Word: mishima
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This unsavory brew of landlocked lechery and homicide has something -although not enough-to do with a Yukio Mishima novel. The book's spiritual narcissism and level tone of nightmare has been replaced here by the flossy look of soft-core porn, the pulpy dementia of a horror flick...
Maeno's background included some porn film credits (most recent: Tokyo Emmanuelle), two broken marriages and a previous suicide attempt. An ardent admirer of the ancient Japanese samurai code, he also esteemed Yukio Mishima, the flamboyant novelist who committed hara-kiri in 1970 to protest Japan's loss of traditional values. Many members of Japan's restive right wing have felt that Kodama damaged their cause by acting as a conduit for American bribes-an error that Maeno evidently was seeking to avenge...
Bright Widow. Nathan records Mishima's entrance into Tokyo's homo sexual world, which evidently began as a kind of professional voyeurism, the young author detachedly taking notes on the scene at a gay bar. Homosexuality sometimes figured in Mi shima's work, notably in his autobiographical novel, Confessions of a Mask. But it remained only one compartment of his extremely varied private life. Despite the flamboyant outrages he en joyed committing, Mishima had a surprising appetite for respectability. In 1958, partly because he thought it was expected of him, partly because he wanted to please...
Nathan subordinates Mishima's work to his life. That may be unwise; without the evidence of his literary achievement, especially his last work, the tetralogy that he called The Sea of Fertility, Mishima might seem a kind of psychotic Japanese version of Monty Rock...
Nathan writes with a certain dis taste for Mishima - which is natural enough since Mishima was, for all his exuberance and charm, a squirmingly unpleasant character; his brilliance had the phosphorescence of decay. All his life, he was explicitly and erotically in love with death. Suicide was the only act, he believed, that could make him comprehend his own existence. Just after Mishima disemboweled himself, his mother said: "This was the first time in his life that Kimitake [Mishima] did something he always wanted to do. Be happy...