You must remember thisA kiss is still a kissA sigh is just a sighThe fundamental things applyAs time goes by. The most enduring stories are often very simple. Boy meets girl, they like each other, the world conspires to drive them apart, they remain faithful to each other and, in the end, they ma...
“What we call evil is the instability inherent in all mankind which drives man outside and beyond himself toward an unfathomable something, exactly as though nature had bequeathed to our souls an ineradicable portion of instability from her store of ancient chaos.”- Stephan Zweig.The air grew hea...
All outsiders are enemies. We are a gang of one. Mishima's typical samurai-grace with the pen is on full display here. Simplicity has its rewards, but for me, strands itself on several occasions. The 13-year-old, now fatherless, Noboru, has a reckless curiosity, one which separates him from the e...
A pair of woollen socks! The solitary blue- brown image lingered in my pathetic thoughts, weeks after I had closed down the book. Verses had angrily left me, words refused to find a refuge within my wits and leisurely Mishima’s manuscript had melted into an obscure viscosity leaving behind only t...
Death figures heavily in the writing of Yukio Mishima, as even a casual reader knows. However, his 1960 novel, "After the Banquet," does not fit so neatly into the complete body of work.Mishima himself grouped his novels into two categories - pièces noires and pièces roses, of which "After the Ba...
But my entry into the university was no triumphant event attended only by the unswerving affection of the Superior and by the envy of my colleagues at the temple. From the outside it may have appeared to be a proud event for mc, but in fact my advancement into the university was beclouded by a ci...
The sound of his wife going about her work came to him faintly. A healthy physical craving, submerged for two days, reasserted itself. The lieutenant was confident there had been no impurity in the joy they had experienced when resolving upon death. They had both sensed at that moment - though no...
This was then borne into the presence of the Marquis and Marquise. Since Satoko was aware of this procedure, she had taken the precaution of entrusting her note to Tadeshina, who, in turn, was to give it to Iinuma. So it was that Iinuma, in the middle of studying for his f...