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(★)(Translated by John Bester／ Part autobiography, part reflections on the search for personal identity, this fascinating document is a key to one of Japan´s most flamboyant writers. It traces the tortuous path Mishima took from a sensitive, introverted childhood to a creative maturity as acclaimed novelist and playwright, accomplished swordsman, and self-proclaimed conscience of postwar Japan.／ ◆Yukio Mishima, one of the most spectacularly gifted writers in modern Japan, was born into a samurai family in 1925. He attended the Peers´ School and Tokyo Imperial University, and for a time worked at the Ministry of Finance. His first full-length novel,´Confessions of a Mask,´ appeared in 1949, and since then he published over a dozen novels, almost all of which were translated into English and other languages during his lifetime. They include : ´Thirst for Love´,´Forbidden Colors´,´Death in Midsummer´,´The Sound of Waves´,´The Temple of the Golden Pavilion´,´After the Banquet´,´The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea´, and ´Spring Snow.´／ Mishima´s reverence for the Japanese martial arts led him to take up Kendo (a type of fencing, with wooden swords) and Karate, as well as body-building, and by 1968 he had become a Kendo master of the fifth dan. He also organized a ´private army´ called the Shield Society, and in November 1970 he and his group forced their way into a Self-Defense Force headquarters in Tokyo, where Mishima, after reading out a proclamation, committed ritual suicide with a young follower in the commanding officer´s room. On the morning of his death, the last volume of Mishima´s tetralogy,´The Sea of Fertility,´ was delivered to his publisher. He is survived by his wife and two children.) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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