Cores Proibidas

by Yukio Mishima, Jefferson José Teixeira (Translator)

Grande admirador das tradições milenares da cultura japonesa, especialmente da conduta virtuosística dos samurais, Yukio Mishima viveu a literatura como se fosse parte indissociável de sua existência. Além de romances, escreveu também poemas, ensaios e peças teatrais. Crítico contumaz da degradação do Japão moderno, permaneceu sempre em luta pela retomada dos valores clássicos do seu país, até cometer o suicídio, em 1970. Sua morte é emblemática de como, para ele, arte e vida não se separavam: depois de rasgar o próprio ventre com um sabre, foi decapitado por um de seus discípulos, de acordo com a tradição samurai.
Cores proibidas, publicado pela primeira vez em 1953, é um dos primeiros romances de Mishima, pseudônimo de Hiraoka Kimitake (1925-1970). A narrativa compõe uma trama de alto teor homoerótico sobre a repressão do desejo e a proximidade entre pulsão sexual e dissolução de velhas convicções morais na sociedade devastada do Japão pós-Segunda Guerra. No romance, Shunsuke é um velho escritor que, depois de três casamentos fracassados e uma existência dedicada aos exercícios espirituais, encontra na homossexualidade uma nova aspiração existencial. Shunsuke conhece Yuichi, um jovem de beleza frágil e estonteante que se torna seu amante e uma espécie de fantoche para seus planos de vingança contra as mulheres. O enredo encadeia revelação atrás de revelação, provocando no leitor um misto de curiosidade e atordoamento, já que os personagens assumem atitudes contraditórias e comportamentos escorregadios.

Genres: Fiction, Japan, Japanese Literature, LGBT, Classics, Queer, Asia

568 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1951

About the author

Yukio Mishima (三島 由紀夫) was born in Tokyo in 1925. He graduated from Tokyo Imperial University’s School of Jurisprudence in 1947. His first published book, The Forest in Full Bloom, appeared in 1944 and he established himself as a major author with Confessions of a Mask (1949). From then until his death he continued to publish novels, short stories, and plays each year. His crowning achievement, the Sea of Fertility tetralogy—which contains the novels Spring Snow (1969), Runaway Horses (1969), The Temple of Dawn (1970), and The Decay of the Angel (1971)—is considered one of the definitive works of twentieth-century Japanese fiction. In 1970, at the age of forty-five and the day after completing the last novel in the Fertility series, Mishima committed seppuku (ritual suicide)—a spectacular death that attracted worldwide attention.

Reviews

[William2]

I admire Mishima. It’s too bad though that he ever heard of philosophy. It makes for his worst writing. And the moment he frees himself of it, the prose awakens and moves, often sinuously as in the early pages here. He might have subtitled this one The Big Book if Misogyny. In its heartless cruelty it reminds me of Choderlos de Laclos’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Mishima’s second novel, it was originally published in two parts in Japan, in 1951 and 1953, when he was 25 and 27. In it an ugly old man, a Japanese writer of some standing, who’s taken to falling in love with very young women, finds a way to exact a horrible revenge. As in the Laclos’s novel, this is undertaken through a number of elaborately feigned love affairs. A beautiful young man, who is both gay and the boyfriend of the old writer’s current dalliance, Yasuko, is actively ensnared in a plan to jilt her. There are budget struggles in the home of the young man’s ailing mother. Shunsuké promises to make these money problems go away if the young man, Yuichi, will work with him to actively break the hearts of Yasuko, and many other women to whom he has in the past fruitlessly pledged his troth. Shunsuké is every bit as viscous and malign as the Marquise de Merteuil in the Laclos novel, but at least she possessed the virtue of devising amusing escapades. Shunsuké’s by contrast are absolutely humorless. It’s this fundamental sobriety alloyed with anger that, it can be argued, is at the core of many of Mishima’s novels. Here it takes on the petty injustices of both the gay world of the day, with its superficial thralldom to beauty, and the institutionalized tedium of straight marriage, which in Japan at this time was still often an arranged affair. In my view, Mishima doesn’t like what he sees in either camp.

[Jim Fonseca]

I think it’s easier to structure my review by themes rather than by plot.

Misogyny: A famous old male author, Shunsuke, hates women. He’s been married and divorced three times (all ‘disastrous’) and has had ten other affairs (all ‘clumsy’). He’s always kept a diary, written in French in case any of his women find it. In the diary he details his opinions of how stupid, fickle and irrational women are.



Revenge: The author in the story would love to get back at all of these women. He finds his weapon one day at a beach resort. He meets a beautiful young man named Yuichi whom he compares to the Greek statue of David. He senses that the young man still exploring his sexuality is gay, and he's right. He realizes Yuichi needs ‘cover’ so he basically pays him to marry the young woman Yuichi is going out with. Then he introduces Yuichi to various women who are his ex’s, even setting up lunch and dinner dates with them for him. Shunsuke is right, none of the women can resist him. Nor can one of their husbands.

Gay life in Japan in the early 1950s: As the story unfolds it becomes a primer of what gay life was like in Japan at that time. Gay men hung out in certain bars and met in certain parks at night. Wealthy older men financially supported younger men. They held parties at rented suburban houses where some men were in drag and bedrooms were available. Young men occasionally fell in love with each other but it couldn’t be an exclusive relationship because they needed financial support from older men – their ‘patrons.’ (The consensus is that the author of this book, Mishima, was gay, although his wife always denied it.)

Living beauty vs. ugly death and evil. Shunsuke, who considers himself ugly, is so fascinated by Yuichi’s beauty and his doings that you wonder if Shunsuke isn't in love with Yuichi himself – everyone else is. Shunsuke thinks of Yuichi as “a spiritual puppet of himself.” It’s hard to believe that Shunsuke could be so evil and it’s equally hard to believe Yuichi would be such an active participant in the plot for revenge. But it gets worse. Yuichi starts to enjoy his role and goes above and beyond, telling Shunsuke on occasion, in effect, ‘and guess what else I did.’

We learn a bit about the process of writing from the fictitious author although the only literary writing Shunsuke does in his old age is the editing of a set of his collected works. (24 volumes!) He no longer values his own written work, telling us that it was all about people going through life with serene resignation and without jealousy or hatred. Such a sharp contrast to his true feelings!

There is good writing. Here’s a passage about the first time Yuichi goes to the park where gay men meet at night:

“This company - this choosing, craving, pursuing, joyfully seeking, sighing, dreaming, loitering company - this company with sentiments wedded by the narcotic of custom - this company whose desire had been changed to something ugly by an incurable esthetic disease exchange fixedly sad stares as its members roved under the dim light of the street lamps. In the night many, many, wide-open, thirsty glances met and melted into each other. At the bend of the path, hand in hand, shoulder against shoulder, eyes over shoulders, while the night breeze softly wrestled the branches; now coming, now going again, the appraising looks sharply cast crossed in the same place.....These men do not have to sleep together. From the day we were born we have slept together. In hatred, in jealousy, in scorn, coming together for a short moment of love just to keep warm.”

I’ve read a lot of books by the author, Mishima – this is my eighth - including all four of his tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility. I have to say: this is a pretty bizarre premise for a story. And yet, and I don’t know why, I think this book has Mishima’s best writing. I thought that several times as I was reading it.



Mishima was a prolific author, writing more than a book a year for the 30 years of his writing career from 1941 until his suicide in 1971. Forbidden Colors was written about ten years in; it was published in two installments in 1951 and 1953.

Top photo: modern Tokyo’s small bar scene from sassyhongkong.com
The author from bbc.com

[Revised 7/2/23, edits 10/12/23]

[Capsguy · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's such a pity that Forbidden Colours will always be foreshadowed by Mishima's other works that had closer ties to his eventual death, because if he talked about suicide and actually did it it must mean that that work is suddenly more DEEP&EDGY, right guys?

I love Mishima's ability to depict internal thought-processing and reasoning across a wide array of characters in quite unique positions for a reader like myself. His views on Japan's shift to a more materialist and individualistic culture for reasons like the attempt to appear beautiful actually come at the cost of the loss actual beauty make a compelling case.

Mishima was a bad-ass. He belonged to a certain group at a certain time and was not afraid to say things how they were. Japan is still considerably repressive towards homosexuality, especially in men and I found that the behaviours and beliefs of many homosexuals could genuinely end up despising women as a result which was evident throughout the novel.

This is not a quick read, Mishima took his time to ensure that all the characters throughout the story were crafted beautifully which allowed him to create some considerably memorable scenes that he managed to pull off without appearing far-fetched.

There is so much you can pick up in the novel. If you think this is going to be some homo erotic fiction, it is not.

Despite the subject matter and foreign nature of the work which may repulse or encourage some to not read it (homosexuality, misogyny etc.), I cannot emphasise the importance of at least giving it a try. An author like no other, writing a story like no other in a time like no other. Don't read him because he is the 'Japanese Hemingway', read him for what he was and what he has given us all, this certainly was not reminiscent of anything I had read by Hemingway, which shows that Mishima was so far from being a one trick pony.

[عبدالعزيز · Rating 5 out of 5]

يمتد تاريخ الأدب الياباني على فترة ما يقارب ألفي عام، و تأثرت أوآئل الأعمال الأدبية اليابانية بالثقافة الصينية والتي غالباً ما كُتبت باللغة الصينية، إلا أنه عبر الزمن تغير هذا النمط ليأخذ الأدب الياباني طابعاً مميزاً خاصاً به.

وعندما بدأت اليابان بفتح أبوابها على الغرب في القرن التاسع عشر، بدأ الأدب الياباني بالتأثر بالأدب الغربي والتأثير فيه.

و على الرغم من حداثة الأدب الياباني، قياساً بتجارب أمم أخرى، فقد وصل إلى مراتب متقدمة بفوز روائييه بجائزتين من جوائز نوبل.

الكتاب اليابانيون لديهم اهتمام واضح في العلاقات والمشاعر الإنسانية، لا يبحثون عن الغموض والإثارة والتشويق، ورغم ذلك ما أن تبدأ بقراءة أحد رواياتهم حتى تشعر أنك تريد المزيد لتقرأ.
هذا الرواية التي أظهر فيها مشيما ميوله الجنسية كشاذ، وتعد من أهم الروايات اليابانية الحديثة التي يظهر بها تطور انسلاخ الأدب الياباني عن ماضيه والظهور بشكل جديد.

[Marius Citește · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roman complex plasat într-o Japonie postbelică ce explorează teme ca frumusețe-urâțenie, viată-moarte, tinerețe-bătrânețe, trup-spirit și ne arată constrângerile societății prin intermediul vieții unui tânăr homosexual, Yuichi, cu un trup pefect, un ideal de frumusețe amintind de statuile grecești și a unui bătrân scriitor misogin, Shunsuke, dezamăgit de propria viață.

Acesta din urmă folosindu-se de frumusețea tânărului Yuichi caută să se răzbune pe femei, ca tânăra Kyoko și doamna Kaburagi, pentru a le seduce și a le manipula. Îl inițiază pe tânăr în arta trădării emoționale, incurajându-l să facă o căsătorie fără dragoste în timp ce va avea relații atât cu bărbați cât și cu femei de vârste și din medii sociale diferite.
Putem face unele paralele cu alte mari cărți ale literaturii universale ca "Moartea la Veneția" de Th.Mann, relația dintre Shunsuke și Yuichi făcând aluzie la răzbunarea domnișoarei Havisham folosindu-se de Estella în "Marile Speranțe" de Ch.Dickens.

Roman psihologic, plin de idei folosofice ce examinează conflictele interioare ale personajelor și puterea distructiva a emoțiilor reprimate.

[George Ilsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish that Mishima wrote more books like this one. He destroyed another of his manuscripts, and probably felt it was career-destroying to write too close to his heart. His first book "Confessions of a Mask" was successful and semi-autobiograhical; despite that, or perhaps because of that, Mishima chose to hide as much as he revealed. The "Mask" continued throughout his life, but not the "Confessions."

Forbidden Colors may be considered a masterpiece, a melange of characters pretending, but feels convoluted and forced rather than ultimately honest and revelatory. So why 5 stars? Because it is Mishima and it is all we have — unless a supposed destroyed manuscript surfaces, now that researchers have access to his papers. Also, it provides a glimpse of Tokyo's post-War gay bars, a milieu that Mishima knew quite well.

[Cipi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un roman despre frumusețe. Homosexualitatea este doar o temă de suprafață. Nici nu cred, de fapt, că Yuichi ar fi homosexual, cel puțin nu doar asta. Este mult mai mult de atât, să zicem că ar fi mai degrabă într-o sferă a bisexualității, undeva la o margine sau, poate, în afara spectrului, dar este un om care pur și simplu există. Sau, cel puțin, va fi cândva un om, căci în romanul ăsta este un proiect (de răzbunare, al lui Shunsuke), iar mai ales, cât am reușit eu cu mintea mea limitată să judec, un obiect. Pentru că mergând mai departe de toate temele prezente (a esteticului, creației (care își învinge creatorul), socială <<înclinația homoerotică într-o Japonie postbelică, plină și de alte probleme>>, dragostei, bildungs ș.a.), Yuichi este folosit de absolut toată lumea. De pildă, Shunsuke, de la care pleacă întreaga poveste, crede că îl va putea modela pe Yuichi în așa fel încât să-i satisfacă toate frustrările: vrea să combine frumusețea lui interioară cu frumusețea carnală a tânărului. Vrea să-i impună un set de principii, văzând că este amoral. Îl transformă, conștient fiind, într-o armă. Bineînțeles, Yuichi acceptă, e un personaj lipsit de voință în cea mai mare parte a cărții, nu cunoaște miezul oamenilor, îi dezbracă pe toți, femei și bărbați deopotrivă, însă vede numai trupurile, nicicând nu reușește să se adâncească mai mult. Mai mult, apare la un moment dat o oglindă: Yuichi e un personaj, mai ales, plictisit. De aceea, romantismul la el nu ține, zboară ,,din floare în floare", nu se atașează de nimeni în afară de sine, dezvoltă complexul lui Narcis, motiv pentru care el și atunci când face dragoste cu cineva, de fapt face cu el însuși, cu imaginea pe care o vede în ochii celuilalt. Shunsuke îl învață să urască lumea, să vadă numai negrul din ea și îi reușește, Yuichi aproape că devine un automatism.
Este greu să scapi din mrejele altuia, să te debarasezi de influența lui și să nu mai rătăcești, să-ți sădești propriile rădăcini. Yuichi este chinuit. Viața cosmopolită la care ajunge să aibă acces nu îl încălzește cu nimic. Nu asta căuta. Ci, mai degrabă, o pace, caută să reclădească fisura de dinăuntrul lui, fie și că nu înțelege care e și nu o cunoaște (deși mi-ar fi greu să afirm că este neapărat atât de preocupat de asta, pentru că nu caută mereu o rezolvare, cât un fel de a se obișnui). Iar asta ar trebui să căutăm cu toții. Să nu ne mai lăsăm să fim programați de alții. Sau, cel puțin, să rezistăm.

[Mike Mason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superbly powerful book that resided for years on bookshelf. Shunsuke aims to get payback on womankind for his 3 failed marriages. Using a beautiful gay man - Yuichi - to enter a loveless marriage and have affairs with others at his direction. Whilst Yuichi has even more affairs ...with men.

The story is well told. I finished the book quickly as could not put down. I have amassed more of the authors works to devour.

[Dusty Myers · Rating 2 out of 5]

For those who don't know, Yukio Mishima is one of Japan's most-revered writers of the 20th century. He committed suicide in 1970 that tragic and noble ritualistic way they have over there, and he was probably gay, though he was definitely married (to a woman). This novel is, above all, a harsh critique of marriage. Like Thomas Mann, the story begins with an aged, single, famous writer (Shunsuké) at the beach, gazing upon the impossibly beautiful body of a young male (Yuichi, much older than Mann's Tadzio). Shunsuké has been hurt, emotionally, and like embittered by two previous women he was with, and so he takes Yuichi under his proverbial wing as a kind of experiment.

Yuichi is to marry a young woman, but confesses that he can't ever love a woman. He feels nothing for the sex as a whole. Shunsuké tells him that women should be treated as stupid animals, easily manipulated, and tells him to go through with it for the sake of power and position. Then, throughout the rest of the novel, Shunsuké basically uses Yuichi's good looks to get him to seduce and emotionally destroy the very women who emotionally destroyed him.

It's, clearly, a pretty angry book. At one point Yuichi is walking with one of his many lovers throughout the book, and overhears a passing woman say something like "Ugh, gays!" He blows up to his companion:

"'Them! Them!' Yuichi ground his teeth. 'They who pay three hundred and fifty yen for a lunch hour together in a hotel bed, and have their great love affair in the sight of heaven. They who, if all goes well, build their rat's-nest love nests. They who, sleepy-eyed, diligently multiply. They who go out on Sundays with all their children to clearance sales at the department stores. They who scheme out one or two stingy infidelities in their lifetimes. They who always show off their healthy homes, their healthy morality, their common sense, their self-satisfaction.'

Victory, however, is always on the side of the commonplace. Yuichi knew that all the scorn he could muster could not combat their natural scorn" (238).

So an angry book, but a pretty wise one. This is the most articulate version I've read of the idea that a gay man's anger or hatred toward the heterosexual order is always limited by the fact that he came from such an order, whereas a hetero can do everything possible to keep homosexuality out of his life all together, making his hatred for it real, powerful, and thorough.

The copy on the back of my copy of the book is not so wise, however. It interprets Yuichi's situation as being "[d]rawn to homosexuality after a loveless marriage," as though gay sex were some logical form of therapy (which for some married men maybe it is...). Mishima somewhat addresses this pre-"gay rights" homosexual dilletantism late in the book, once Yuichi starts sleeping with Kawada, who is some important financial worker:

"The homosexual of promise, whoever he is, is one who recognizes that certain manliness within himself, and loves it, and holds fast to it, and the masculine virtue that Kawada recognized in himself was his ever-ready nineteenth-century predilection for diligence. A strange trap for one to be in! As in that long-ago warlike time, loving a woman was an effeminate act; to Kawada any emotion that ran counter to his own masculine virtue seemed effeminate. To samurai and homosexual the ugliest vice is femininity. Even though their reasons for it differ, the samurai and the homosexual do not see manliness as instinctive but rather as something gained only from moral effort. The ruin Kawada felt was moral ruin. The reason that he was an adherent of the Conservative party lay in its policy of protecting the things that should have been his enemies: the established order and the family system based on heterosexual love" (380).

Paging Larry Craig. Mishima's narrator loves to butt in a lot like this with a grand, sometimes-smirking knowingness about his characters, but it always felt more companionable than intrusive. All-in-all a pretty good novel, though I imagine his better-known books—those without, perhaps, so strong a need to delineate their author's desired position somewhere between the code of the samurai and that of the homosexual—are better reads.

Oh and there's this incredible sentence: "Drunker than if he had drunk saké, he was drunk on intoxication" (222).

Yes!

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

as with all other books by Mishima i have read, the writing style, twisting of sentences, use of extravagant imagery and downright beauty of the whole book is what makes this read so phenomenally amazing. Forbidden Colours is veiled with prose so insanely beautiful, it's often easy to over-look the horrifically cruel and emotionally gutting plot. I believe that to be the point, and exactly why i put it as one of my favourite all-time reads. There is not one redeeming feature in any of the characters, all are mistreated or mistreat others, and if a positive feature does arise, Mishima skillfully uses this feature to slowly destroy another character, or the character him/herself. Everyone in it unravels by their own hand, leading towards a culmination of broken hearts, much like an emotional train wreck. The book starts as it means to go on, with a rather grotesque display of womanizing, which is passed on and on and on (in various guises) through other characters, each time ramping up the knock-on effects, and thus the book continually stirs the pot of human greed, weakness, destruction and fake-love into such vile-looking substance, it's a miracle that Mishima manages to keep the beauty and grace of his writing centre-stage. with the characters and plot looking like a rotting joint of meat, Mishima garnishes it with flowers of such transfixing intoxication, it reads like a lavish banquet.

[Hawraki · Rating 5 out of 5]

رواية حب محرم من أفضل الروايات التي قرأتها هذا العام، أين كنت يا ترى عن ميشيما؟

يتعرف الكاتب العجوز شانسوكي بالشاب الفتيّ الخارج من الكتب والروايات، ذو الجسد المنحوت على شاكلة التماثيل الرومانية فيقرر عقد صفقة شيطانية لينتقم من مرارة حياته ومن النساء الذي لم يفلح قط بجذب انتباههن لدمامته، ولسوء حظه، فقد تزوج العجوز ثلاث مرات وفي كل مرة يفشل زواجه الجديد بطريقة درامية أكثر من الزواج السابق، بالنسبة لشانسوكي كان يوشي أو يوشان، يمتلك كل ما حلم به ولم يحصل عليه، الجمال المطلق الذي يوقف أنفاس الرجال والنساء على حد سواء، وعدم الرغبة في النساء.

يستغل شانسوكي احباط يوشي حينما يعلم بأنه يجب عليه أن يرتبط بإمرأة تنفيذًا لرغبة والدته المريضة، فيبدد فكرة الانتحار من رأس يوشان، ليجعله مقابل مبلغ مالي، ينفذ مخططه الممتع في تدمير النساء، فتبدأ بزواج يوشان من ياساكو المغامرة الممتعة في العالم المنحط والمنعزل عن المجتمع الياباني.

حجم الرواية كبير بعض الشيء، لكن اسلوب ميشيما في السرد والتوصيف ممتع، أما شخصياته فمتميزة ومختلفة كلٌ بطابع أو رغبة معينة، مما يجعل الرواية أثقل وأكثر واقعية. هذه الرواية ستجعلك تفكر في حياتك مرتين، وفي من حولك ألف مرة. رواية ممتعة بكل المقاييس، ليس العمل الأخير الذي سأقرأه بإذن الله للروائي، والمسرحي، والمؤلف والممثل المنتحر كرهًا للشيخوخة وتحيزًا للشباب، يوكيو ميشيما.

[Tim Pendry · Rating 4 out of 5]

An early Mishima novel that shows him at his most paradoxical. The style is mannered at times, realist at others. It is highly referential to a specific post-war Japanese culture, half-way between defeat and economic miracle, and yet looks back to European decadent and classical literature.

There are two barriers to understanding here. First, we wonder whether the translator (Alfred Marks) has always been able to communicate the subtle behaviourial codes of an upper class that hovers between traditionalism and business.

Second, Mishima's partly satirical posturing on art and beauty through the cynical, bored and rather unpleasant novelist Shinsuke, will result in some small moments of dreariness. Few of us in the twenty-first century can get truly excited by debates on lost aesthetics.

But these are relatively minor concerns because Mishima brilliantly portrays the homosexual underworld of post-war Tokyo in a culture that disapproves of it but more as a social weakness than as a moral failing. It is 'unnatural' but not 'evil'.

The mood is thus of turn of the century Europe rather than offering us the visceral horror of the 'deviant' to be found in the then-contemporary West and still to be found amongst many religious troglodytes in the Americas and Africa.

A sub-culture is here denied entry into the wider culture on equal terms but it is allowed its dark space. In that space, homosexuals seem to live a vacant and sad but tolerated life, albeit with more than a hint of desperation.

Mishima (when he is not posturing as the superior Japanese traditionalist able to be more modern than the moderns) writes as brilliantly here as elsewhere. He also has the ability to dissect formal heterosexual relationships as he does homosexual within a culture of shame rather than guilt.

The character of Yuichi (Yuchan to his homosexual associates), often taken to be Mishima himself, remains a cypher throughout - a cool and self-regarding person with a limited emotional range.

What is more interesting is the way he impacts on others, giving us the paradox of the cool 'Mishima' being able to define quite precisely the emotional responses of a range of figures: his wife, his mother, a high-born female, a shallow female and all grades of male lover.

As a non-procreative male, the extent of Mishima's imaginative genius can be found not only in his portayal of women but in his unsentimental portrayal of a new-born baby while giving a good account of the way that Yuichi (as a man) can 'love' both wife and baby as a father.

The book is about the complexity, lack of fixedness, of love. Yuichi is detached but no psychopath. He can feel but his position as the object of projected desires means that he is often not allowed to by circumstances. If he 'weakens', he may be denied access to his true nature for ever.

This is the fascination of the book - to see how a pure beauty without apparent moral content creates a range of desires and 'wants' in others within a society that is layered with codes on what is acceptable or is not acceptable, wholly unlike our own in the West.

It is no accident that the sophisticated novelist with a broad education brings cruelties and small evils into the world of Yuichi, whereas Yuichi merely acts, like an animal, according to his rather limited range of needs.

Shunsuke's desire for a vicious revenge on women shows a person who has ceased to function as a human being and has no place on the planet as a vindictive, dessicated old man who has lost his creative spark.

His agent (Yuichi) is so detached that it becomes clear that the novelist is only half directing events. The women he wants to humiliate are all humiliated through Yuichi but they retain their power and dignity and Shunsuke is left with nothing.

Yuichi blithely sails through the events of the novel, somehow always landing on his feet like a cat, never feeling the pain he inflicts. The book is an essay both in the injustice of life and on the Nietzschean position of a general object of desire in the world.

As a result, although the actual sexual content is limited, the book gives off an aura of eroticism even when the reader (like myself) is very dominantly heterosexual.

What Mishima does, which is remarkable, is suggest to the male heterosexual reader what parts of himself as a male would re-emerge intact within a homosexual male - in other words, what it is about being a male that exists as essential whether one is gay or not.

To make a heterosexual male empathetic to the world of the homosexual would be no mean feat today - in the early 1950s, it would have been startling.

But the book is not so much about homosexuality as about desire itself and the way that desire has a life that is far more significant than any actual meaning to be placed in the desired object - because, in the end, Yuichi is always simply an object who finds it reasonable to be an object.

There are few occasions when Yuichi/Yuchan expresses genuine unhappiness so long as he is following his true nature. His cruelty is casual, the flow of the river through the easiest channel. Shunsuke is malicious as are others but Yuchan is as disinterested in malice as in kindness.

This a-morality (not immorality) is perhaps what will 'shock' most readers - especially in one particularly nasty incident where a somewhat shallow bimbo who had hurt the novelist is seduced by the two conspirators' trickery into being, in effect, raped by the novelist in the dark.

The women are treated like objects in a very different sense but there is a sense that the novelist has seduced Yuichi into treating women as things through being directed into the realisation that everyone treats him as a thing (even if he does not care overly).

And, disturbingly, we have none of the hysterical self-traumatizing of Western women but only a determined dignity where the impression is left that these women have come to terms with their position with far more dignity than the ultimate loser in the game - the manipulative novelist.

The book brings us, the Westerner (from a culture with a serious problem in managing desire), into a medium (Japanese traditional culture) that is alienating to the degree that desire is clearly given form and that this form is then articulated in almost ritualistic ways.

By the end of the book, we are left wondering whether it would be better or worse to give desire its outlet through rigid codes and appropriate forms than (as our culture did at that time) deny it any role in formal society at all.

Homosexuality was illegal in the UK at the time the book appeared but, being Japanese, nothing is illegal here, merely shameful.

Any English homosexual reading the translation at the time must have had mixed feelings about its message - an acceptance and management of shame through combinations of secrecy, hypocrisy and denial but the 'vice' being permitted nevertheless. He might have lived with that.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yuichi! Yuichi! Yuichi!

It’s all a bit silly because he is so much. Everyone falls in love with him, and the reader is pretty much the only person who doesn't get to bang him. Mishima loves Yuichi too much for anything really bad to happen to him, but there's the threat that weird Shunsuke will win. Will a Dorian Gray style "having fun and breaking hearts makes you ugly" kick in? Will he end up killing himself? Will he turn into an aged, make-upped queen? Shunsuke tries to push Yuichi too far, but Mishima keeps him beautiful and keeps us in love with him. Really unpleasant episode with dizzy socialite...but cut to Yuichi being charming with baby daughter. Like an Asian version of that Athena poster, but less cheesy.


"He saw the golden hair of the man’s chest protruding from a gap in his shirt and felt as if he were being embraced by a great hornet."

On childbirth: "Yasuko's lower body moved like the mouth of a person vomiting."

"To samurai and homosexual the ugliest vice is femininity."

"After Yuichi left, however, this middle-aged nobleman would be struck by mindless passion. He would pace the narrow room dressed only in his robe. Finally he would fall down on the rug and roll about. In a small voice he would call out Yuichi’s name hundreds of times."

[Sketchbook · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mishima lived his s&m, militaristic, uber-masculine/gay fantasies. In his 20s he bared his feelings in this troubling, often astonishing novel where desire is an evil spirit to get drunk on. Life, as he
sees it, is a deceptive "show" in false face, headlining naked
players in a series of tableaux depicting Beauty, Sex, Death. And the show, which spotlights lovelessness in Loveland, must always go on.

[N]

Dark, atmospheric, moody and tense.

[Carol Storm · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you've never read Mishima before, don't start with this book. Begin with his first book, CONFESSIONS OF A MASK, then read THE TEMPLE OF THE GOLDEN PAVILION, which is another great early book. Then read the four classic novels he wrote just before he died, SPRING SNOW, RUNAWAY HORSES, THE TEMPLE OF DAWN, and DECAY OF THE ANGEL.

FORBIDDEN COLORS is from the "sagging middle" of Mishima's career. What's missing is the idealism and passion of his last great novels. This is a more mundane world, not because the main character is gay, but because he's not especially heroic or even very intelligent. He has no vision for himself, he's more a passive receptacle of other people's fantasies. There's lots of bitter, brilliant insight into the every day lives of homosexuals, but not as much drama, color, and spectacle as in the last great novels, when Mishima was consciously creating a series of timeless masterpieces that would capture all of the Japanese character, not just the concerns of one small group.

[Mizuki · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of Yukio Mishima's best novels!

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mishima's writing is so good and then boom 20 pages of misogyny

[Francisco Gabriel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mi primer libro de este gran autor, una historia tan retorcida como la vida misma de muchas personas. Es impresionante que a pesar de transcurrir en los 50's no está alejada de la realidad actual. Misoginia, prostitución masculina, la soberbia y discriminación son temas que se plantean muy bien. El único pero que le pongo, un poco de incongruencia en el personaje de Yuichi.
Una lectura muy recomendable.

[nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

“𝘐𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘦𝘹𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦; 𝘰𝘣𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘦𝘹𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩 𝘰𝘳 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘸𝘰 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘦𝘹𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬 𝘰𝘧 𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘺 𝘤𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘣𝘦𝘢𝘶𝘵𝘺. 𝘏𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘢 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬 𝘰𝘧 𝘢𝘳𝘵, 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦, 𝘢𝘣𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘮𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘭…𝘛𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘰𝘧 𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘭, 𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘭 𝘪𝘴 𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘦𝘥; 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘣𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵, 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘦𝘥; 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘰𝘧 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦, 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘦𝘥.”

Misogyny runs wild and free to find solace in queerness in the self.

Throughout Mishima’s work, you’ll see on countless occasions the number of times he diminishes the female form only to bring forth male beauty. Here, the reasons are obvious.

Self-loathing.
Closeted.
Vulnerable.

Male toxicity is draped around Mishima’s broad shoulders, and he tries so hard to unsheath this through the efforts of writing. Here he comes out of the closet like a phoenix, burning the body to a corpse to reinvent the self, to find the whole in all of the night. And by doing so, hate spews out of him, against women, against all odds. And though this is in no way a healthy means to find oneself, it’s desperate, like a rabid dog wretched and wrought in a chainlink fence, trusting no hands of help, but needing it so much so.

It let me to think, What have I hated to love my queer self? How did I hate so that I was okay with being alive? These same questions twist and turn in such a bloated novel that you think, who the hell was the twink that hurt Mishima so badly?! If only the twink was a little kinder to Mishima, though, we all can imagine how difficult of a task that would be…

Not good. Not great. But it’s tell-all in terms of Mishima’s sentiments on the self, suicide, being gay, and hiding behind the mask of heterosexuality. Not a novel folks should be running to, but it’s one that picks at the complex character Mishima made for himself.

[Brixton · Rating 3 out of 5]

a cracked-mirror mosaic of modernity and a deeply primordial kind of sensuality. a book full of electrifying descriptions of japanese gay nightlife; maybe the first time i've seen it represented so diligently and beautifully in a piece of fiction. each character in the novel is rotten and sinister in their own way, perhaps particularly shunsuke and yuichi, but in classic mishima fashion (and, so true to what these characters represent) his depictions of them casts a spell over you. disturbing, captivating, invigorating.

[Daniela · Rating 3 out of 5]

On 25 November 1970, writer Yukio Mishima barricaded himself in the commander’s office of a Japanese military base in Tokyo. After he and his supporters immobilized the commander, Mishima went out to the balcony to address the soldiers. This speech was a summary of many ideas Mishima had spent years sponsoring. Westernization is killing the “Japanese soul”. The Japanese army, which ought to be the nation’s backbone, is now reduced to the modestly titled Japan Self-Defense Forces. Post-war Japan is in a slumber from which it can only be awaken by an Army whose duty is to defend to Emperor and safeguard Japanese identity. To prove his commitment to the restoration of Japanese self-determination and freedom from Western shackles, Mishima announces he is going to kill himself.

The soldiers laughed him off his balcony. He went back inside and said, “I don’t think they heard me”. Abetted by his comrades, he then committed seppuku, a ritual suicide historically associated with samurais and codes of honour. By all accounts, it is a gruesome way to die: the victim disembowels himself, and only after is his head cut off by a third-party so as to spare them needless pain. It seems Mishima took longer to die than necessary, as the friend who was supposed to decapitate him was unable to do it. Although he’d been planning this half-hearted coup for months, it is hard to see how anyone, including Mishima, could have believed in its success. Following the precepts he had spent his life writing about, Mishima was invested in the idea of a death that would signify something through its performance. Seppuku was ideal for him. It concentrated all that he held dear: tradition, drama, symbolism; it was real yet performative.

A particularly striking aspect of Mishima is his beauty. A medical blunder prevented him from being conscripted into the Japanese army (a good thing too, as the unit he was supposed to join was decimated in the Philippines), and one gets the feeling that his obsession for exercise was a result of this rejection. Undoubtedly, he did much to cultivate his physique: he practiced Kendo, Karate, Battōjutsu, and was very invested in weight lifting.

Beauty and death are constant presences in Mishima. Forbidden Colours is about this duality. An aged, ugly writer uses a beautiful young man to punish all the women who rejected and wronged him. The young man, incapable of loving women and enamoured of his own beauty, becomes a moral monstrosity whose sins are lessened because he is beautiful. Beauty is a redeeming force for Mishima, not because the harm is less felt, but because harm itself becomes meaningless. What is selfishness when compared to the sublime? All the characters are sacrificed at the altar of Yuichi’s face and body, and in the end they almost thank him for it.

It is tempting to link this story – the amorality promoted by beauty – to Mishima’s own conception of identity and History. I am sure Mishima himself would disagree. He would say that morality and beauty are indistinguishable from each other. Death immortalizes beauty by preventing the beautiful from growing old, becoming so the third element of this somewhat unholy triad. However, apart from the considerations about the “eye of the beholder”, aesthetics is a construction which becomes theatricality when applied to human bodies. Forbbiden Colours is the story of a young man who decides to play the role beauty condemned him to. Like Mishima’s cinematic death, beauty is perhaps little more than yet another performance.

On James Dean’s premature death, Mishima wrote that “his tragic death was in fact a consummate victory.” Mishima didn’t die young – but he died beautiful. Perhaps, for him, that was enough.

[Meike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly poetic language and more intricate thoughts per paragraph than bpm on any given night at Berghain - Mishima knows how to challenge his readers. The whole personnel of "Forbidden Colours" is floating between the classic poles that make up the world of ideas measured by Mishima: Youth and old age, beauty and ugliness, tradition and modernity, body and mind, homosexuality and heterosexuality (and of course there's suicide, too). In this novel, the two protagonists, Yuichi and Shunsuké, are both highly mysogynistic, and Shunsuké aims to execute his revenge on women with the help of Yuichi (who is actually gay).

Interestingly, the book shows no happy relationship, heterosexual or homosexual, that is bound by love. The female characters reflect the role of women in Japanese society shortly after WW II, their upbringing and possible ways of coping with their restrictions. They mainly react and endure instead of becoming factors who shape the story and by that their own destiny. Homosexuals are shown as stigmatised and in this book, Mishima quite openly attacks the hypocrisy of his contemporaries on this issue.

Nevertheless, this is not a book that agitates or openly advocates certain positions regarding social justice (this is Mishima, folks). Rather, the text remains ambiguous and abstract by reflecting and discussing the author's obsession with the power that lies within youth and beauty and the sovereignty he ascribed to "death through action" (meaning suicide). Power relations between men women as well as men and men are played out through the course of action, always developing and shifting, changing shapes but never profoundly changing their character.

I read very slowly, trying not to miss any point the characters are making in their rather philosophical considerations - nevertheless, I am sure there is a lot more than you can grasp by reading the book once. I like that Mishima is an author that I certainly do not always agree with, but he is always interesting, intelligent, and challenging - in short, he pushes and unsettles me, and that's what I appreciate so much about him.

[Felipe Arango Betancourt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Esta novela es todo un laberinto de celos, egoísmos, odios y bajas pasiones. El lado más oscuro del alma humana: su lado más mezquino y calculador.
Japón, segunda mitad del siglo XX. Un Japón ocupado, un Tokyo lleno de norteamericanos en busca de aventuras; el Tokyo homosexual underground, donde la homosexualidad se lleva en anonimato y donde el protagonista la lleva de una manera vergonzante pero desenfrenada, de una promiscuidad pavorosa. Yuishi, el protagonista es un narciso irremediable.

La homosexualidad de Yuishi es vista y entendida bajo la visión y moralidad de Occidente, como algo vergonzoso que se debe ocultar, la homosexualidad entendida como una depravación y una desviación. Esa doble moral que puede justificar una infidelidad heterosexual pero no una infidelidad homosexual.

¿Qué hay detrás de esa misoginia del viejo escritor? Pensemos... quizás una homosexualidad no aceptada, reprimida duramente. Una fuerza que avergonzaba y que siempre calló a favor de las apariencias sociales.

La fuerza, la violencia, la gracia con que escribe Mishima acá queda demostrada.
No hay diferencia entre la espada y la pluma empuñada.

[Andrea F J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un capolavoro: è il primo romando di uno scrittore giapponese che mi avvince perchè non si ritorce su se stesso ma ha un sviluppo narattivo nella trama e nella pscicologia dei personaggi.
L'ambientazione risulta estremamente moderna e attuale: il palco della "scene" omosessuale di Tokyo è lo stesso dei giorni nostri, così pure località di villeggiatura, le coste, gli onsen, i parchi.
I temi si intrecciano insieme alle storie dei protagonisti: la misoginia, l'innocenza (che, in un modo tipicamente giapponese, non significa assenza di colpa ma assenza di rimorso), l'omosessualità, le aspettative sociali, l'arte e il suo processo creativo, l'amore o la passione o l'assenza di entrambi, il suicidio. Trama e ordito di vicende e soggetti sono impreziositi da strass di rara ironia.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

If a greater misogynist than Shunsuké exists in literature then I don't want to meet him. This book really challenged me. On the one hand, the vile opinions spewed by Shunsuké made it very hard to read, but on the other hand the plot was pretty propulsive and erotically charged. I don't know if I can say I "liked" the book, but I did enjoy reading it and found it to be mostly immersive (though I could've done without the paragraphs upon paragraphs of uninterrupted philosophizing dialogue — I get it, you're making a point about ART!). I also found the third person omniscient narrative choice too easy and prone to info dumps. Overall, the book had shades of Gatsby and Giovanni's Room, though both those books are better. Read this one if you like Mishima and/or the idea of double lives in response to societal strictures (just maybe skip all the misogynistic scenes).

If you liked this, make sure to follow me on Goodreads for more reviews!

[Wael Koubeissy · Rating 4 out of 5]

رواية تلعب على التناقض بين الشباب والشيخوخة والحياة والموت والجمال والقباحة وتتناول المثلية الممزوجة بكراهية النساء وحب الذات والحياة المزدوجة في مجتمع تحكمه العادات والتقاليد والأحكام المسبقة وفي قالب روائي ممتع ولغة ذات قيمة أدبية رفيعة.
الرواية الأولى التي أقرأها لميشيما وقد جربت قراءتها قبل 15 سنة ولاقيت صعوبة في ذلك فقررت قراءتها من جديد الآن وهي لم تخيب ظني واستمتعت بقراءة صفحاتها الـ 750 وبرسم الكاتب لشخصياته التي تحتاج كل منها إلى رواية.
شيء غريب شعرت به لا أعلم إن كان من قرأ الرواية يشاطرني الشعور، لا ينفك الكاتب يتغنى ببراءة يوشي وطيبته وعفويته إلا أنني لم أر فيه براءة ولا طيبة بل وجدته شخصاً دنيئاً يسيء إلى كل من حوله، حتى مثليته التي توقعت أن توصله إلى إيجاد الطمأنينة باختبار مشاعر الحب لم توصله سوى إلى العالم السفلي لعالم المثلية في خمسينيات اليابان فمنذ تجربته المثلية الأولى كانت علاقاته مادية باردة تخلو من الحب والمشاعر، حتى في علاقته الأخيرة مع الشاب الذي يصغره سناً شعرت ببرودته ولم أشعر بأن الحب وجد طريقاً إلى قلبه.
رواية ممتازة بلغتها وأسلوبها وشخصياتها وتناقضاتها وأحياناً أحداثها أنصح بقراءتها

[Rhockman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un relato sencillo, con una narración atrapante y un mensaje enfermizo.

Un misógino conoce a un cínico y de ese encuentro surge el proyecto de crear una obra de arte que trascienda el campo de la materialidad para alcanzar el "espiritu". El tema de la "espiritualidad" se toca constantemente sin dejar bien en claro al lector que se quiere decir con esa palabra. Tal vez, un japonés de 1950 tenía una idea muy especifica de que significa; si alguien nos dice que "la belleza perfecta se encuentra en el ridículo", a simple oído nos parece una frase increíble, pero después de analizarla nos damos cuenta que no significa absolutamente nada.

En boca de uno de los personajes hay un constante despotricamiento en contra de "la mujer" con el que no estoy de acuerdo y que hizo la lectura, por momentos, bastante densa.

Aún así, no podía dejar de querer saber que iba a pasar después.

[Manal · Rating 3 out of 5]

قصة انتقام رجل حانق على جنس النساء بسبب تجارب سيئة مر بها في السابق.

الرواية تتحدث عن بداية انتشار الشواذ جنسياً في المجتمع الياباني، وتعطي القارئ صورة عن حياة أولئك الأشخاص، وعن علاقاتهم التي تتم في الخفاء، خوفًا من نقد المجتمع وشعوره بالاشمئزاز من الممارسات الشاذة التي تنتشر بينهم.

وصف الكاتب المشاعر التي يشعر بها الرجل الذي لا يجد في نفسه أي انجذاب تجاه النساء، و الضغط الاجتماعي الذي يجبره على التظاهر بالعيش كشخص طبيعي لا يعاني من أي مشكلة مرضية، و يجبره أيضًا على الدخول في علاقة زوجية فاشلة!

يحسب للكاتب أسلوبه اللائق في عرض تفاصيل حياة هذه الفئة، دون التصريح بأي وصف لتلك الممارسات الجنسية.
أسلوب يوكيو شابه كثيرًا أسلوب ياسوناري كاواباتا، حيث ملأ الرواية بالكثير من الوصف و التفاصيل التي لا تخدم النص في كثير من الأحيان، حيث إن الرواية تأتي في ٧٠٠ صفحة و لكنها ليست تلك العميقة أو المعقدة لتكون بهذا الطول!

[Nuria Pascual · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nos movemos por el ambiente homosexual de Japón en los años 50, en un momento en el que el mundo occidental va impregnando cada vez más la cultura oriental. La trama gira en torno a Yuichi, cuya belleza y falta de moral y ética va marcando el devenir de los que le rodean. De esta forma nos encontramos con personajes interesantes que nos dibujan la sociedad japonesa de la época, pero que a su vez contienen cierta complejidad psicológica que va evolucionando a lo largo de la novela. A todo esto se suman reflexiones, a veces excesivas, sobre la belleza, la vejez, la sensualidad, la juventud, el desengaño ante la vida, en donde en ocasiones la misoginia llega a ser extrema, sobre todo en boca de uno de los principales personajes.