A Sailor on the Sea of Humanity

I am intrigued by Mishima's life, and the extraordinary circumstances of his death. I hope to return to his writing soon. View all 4 comments. Ses ince bir sis kadar belirsizdi. Knowing the story of Yukuio Mishima's life, and its tragic end, leads the reader of this novel into some dark parts of the author's mind. The characters in this novel are thinly veiled allegorical figures of Mishima's world view: Mishima was so consumed with this vision that he staged a failed coup attempt in a Knowing the story of Yukuio Mishima's life, and its tragic end, leads the reader of this novel into some dark parts of the author's mind.

Mishima was so consumed with this vision that he staged a failed coup attempt in and then performed seppuku when it was not successful. The three main characters of the novel: Ryuji represents everything Noboru wants from the future - his desire to become a mariner one day is the single most important thing in his world. His mother is the owner of a store that provides wealthy Japanese and expats expensive Western clothing and baubles.

When Ryuji enters their life, a love triangle forms that quickly dissolves into one of hate.

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How will Noboru, the clear alter-ego of the author, resolve the conflict? You'll have to read the book to find out just how low Mishima can go. And knowing how he ended his life, you can probably guess how brutal it will be. I love cats, and this was a very hard part of the book to read. View all 12 comments. Oct 11, Michael Finocchiaro rated it it was amazing Shelves: This is one of Mishima's shorter stories but it is so beautifully and heartbreakingly written that you almost wish it would be longer.

My no-spoiler rule prevents me from giving you any details but if you loved The Old Man and the Sea and want to read a Japanese variation on the sea tragedy that is also a psychological study, you will love this one. The Mishima universe is a wonderful one to explore and this is a great place to start. Jun 11, Sinem A. Jun 03, Evan rated it it was amazing Shelves: A man isn't tiny or giant enough to defeat anything. His vague notions of glory -- that something great awaits him at the next port -- allow him to avoid his sense of powerlessness and the reality of his aimlessness.

His idea of romantic completion is an unconsumated coupling that is destroyed utterly in instant oblivion -- a kiss and the lovers' lives brought to an end in a tidal wave, for instance. To him, this is the idea of a perfect marriage. His lifestyle of staying on the move and not becoming attached ends soon after he meets a well-to-do widow, Fusako, in the port of Yokohama.

As it starts it, we think it might be a novel about burgeoning adolescent sexual discovery, as Fusako's year-old son, Noboru, discovers a peephole into his mother's adjoining bedroom, well hidden in a cabinet inside the closet. It allows him to study his mother's naked body and later the coitus between she and Ryuji.

The focus then shifts to Ryuji, and over time we learn his backstory, and how Noboru's interest in ships and maritime trivia lead to the eventual hookup of his mother and sailor. There's a lovely sentence in which Ryuji thinks about how his great quest across every corner of the Earth ends on a point of exquisite sensation: The book is filled with countless wonders of such poetic beauty, but eventually it leads into darker territory about what it means to be a man, about the lies of fathers or more accurately, the fear of growing up into a world where there is no real control or heroism for a man , and the seductive violence of groupthink.

Noboru, as it happens has joined a group of proto-fascist youths who pervert the Nietzschean idea of the Superman. Their hatred of weak men, which all of them consider their fathers to be, drive the characters to a fate about which I cannot elaborate. Let's just say that the moment Ryuji morphs from a sailor-hero to a mere father figure in Noboru's mind is a pivotal one. There's a very disturbing passage in the book where the gang practices their "manly" cleansing ritual of cold violence on a poor kitten.

To them, in their warped idea of real manhood, such violence brings some kind of order to the universe. The book accurately essays the dangers of social conformity in extremis and along the way somehow manages to mix in equal portions of romantic longing, family dynamics, the workings of port cities and international import and export, the pull of the sea vs. I suspect that Mishima's concerns about the Japanese man as an emasculated being might also stem from the sense of Japanese defeat after World War II.

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The novel takes place after the war, more or less contemporaneous to its publication in the s. I also love how the novel enters the thoughts of the characters as they internally edit themselves when they verbalize bland platitudes and chitchat to one another -- chastising themselves for not saying what they really want to say. The physical descriptions of the living quarters, the environs and the sights of Yokohama are masterly.

Rarely have I encountered a book in which so much poetic and langorous space co-exists within such a fast-moving, concise narrative. The book seems to be going in one very romantic direction and then shifts gears to something disturbing and ominous. It takes a deft hand to make such a change of emphasis work. Mishima, it seems, possessed the mastery to pull it off.

This is a great book and a super fast read. Another one for my favorites category. View all 5 comments. The problem with expressing a lack of appreciation for "transgressive" material is the underlying assumption that such an expression is evidence of weakness. Weak stomach, weak nerves, a weak anything that explains why a tolerance for violence is not ready and willing.

No one calls someone "weak" for proclaiming a dislike for the romance genre, so prominent in society is the disdain for the potential creation of bonds of empathy between strangers. I find the contrast interesting enough to keep i The problem with expressing a lack of appreciation for "transgressive" material is the underlying assumption that such an expression is evidence of weakness. I find the contrast interesting enough to keep it in mind for future conversations about love and war and which is the stronger US fetish, the one for Disney or the one for mass murderers.

US children love the former, but it's the latter that contributes to them being seventeen times as likely to be murdered by firearms as children in any other developed country. Even the most neglectful fathers, like mine, are no different. Had Mishima not written this particular segment, I wouldn't have valued the book so much. The boy rebelling against the thorn in his side to a homicidal extent would be a more sympathetic narrative were girls the world over not expected to cope with far worse suffocation of self without any hopes of outwardly aggressive overthrow.

However, the patriarchy being the patriarchy, fathers operate in a similar fashion of believing themselves the main character in a sideshow of bed partners and offspring regardless of the gender of said offspring. Mishima characterized the poison concretely enough to forgo the generic "phonies" outcry that, as a female reader with no patience for abusive manpain, I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

And I think we should be grateful to them. I also must say that it's not as simple as "manpain", what with the equating of children to humanoid playthings and the US occupation after the atomic bombing atrocities and the structure of Japanese culture itself. Coupled with "Western" influence, an influence that feminizes Asian males and continues to run rampage over continents that weren't able to resist as effectively as Asia, and you have a maelstrom that I am in no way able to pass judgment on. I'm not a fan of solipsistic violence being equated to objectivity, but I'm not going to discredit the teenage years with words such as "phase" and "angst".

While no longer a teenager, I'm still coming to terms with the extent my "Land of the Free" is built upon genocide and enslavement and stirring up bloodbaths for the sake of the economy, so if anyone was able to reconcile with that during their formative years, congratulations. I'd never want what you've won, but you've won regardless. Aug 09, Murat G. Bi oturup soluklanmakta fayda var.

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La storia segue due linee: Mi soffermo in particolare sulla figura dell'adolescente con relativo gruppetto di coetanei. Per vari aspetti le vicende inducono ad un confronto con "Agostino" di Moravia. In Moravia, l'insicuro Agostino incontra giovanissimi sottoproletari maleducati e volgari, in perenne lotta fra di loro magari per un pacchetto di sigarette. Qui invece il ragazzo, freddo e anaffettivo, frequenta amici con famiglie benestanti ; sono bravi studenti apparentemente inappuntabili, ma coltivano un'ideologia nichilista pericolosissima: Astutamente conoscono le leggi: Peki ya bunlar sizin de sonunuz olursa?

Apr 11, Nate D rated it liked it Recommends it for: Recommended to Nate D by: Like some baroque poisoned confection, a massive slice of dense chocolate cake, rich to the border of nausea, decked out with delicately overwrought sugar flowers and decorative drips and curlicues of livid icing laced with arsenic.

That's the style here: It'd be ridiculous if it weren't so serious, laughable if not so compelling. I'm having a hard time judging Like some baroque poisoned confection, a massive slice of dense chocolate cake, rich to the border of nausea, decked out with delicately overwrought sugar flowers and decorative drips and curlicues of livid icing laced with arsenic. I'm having a hard time judging its actual degree of excess, but I enjoy excess, too, so. The hilarious, probably xenophobia-motivated blurb on my copy: Jul 02, Eddie Watkins rated it really liked it Shelves: How about violently inevitable.

Like a ritual the outcome is preordained and known, but for those who fall under its spell there is no loss of power. A brutal vision wedded to a dreaminess; a clear-sightedness goggled by fantasy blurs; an adolescent sexual awakening derailed into murder.

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This is one sexy bludgeon of a book, like a geisha sporting top-of-the-line brass knuckles. Oct 08, Tosh rated it it was amazing. A very wicked book of sorts, but also a great book on children and how they think. Which is kind of devilish on my part to say - but Mishima captures the kids' view of something very grown-up. The book is very textural in that it is about a lonely woman's erotic impulses as well as her child picking that aspect of her personality or sensuality. Essential book in the Mishima world. Winter 12 52 Nov 03, Summer 12 44 Oct 30, His first published book, The Forest in Full Bloom , appeared in and he established himself as a major author with Confessions of a Mask From then until his death he continued to publish novels, short stories, and plays each year.

His crowning achievement, the Sea of Fertility tetralogy—which contains the novels Spring Snow , Runaway Horses , The Temple of Dawn , and The Decay of the Angel —is considered one of the definitive works of twentieth-century Japanese fiction. In , at the age of forty-five and the day after completing the last novel in the Fertility series, Mishima committed seppuku ritual suicide —a spectacular death that attracted worldwide attention.

Books by Yukio Mishima. Quotes from The Sailor Who Fe If I were an amoeba, he thought, with an infinitesimal body, I could defeat ugliness. Nobody had suffered pain from his act, at least not of the physical kind; nor had anyone died before their time, unless it were from grief. He inspected his hands; they were clean of the blood of the billions of the living.

They were stained with far worse: The blood of the tens and hundreds of billions who could never be born. He would never know if they had tracked the virus back to him; he'd been gone by then. Stealing the ship had been out of fear. Had he committed the ultimate act of genocide? The only way to know would be to come back later to see.

The deep-space mining and manufacturing barge was ideal. Fully automated, rarely manned, thus easily stolen, with the necessary sub-light drive he would need; the manufacturing facilities ensured he would neither starve nor face a shortage of mechs for labor. Two long years he waited: A year to reach the asteroids, to take on mass; half a year accelerating toward the darkest point in space at a comfortable one gee, nestled safely inside a ship careening at a leisurely pace sixteen times that, almost to the speed of light; then braking back—relativity's time dilation leaving him two years older in a world a century in the future.

A world almost empty of humanity, save for the centenarians. They patiently awaited the end of time.



Others had gone out and come back too, they said, noting his youthful appearance of twenty-eight, or was he from one of the colonies? Hadn't those failed, they asked, cut off from Earth and all? Not to worry; the nannymechs would make him comfortable. But none had guessed it had been Buchanan King's mistake that caused their pain. He couldn't bring himself to visit his own children, if they were even alive, or their graves if not.

It wouldn't help to tell them that he'd done this for them and their children: Buchanan locked away the shame, the absolute stupidity he felt at presuming to release a virus untested. He'd been so positive it would work—and that he would step forward to acclaims of brilliance—and if not, that it would be harmless, and he, anonymous. The capriciousness of youth. Within a year it was inescapable: A cure would surely be found. And almost was, by eighty years after. Yet the remaining virologists were dying off, and the anti-virus, almost completed, had languished and been forgotten.

The nannymechs made sure everyone was comfortable. They had been so close, Buchanan saw.

He was able to complete their anti-virus within months. But he couldn't bear to look into their wrinkled eyes to explain it would take years for the anti-virus to mutate INVIR into a harmless form. The thought that his own children might still be alive sealed his decision. He left behind a supply of the anti-virus with a note, in exchange for stealing batches of frozen sperm, eggs, and blueprints for the incubators and nannymechs civilization had long ago ceased trying, resigned to their fate. He encouraged them in the note to try again, that maybe he was wrong in his estimate, that eggs might fertilize again sooner.

If they could simply keep trying, until He stole away to his ship in the night. Three years later, this time pinching the barrier of light speed far closer, to within a trillionth of a percent, a year out to nowhere and back—a million years had passed on Earth. The hill on which his house stood a thousand millennia ago was more barren of human signs than it had been twice as long before, when primitive hominids had hunted there.

In his atonement he had brought life. Sperm and eggs awoke from their frozen sleep, and he seeded the lands with a thousand incubator grown babes and a nanny-mech per tribe of thirty. He hoped the recordings he'd left with each would steer them to adulthood, and that at least some would survive. Twenty years he stayed with one tribe, "ensuring the nannies could handle the tasks," he told himself. But more, so he could watch his mistake be reversed, to see children grow. He acted only in accord with what the nannies taught, so as not to bias their development. Hunting, fishing, planting; basic survival skills.

He told them nothing of Earth's past, of their great technologies, nor of his own failings. Book Worm Chatter Box. The Little Reader Library. Chapter One, Page One. Lindy Reads and Reviews.

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