Spiritual Hunger (from the novel by Yukio Mishima)

Author: [Japanese] Yukio Mishima
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1999-01-01
Features: Yukio Mishima was a renowned Japanese writer who achieved great success in literature and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature twice. The famous Japanese comparative literature scholar Kenichi Chiba considered, "Mishima was on par with Proust, Joyce, and Thomas Mann, ranking as one of the four greatest representative writers of the 20th century." Donald Keene, a leading authority on Japanese literature in the United States, regarded Mishima as "the unparalleled genius of the world." In The World's 100 Most Influential People, published by a major American magazine, only Yukio Mishima was selected as the representative artist of Japan.
Mishima explored various artistic paths in literature, blending romanticism, aestheticism, and classicism. He particularly adopted a creative method that combined Japanese and Greek classicism, achieving artistic success in depicting the beauty of life and death in men. This achievement is widely recognized. Among his works, Spring Snow is hailed as the modern The Tale of Genji. His works have been translated into over twenty languages worldwide, and almost all of them have been published in different countries.
The female protagonist, Setsuko, marries Kuraoka at her parents' arrangement. Their marital life is fraught with discord and lacks emotional connection. Consequently, she begins an affair with her former lover, Tatsuo. She believes that as long as any evil thoughts remain in her heart, they still belong to the realm of virtue. After becoming pregnant with Tatsuo's child, she recognizes her original thoughts and actions as "hypocrisy," yet she also feels that "as long as one lives behind hypocrisy, one will not feel the spiritual hunger of those who call for virtue." Ultimately, she returns to the "world without echoes" in her stumbling pursuit of virtue.