The Entanglements of Yukio Mishima

In today’s newsletter, a selection of Yukio Mishima novels. Plus:

Ian BurumaBuruma writes about the culture of Asia.

Yukio Mishima was a great writer, but the manner of his death, by seppuku, slitting his stomach with a samurai sword, may now be better known to most people than his novels or plays—a pity, because many of his novels are very much worth reading. However, as his work is soaked in fantasies about violent death, his final act is hard to disentangle from his books. These bloody political, erotic, and literary entanglements are the subject of my article for this week’s issue.

My favorite Mishima novel is the one that made him famous, “Confessions of a Mask,” from 1949. In this early example of auto-fiction, Mishima offers a poetic analysis of his sentimental education as a young man whose sadomasochistic gay fantasies clash with the conventions of his upper-class upbringing.

The other novel I would recommend is “The Temple of the Golden Pavilion,” from 1956, in which the main character is a young Buddhist acolyte who tries to liberate himself from his obsession with the beauty of a temple in Kyoto by destroying it. The annihilation of beauty was Mishima’s enduring theme, and perhaps one of the motives for his own gruesome end. Read “Yukio Mishima’s Death Cult” »

With four fires raging, tens of thousands have evacuated and others are confronting the precarity of where they live. Emily Witt reports »

P.S. The SAG Award nominees were announced virtually yesterday, after the in-person event was cancelled owing to the wildfires. Cate Blanchett has been recognized for her role in the psychological-thriller series “Disclaimer.” “Performance is not, and never has been, really, all of who I am,” the actor told John Lahr, in 2007. But Blanchett prefers to keep unknown the rest of who she is: “I do like to preserve the mystique of the thing, for myself as much as anyone else.” 🤐

Hannah Jocelyn contributed to this edition.