Is There a Way Out?: The Unhuman Politics of Noboru and His Gang in Yukio Mishima's The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with Sea

Abstract

Keywords

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Is There a Way Out?: The Inhuman Politics of Noboru and His Gang in Yukio Mishima’s The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea

Abstract

“True beauty is something that attacks, overpowers, robs, and finally destroys.”1 Thus says Yukio Mishima, born in 1925 as Kimitake Hiraoka, the Japanese author. If this sentence is counted as the epitome of his philosophy of life, it will not be surprising to realize his fascination with sexuality, suicide, violence, and death in his works. He was the man of extreme passions; that is why it was hard to satisfy him. To quote by Cawthorne “In his autobiographical novel Confessions of a Mask, [Mishima] revealed that he was a man incapable of feeling passion or even feeling alive unless he was embroiled in sadomasochistic fantasy, dripping with blood and death. He said that he had written the book to channel his own homicidal instincts and the pen-name he chose- Yukio Mishima- could be written so that the characters also read ‘mysterious devil bewitched with death.

Keywords

• Inhuman
• Politics
• Noboru

References

1. Bargen, D. G. Doris, (1997) A Woman’s Weapon: Spirit Dispossession in the Tale of Genji (Hawaii University Press).
2. Cawthorne, Nigel, (2011) Sordid Sex Lives: Shocking Stories of Perversion and Promiscuity from Nero to Nilsen (London: Quercus).
3. Mishima, Yukio, (1970) The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (Middlesex: Penguin Books).
4. Mishima, Yukio, (1971) The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (New York: Berkeley Books).
5. Tyson, Lois, (2006) Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide (New York: Routledge).
6. Yamanounchi, Hisaaki, (1972) “Mishima Yukio and His Death,” Modern Asian Studies, 6/1, (1972): 1-16.
7. Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, (New York: Berkeley Books, 1971), pp.30.