Download or read book Persona written by Naoki Inose and published by Stone Bridge Press. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 866 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the life of the Japanese author who went from sickly youth to dedicated student of the martial arts, looking at his family life, the wartime years, and his career as a writer who advocated for traditional values.
Download or read book Mishima a Biography written by John Nathan and published by Little Brown. This book was released on 1974 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finally back in print: The definitive biography of the legendary Japanese writer-legendary as much for his tumultuous life and macabre suicide as for his Nobel-nominated writings.
Download or read book The Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea written by Yukio Mishima and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-01-26 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A tale of youth and warped masculinity, this is the suspenseful, lyrical and page-turning Japanese classic. A band of thirteen-year-old boys reject the stupidity of the adult world. They decide it is illusory, hypocritical and sentimental, and train themselves in a brutal callousness they call ‘objectivity’. When the mother of one of them begins an affair with a ship’s officer, he and his friends idealise the man at first, but it is not long before they conclude that he is, in fact, soft and romantic. They regard this disillusionment as an act of betrayal on his part – and the retribution is deliberate and horrifying. ‘A page turning novel... A timeless classic’ Independent ‘Mishima’s greatest novel, and one of the greatest of the past century’ The Times TRANSLATED BY JOHN NATHAN
Download or read book The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima written by Henry Scott Stokes and published by Cooper Square Press. This book was released on 2000-08-08 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Novelist, playwright, film actor, martial artist, and political commentator, Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) was arguably the most famous person in Japan at the time of his death. Henry Scott Stokes, one of Mishima's closest friends, was the only non-Japanese allowed to attend the trial of the men involved in Mishima's spectacular suicide. In this insightful and empathetic look at the writer, Stokes guides the reader through the milestones of Mishima's meteoric and eclectic career and delves into the artist's major works and themes. This biography skillfully and compassionately illuminates the achievements and disquieting ideas of a brilliant and deeply troubled man, an artist of whom Nobel Laureate Yasunari Kawabata had said, "A writer of Mishima's caliber comes along only once every two or three hundred years."
Download or read book Mishima Aesthetic Terrorist written by Andrew Rankin and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2018-09-30 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Half a century after his shocking samurai-style suicide, Yukio Mishima (1925–1970) remains a deeply controversial figure. Though his writings and life-story continue to fascinate readers around the world, Mishima has often been scorned by scholars, who view him as a frivolous figure whose work expresses little more than his own morbid personality. In Mishima, Aesthetic Terrorist, Andrew Rankin sets out to challenge this perception by demonstrating the intelligence and seriousness of Mishima’s work and thought. Each chapter of the book examines one of the central ideas that Mishima develops in his writings: life as art, beauty as evil, culture as myth, eroticism as transgression, the artist as tragic hero, narcissism as the death drive. Along with fresh readings of major works of fiction such as The Temple of the Golden Pavilion and “Patriotism,” the book introduces less familiar works in different genres. Special prominence is given to Mishima’s essays, which contain some of his most brilliant writing. Mishima is concerned with such problems as the loss of certainties and absolute values that characterizes modernity, and the decline of strong identities in a world of increasing uniformity and globalization. In his cultural criticism Mishima makes an impassioned defense of free speech, and he rails against all forms of authoritarianism and censorship. Rankin reads Mishima’s artistic project, up to and including his spectacular death, as a single, sustained lyric, an aggressive piece of performance art unfolding in multiple media. For all his rebellious energies, Mishima’s work is suffused with a sense of ending—the end of art, the end of eroticism, the end of culture, the end of the world—and it is governed by a decadent aestheticism which holds that beautiful things radiate their most intense beauty on the cusp of their destruction. Erudite and authoritative, yet written in clear, accessible prose, Mishima, Aesthetic Terrorist is essential reading for all those who seek a deeper understanding of this radical and provocative figure.
Download or read book Life for Sale written by Yukio Mishima and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After botching a suicide attempt, salaryman Hanio Yamada decides to put his life up for sale in the classifieds section of a Tokyo newspaper. Soon interested parties come calling with increasingly bizarre requests and what follows is a madcap comedy of errors, involving a jealous husband, a drug-addled heiress, poisoned carrots—even a vampire. For someone who just wants to die, Hanio can't seem to catch a break, as he finds himself enmeshed in a continent-wide conspiracy that puts him in the cross hairs of both his own government and a powerful organized-crime syndicate. By turns wildly inventive, darkly comedic, and deeply surreal, in Life for Sale Yukio Mishima stunningly uses satire to explore the same dark themes that preoccupied him throughout his lifetime.
Download or read book Confessions of a Mask written by Yukio Mishima and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 1958 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of a man coming to terms with his homosexuality in traditional Japanese society has become a modern classic.
Download or read book Mishima written by John Nathan and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2000-04-07 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published: Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1974.
Download or read book Mishima written by Marguerite Yourcenar and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2001-09 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On November 25, 1970, Japan's most renowned postwar novelist, Yukio Mishima, stunned the world by committing ritual suicide. Here, Marguerite Yourcenar, a brilliant reader of Mishima and a scholar with an eye for the cultural roles of fiction, unravels the author's life and politics: his affection for Western culture, his family and his homosexuality, his brilliant writings, and his carefully premeditated death.
Download or read book Yukio Mishima written by Damian Flanagan and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2014-08-15 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most internationally acclaimed Japanese author of the twentieth century, Yukio Mishima (1925–70) was a prime candidate for the Nobel Prize. But the prolific author shocked the world in 1970 when he attempted a coup d’état that ended in his suicide by ritual disembowelment. In this radically new analysis of Mishima’s extraordinary life, Damian Flanagan deviates from the stereotypical depiction of a right-wing nationalist and aesthete, presenting the author instead as a man in thrall to the modern world while also plagued by hidden neuroses and childhood trauma that pushed him toward his explosive final act. Flanagan argues that Mishima was a man obsessed with the concepts of time and “emperor,” and reveals how these were at the heart of his literature and life. Untangling the distortions in the writer’s memoirs, Flanagan traces the evolution of Mishima’s attempts to master and transform his sexuality and artistic persona. While often perceived as a solitary protest figure, Mishima, Flanagan shows, was very much in tune with postwar culture—he took up bodybuilding and became a model and actor in the 1950s, adopted the themes of contemporary political scandals in his work, courted English translators, and became influenced by the student protests and hippie subculture of the late 1960s. A groundbreaking reevaluation of the author, this succinct biography paints a revealing portrait of Mishima’s life and work.
Download or read book My Friend Hitler and Other Plays of Yukio Mishima written by Yukio Mishima and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acclaimed Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) was also a prolific playwright, penning more than sixty plays, nearly all of which were produced in his lifetime. Hiroaki Sato is the first to translate these plays into English. For this collection he has selected five major plays and three essays Mishima wrote about drama. The title play is a satire that follows the breakdown of friendship between Adolf Hitler and two Nazi officials who were ultimately assassinated under orders from Hitler.
Download or read book Star written by Yukio Mishima and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the first time in English, a glittering novella about stardom from “one of the greatest avant-garde Japanese writers of the twentieth century” (Judith Thurman, The New Yorker) All eyes are on Rikio. And he likes it, mostly. His fans cheer, 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 “action”; Rikio, for a moment, transforms into another being, a hardened young yakuza, but as soon as the shot is finished, he slumps back into his own anxieties and obsessions. Being a star, constantly performing, being watched and scrutinized as if under a microscope, is often a drag. But so is life. Written shortly after Yukio Mishima himself had acted in the film “Afraid to Die,” this novella is a rich and unflinching psychological portrait of a celebrity coming apart at the seams. With exquisite, vivid prose, Star begs the question: is there any escape from how we are seen by others?
Download or read book Yukio Mishima written by Acie Cargill and published by . This book was released on 2019-07-19 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yukio Mishima, one of Japan's best writers of the 2oth century, was deeply attracted to the patriotism and martial spirit of Japan's past, which he contrasted unfavourably to the materialistic Westernized people and the prosperous society of Japan in the postwar era. Mishima himself was torn between these differing values. Although he maintained an essentially Western lifestyle in his private life and had a vast knowledge of Western culture, he raged against Japan's imitation of the West. He diligently developed the age-old Japanese arts of karate and kendo. He formed a controversial private army of about 80 students, the Tate no Kai (Shield Society), with the aim of preserving the Japanese martial spirit and theoretically helping to protect the emperor (the symbol of Japanese culture) in case of an uprising by the left or a communist attack.On November 25, 1970, Mishima and four members of his militia entered a military base in central Tokyo, took the commandant hostage, and tried to persuade the soldiers at the base to join them in supporting the emperor and overturning Japan's pacifist Constitution. When this was unsuccessful, Mishima committed suicide by seppuku. It seems that this was his original purpose, a ritual suicide in the samurai tradition. He had written his closing letters and got all his affairs in order before they went on their mission. He left enough money for his assistants to have a legal defense.
Download or read book The Sound of Waves written by Yukio Mishima and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-04-09 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A timeless story of first love set in a remote fishing village in Japan. • "A story that is both happy and a work of art.... Altogether a joyous and lovely thing." —The New York Times A young fisherman is entranced at the sight of the beautiful daughter of the wealthiest man in the village. They fall in love, but must then endure the calumny and gossip of the villagers.
Download or read book Sun Steel written by Yukio Mishima and published by New York : Grove Press. This book was released on 1970 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Consists of a series of essays
Download or read book The Temple of Dawn written by Yukio Mishima and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-04-09 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The third novel in the masterful tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility, in which a brilliant lawyer will go to nearly any length to discover whether a young Thai princess is in fact the reincarnated spirit of his childhood friend. • “Surpassingly chilling, subtle, and original.” —The New York Times Here, Shigekuni Honda continues his pursuit of the successive reincarnations of Kiyoaki Matsugae, his childhood friend. Travelling in Thailand in the early 1940s, Shigekuni Honda, now a brilliant lawyer, is granted an audience with a young Thai princess—an encounter that radically alters the course of his life. In spite of all reason, he is convinced she is the reincarnated spirit of his friend Kiyoaki. As Honda goes to great lengths to discover for certain if his theory is correct, The Temple of Dawn becomes the story of one man’s obsessive pursuit of a beautiful woman and his equally passionate search for enlightenment.
Download or read book S seki written by John Nathan and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-15 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916) was the father of the modern novel in Japan, chronicling the plight of bourgeois characters caught between familiar modes of living and the onslaught of Western values and conventions. Yet even though generations of Japanese high school students have been expected to memorize passages from his novels and he is routinely voted the most important Japanese writer in national polls, he remains less familiar to Western readers than authors such as Kawabata, Tanizaki, and Mishima. In this biography, John Nathan provides a lucid and vivid account of a great writer laboring to create a remarkably original oeuvre in spite of the physical and mental illness that plagued him all his life. He traces Sōseki’s complex and contradictory character, offering rigorous close readings of Sōseki’s groundbreaking experiments with narrative strategies, irony, and multiple points of view as well as recounting excruciating hospital stays and recurrent attacks of paranoid delusion. Drawing on previously untranslated letters and diaries, published reminiscences, and passages from Sōseki’s fiction, Nathan renders intimate scenes of the writer’s life and distills a portrait of a tormented yet unflaggingly original author. The first full-length study of Sōseki in fifty years, Nathan’s biography elevates Sōseki to his rightful place as a great synthesizer of literary traditions and a brilliant chronicler of universal experience who, no less than his Western contemporaries, anticipated the modernism of the twentieth century.
