The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea, the Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Confessions of a Mask

by Yukio Mishima, John Nathan (Translator)

3 novels in one paperback.

Genres: Fiction, Japanese Literature, Japan, Classics

143 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1982

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

[ken · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first Mishima, big slay.

"The sea had amplified and abstracted to a point where the pier had lost its sense of reality and now seemed dazed, bereft of function."

"The dark passions of the tides, the shriek of a tidal wave, the avalanching break of surf upon a shoal... an unknown glory calling for him endlessly from the dark offing, glory merged in death and in a woman, glory to fashion of his destiny something special, something rare. At twenty he had been passionately certain: in the depths of the world's darkness was a point of light which had been provided for him alone and would draw near some day to irradiate him and no other."

[Alex Sarll]

When a novel opens with a boy spying on his mother as she masturbates, you can be fairly sure there isn't going to be a happy ending. And that's even before she takes a new lover, the eponymous sailor who seldom finds in the real sea any salve for the yearning dreams of grandeur and escape which lurk within him. Or you meet the boy's friends, a sinister coterie of schoolboy nihilists whose 'chief' leads them in abjuring any trace of humane sentiment. But Hell, it's Mishima, and his books always get under my skin, make me feel itchy and out of sorts, give me a greater understanding than any other author of the reaction which makes people want to ban books*. More painful than the surface grubbiness or horror, though, is the aching hole of disappointment which underpins both, the way that both boy and sailor long for an ideal which is by definition unattainable, because that which can be grasped thus subsides into the real. Of all the writers who killed themselves, he remains the one whose decision is easiest to grasp; even if his coup had somehow succeeded, he must have known the reality would never compare to the shining dream of glory.

*Though just so we're entirely clear, anyone trying to ban a book remains a terrible person. As their own moralising rhetoric should remind them, one does not give in to every urge.

[Ewan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very emotive and heavy with its touches, Yukio Mishima's book will work for those that can connect with it. The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea has touching moments within it as that battle for love rages on, but there are times where it flounders around and struggles with what it wishes to say. Some very good moments throughout as it takes on the subconscious battles of a child not knowing any better and the adults who are trying to break the news to him of their love for one another. It's an interesting story, it just didn't stick.

[Aileen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short but disturbing story of 13 year old Noburu and his gang of friends who all despise their fathers and are contemptuous of the world around them. Noburu’s widowed mother meets sailor Ryuji and much to his disgust they soon become engaged. The gang decide Ryuji needs to die. A nasty bunch of children doing nasty things and plotting even more, there was nothing to redeem them. I skipped one chapter when I realised what was going to happen in it. I didn’t want to read that.

[Isaac · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ok like 4.5 stars!

Mishima’s a crazy little cat with his crazy little ideas of masculinity.

This story took me by surprise. I can’t say I’m swooning over the subject matter, but his writing is so excellent and I’m so intrigued by what this story says about glory, grief, malice, and countless other things. Don’t know if I’d recommend it to many, but wowzers!! Let me sit and ponder a moment 💁‍♀️

[Samarra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't love this book. I felt the sense of dread that there was an impending act of violence coming. The descriptions of the sea and this little town were nice but I was never compelled to open this book - the characters felt very one-dimensional and other than finding out what was going to happen at the end, I kind of didn't care about the plot all that much. I think I would read something else by Mishima before writing (ha) him off completely.

[geny · Rating 5 out of 5]

such a terrifying book. other reviews better describe what i can’t even begin to articulate.

[Dechen Yoesel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Got real dark, real soon

[Sasha Mochida · Rating 2 out of 5]

love mishima but this book was such a miss for me …too grotesque and would not recommend as a mishima starter …couldn’t even finish it even though i only had a few pages left

[Tori · Rating 2 out of 5]

4 stars for Fusako’s plot line 1 star for Noboru’s

[Kidira · Rating 5 out of 5]

In The Gay Science, Nietzche determined that traditional western values and concepts of good and evil were dead, and sought desperately to fight the nihilism that would replace them.

I just finished reading Yukio Mishima’s The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea, in which the characters find themselves in a similarly valueless society.

To apply some New Historicism, Mishima believed Japan had lost its raison d'être after defeat in the second World War. 1960s Japan was prosperous, but directionless- a vassal to valueless western materialism.

Fusako, the mother, is soft. Flitting her five years of widowhood away, minding a successful Western imports shop, surrounded by material comfort but profoundly lonely.

Ryuji, sailor and suitor to Fusako, is by contrast embracing his solitude. He braves the sea, and believes himself destined for glory, but unable to articulate how.

Then there is Fusako’s son, Noboru, a member of a gang of thirteen year olds eager to prove their mastery over reality as what Nietzche would call the ubermensch.

Their leader espouses absolute dispassion, and a belief that the world is made of chaos. It is their task, by right, to obliterate false pretenses of society that attempt to order the world around it.

In this way, they can achieve mastery over reality through a violent skepticism that places them closer to the true nature of the universe.

To quote their leader: “living is merely the chaos of existence, but more than that it’s the crazy mixed up business of dismantling existence instant by instant to the point where the original chaos is restored, and taking strength from the uncertainty and the fear that chaos brings to re-create existence instant by instant.”

The novel also calls into question the definition of a hero. I believe Mishima views Ryuji as a fallen hero, and sees the gang as necessary in restoring Ryuji’s hero status even through destructive means.

To a simple reader like myself, this is of course distressing. It is difficult to read a story that commends death as restorative, glorious, and necessary. But Mishima does so in such a way that there is a seductive beauty and reason in every sentence.

That’s why Nietzche named it The Gay Science, by the way. “Gay science” is a classical term referring to poetry, and Nietzche’s texts contains much of it.

Nietzche seems to argue the beauty of poetic language is concomitant with the triumph over nihilism. Mishima’s descriptions of the sea and the sails, of the love between Ryuji and Fusako, of the disturbing dissection of a kitten by the gang, all seem to agree.

[Jack Deighton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mishima, seemingly at the height of his literary powers and success, cut short his own life by committing seppuku in 1970, apparently in protest at the erosion of Japan’s values due to Western influence.

In this short novel, the first of his I have read, Fusako Kuroda has been widowed for five years. Unknown to her, her son Noboru has discovered a hole in the wainscotting between their bedrooms through which he can witness her bedtime routines. After a visit with Noboru to a tramp merchant steamer she takes up with the sailor, Ryuji Tzukazaki, who was attentive to Noboru but who it is revealed considers sex as a secret yearning for death. Their relationship is then consummated under the eyes of a not best pleased Noboru. Noboru is also number three in a group of schoolboys who enact nefarious rituals in their secret den. Boys have always tended to the wanton; as Shakespeare well knew.

Here is set the scene for an odd tale of love, alienation, dehumanisation and revenge. Things come to a head when after a final voyage away Ryuji decides to give up sailing and marry Fusako. Noboru presents his list of charges against Ryuji to his gang’s chief.

The tension between Japan’s past and present, which Mishima felt all too keenly, is reflected in the different attitudes of the characters. Fusako, with her job in a luxury goods shop, represents modernity, Ryuji a connection to Japan’s former seafaring glories, the boys a reminder of the insular past.

[Daniel B-G · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is deeply problematic. It does a remarkably good job of portraying toxic masculinity, and if you only read the book and look no further for context it is slightly ambiguous how the author feels (though he offers no explicit criticism in the book). Read wider and you realise the writer is on the side of the toxic, and was determined to re-establish a nationalist state after Japan's defeat in WW2. I finished it because it was short and well written, but the content is hideous.

[Doug Mckeever · Rating 3 out of 5]

This booked is super crazy. I enjoyed the fact that there was a hidden world within a world of creepy tweens but this whole thing is dark. I almost wish that it was a longer book because I think the novella format left a lot undeveloped and the conceit is good.

[Al Redman · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Very interesting and dark story line, a unique piece of work unlike anything else I've read.

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

A distinctive and powerful novel of maturation and choice.

[Oscar Kearsley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautifully written but I wasn't terribly interested in the story throughout most of it.