a different matter of course. I can't beleive I typed I instead of he!

[den]

I thought it was just a typo simon ;)