The Collected Works of Yukio Mishima: Cruel Beauty

Author: (Japanese) Yukio Mishima
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2000-04-01
Features: Yukio Mishima was a strange and brilliant genius. He entered the Japanese literary world after World War II. In the late stages of the war, Mishima became a "doubter," a "luddite of the times," and had once "actively sought to lead Japan to defeat." However, once the reality of Japan's defeat was before him, he fell into a state of confusion, exhaustion, and loss. He said, "In the summer of 1945, the concept of life led me to two completely opposite ideas: vitality and health on one hand, and death, decay, and corruption on the other. These two concepts were strangely intertwined—decay bore a brilliant imagery, while vitality left an impression of wounds stained with blood." It was under the interweaving of these two concepts that he explored and constructed his strange literature, beginning his creative career. Mishima's 《》 (The Thief, 1948) was born from these two opposing concepts. The work depicts the love triangle involving Akio and Misako, who are entangled in the shadow of love's end. Akio constantly thinks of "death," and his pursuit of "love" is intertwined with his pursuit of "death." He dies alongside Seiko, who has also betrayed him, in order to transform the fleeting passion they shared into a cold, enduring spirit. As a result, Akio treats his love failure and suicide as a "game of pleasure," and in the opposition between this "game of pleasure" and the "postponed execution of life's joy," he forces the two betrayers to lose their youth, while he himself becomes a "thief." It proclaims that victory belongs to eternal love. In terms of technique, Mishima blended romanticism, aestheticism, and classicism, incorporating the poetic and abnormal portrayal of the love between young men as described by the French early-maturing novelist Roger Martin du Gard, and "attempted to steal the mystery and beauty of youth in the psychological construction" (as compiled by Masao Hyakawa in Criticism and Research: Yukio Mishima). The critical reception of this work was mixed, but it was generally agreed that it "remains a work that stands within the mainstream of Mishima's literature." Kawabata Yasunari held great expectations for his ability to "combine the classical and the modern." In fact, it already revealed the prototype of Mishima's strange literature.