Death In Midsummer And Other Stories [Paperback]

That having been said, I was immensley impressed by this book. After the first three stories ("Death in Midsummer", "Three Million Yen", and "Thermos Bottle") I was ready to admit the genius of the author. The title story is abridged, and the translation on all three is awkward -- I don't know a bit of Japanese, but the English itself lacked lucidity and had some confused grammar. Nevertheless, there's a remarkable detail to the deliniation of character, a mesmorizing lyrical style, and a powerful look into the psychology of man when confronted with tragic and absurd circumstances. The stories, also, are brilliantly subtle satires of middle class values. The author clearly intends to show the decline in the Japanese character as a result of Westernization and modernization. At some points it hints at leftist values -- a dislike of the bourgeois, a sympathy for the poor, etc. But Mishima's strange and anachronistic political beliefs show us that his work is best read as insight into the identity crisis facing modern Japan, and not as leftist, or even entirely rightist. (I read, while glancing through a biography of the author, a statement he made after speaking to a group of leftist students. He said something to the effect of "We shared a friendship and an understanding, embracing through a barbed fence...")

As much as I appreciated the first three stories, however, I found the rest of the book to be much better, revealing an incredible diversity of style and theme. "The Priest and His Love" is a beautiful Buddhist fable exploring the paradox and power of beauty and sensuality. The style of writing reminded me a lot of Pär Lagerkvist. "Patriotism" caught me completely off-guard, and undoubtedly represents the greatest work in the book. Its the story of an officer who commits seppuku (ritual suicide) and his wife, who follows. With great fluidity and poetic grace, Mishima describes their final night together, then, in a frustratingly objective prose, describes the morbid end of the two. Violence and sensuality are tied in with finality, duty and beauty. Mishima was an aesthete, but of the rarest kind -- much in the spirit of Poe, perhaps. The story had an enormous impact of me.

"Dojoji," auspiciously set after "Patriotism," is one of Mishima's Noh plays, and shifts entirely to the languid, allegorical style that characterizes the Noh (contrasted by the turbulent, grotesque realism of the previous story). The play is about the auction of a giant wardrobe that has a gruesome past. Mishima's attempt to reinvigorate the tired Noh theatre was a noble effort, and (in my opinion) a successful one. The spiritual quality of the theatre proves a profound vehicle to the pessimism and spiritual despondency that characterizes modern literature and thought. After reading this play, I went out immediately and found a copy of "Five No Plays by Mishima" which I very much look forward to reading. The next story, "Onnagata," deliberately takes us to the other side of Japanese theatre, the kabuki. Its a homoerotic tale of obsession and infatuation, and a love triangle between three men (or rather, two men and an onnagata -- a man who plays, or rather lives, as a woman in kabuki theatre). One man seeks the elusive love of a famed onnagata by joining the kabuki theatre. The onnagata, for Mishima, is "the illicit child born of a marriage between dream and reality." As infatuation drives him further and further into the world of the kabuki, it has the strange effect of driving him further and further away from the onnagata's love, who, in the end, falls in love with a pretentious young guest director who knows nothing of the kabuki.

"The Pearl" completely surprised me. Of all things, its a social comedy, the type I had suspected, from reading the other stories, that the author was incapable of. To my delight, I was proved wrong. Again poking tremendous fun at the middle class, the story is about five middle aged women, and a lost pearl and a silly mischevious act that explodes into a tale of deciet, head games, and irony.

After reading this, I am a confirmed Mishima fan. It has also excited me into exploring contemporary Japanese literature. Very highly recommended!