Yukio Mishima

OK sort of depends what your taste is ... without a doubt his last four books which are a continuous novel - Sea of Fertility - is one of the greatest works of 20th century. It begins with Spring Snow.

The fag ones are Forbidden Colors and Confessions of a Mask, but the former is really about using power to manipulate others, pretty ugly behavior really. The Mask is about a kid growing up in WW2 Japan lusting for soldiers.

Sound of Waves is a rather soppy but OK straight love story interesting for its local color of lost japan.

rather vague question, anon

I guess I wanted to know whats a good book to start of with to get an understanding of what he is like as a writer.

>>8797575
I started with The Sailor who fell from grace with the sea, and I think that's a good starting point for Mishima.

OK then maybe Spring Snow. Mishima was a very strong believer in samurai values and the destruction of traditional social patterns by modern industrialization and Spring Snow starts late in the Meiji going forwards some twenty years, introducing all the significant themes he's interested to develop in his works.

There's also an excellent movie by Paul Schrader - Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters that I'd highly recommend viewing for insight into Mishima's mind.

ok cool, I heard he was sort of like a Japanese evelyn waugh. Both were gay or bisexual and extremely reactionary in their beliefs but were incredible writers.

ummm I've never heard the comparison, though both had a very historic perspective. Waugh seemed to me a socialite gadfly, who landed upon some interesting zeitgeist themes and became in later years a maudlin drunk. I loved his diaries and his war books offered fascinating detail of the ineptitude of the allies in WW2.

Mishima is in every way a much more "serious" writer and thinker and I consider his works have true greatness

Hey Ouija Boy