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Paperback
Publisher: New Directions
ISBN13: 9780811201186
Condition: NEW
Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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| Customer Reviews: |
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| A sad, sad story |
| Customer Rating: 3 out of 5 |
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From what I can tell, Yukio Mishima was not a very happy man.
Granted, the only works that I have read of this very prolific author are this and Kinkakuji, but I'm seeing a pattern already, and it doesn't point towards Mishima being a cheerful, laid-back guy. Of course, his suicide by seppuku is also a good indicator that he took things way too seriously.
Published in 1948, Confessions of a Mask addresses a subject that would have been taboo anywhere, not just Japan. The main character, whose name is only given as Kochan, is a young man dealing with the fact that he is homosexual. He begins with one of his earliest memories, seeing a night-soil man and finding him beautiful, which he believes is what set his preferences for life. As he gets older, he doesn't yet realize that he's different from other boys, except in that he's small and thin and gets sick a lot more often. He finds himself entranced by men, especially laborers, and not knowing if this is what he's supposed to be feeling.
His sexual maturity is a sad and stunted thing. The pleasure and rapture that he sees in paintings of St. Sebastian hide dark urges of violence and despair. His boyhood love of a classmate is a secret that gnaws at him until he finally convinces himself that he was never actually in love at all. And his attempts to become "normal" end with nothing by emptiness and sorrow. Kochan has no friends to talk to, no family to lean on, and no way to know if what he's feeling is good or bad. All he knows is that the other boys are fascinated by women, and he's fascinated by other boys. In darkness and isolation, Kochan grows. What he grows into, however, is a pale, lonely and barren man.
Like many gay kids, especially in the pre-internet era, Kochan believes that he is unique. An aberration, a deviation from the norm. As far as he knows, no other boy has felt the way he did, and the only other one he hears of - Oscar Wilde - is long dead. His desire to fit in with the rest of the world leads him to play an elaborate game, to wear a mask so convincing that it nearly convinces himself. Being able to hide who he really is and what he really wants becomes a matter of hiding from himself. And as anyone who's tried that will know, hiding from yourself only works for so long....
Such is the life of a young gay man in wartime Japan. While I'm sure what Mishima has presented here is not the average, it is a depressing picture of what it's like to live in a society where such a deviation from the norm is punishable by societal exile. While I can't claim to know what would have happened to a young man in that era who came out of the closet, the narrator doesn't even seem to consider that as an option, good or bad. Thus I can only assume that the consequences would be dire.
There's no doubt that this book is at least semi-autobiographical. A look at A simple story, well-written and chilling |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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This book is really not lacking very much. Perhaps some other reviewers came into it with high expectations for some sort of pinnacle of Japanese literature, but I only wanted a story and the story that was delivered was overwhelmingly engaging. As a story of obsession and tragedies of the heart it is certainly comparable to Nabokov. I am not a fan of stories that are just depressing or a mountain of uncomfortable drudgery, but Mishima keeps you out of that pit with his tell-all intellectual writing style, simultaneously mocking all the follies of human existence and pitying himself for being so analytical. The story has its rough edges but you really feel that he focuses on all the right details and nothing is left out, which is the hallmark of a superior writer. This is absolutely a great gift for a gay friend. I am not gay but I felt a very close sympathy for the main character's predicament. It seems to be a thin veil over Mishima's own experience, and perhaps the story is semi-autobiographical.
The translation is pretty good and the Japanese experience shines through, although the setting of the story definitely lends a hand to that.
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| Gay feelings repressed by cultural forces |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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Different cultures deal with homosexuality in different ways.
Mishima's sadomasochistic homosexuality asserted itself early. While still a tiny child, he responded instantly to certain kinds of masculine beauty and found a mysterious fascination in images and narratives of heroic men being tortured and, ideally, killed. The supreme example was a picture of the martyred St. Sebastian, bound and riddled with arrows, which the child Mishima experienced as the world's heaviest turn-on. Naive as he was, the young author still knew somehow that his interests were unusual and disgraceful, so he kept them secret--thus he created the metaphorical "mask" to hide his true feelings. The story of his early inner life, with its crushes and fantasies, takes up the first half or so of the book and is fascinating.
But then, during young manhood, Mishima tries to become "normal" and fall in love with a girl. Though he likes her very much, he isn't attracted to her physically. The story of this doomed relationship takes up the second half of the book. Being more or less devoid of incident, and (obviously) lacking in erotic passion, it's tedious and difficult to read.
Confessions of a Mask ends disappointingly but the earlier section of the book gives a candid, moving, and memorable account of a child's confused and troubled emerging sexuality as it deals with the cultural norms of a repressive country.
If you are interested in Japanese culture and homosexuality I would strongly recommend Covering by Kemji Yoshimo.
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| In search of desperate beauty |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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It is a commonplace, among those interested to classify Mishima as sensualist author, to review this story from pansexual perspective.
However, Mishima goes far beyond this materialistic and reductionist interpretation of his early chef d'oeuvre by creating a complex narration about a troubled young lad searching for beauty through the spiritual vein of art that accentuated his synesthetic experiences toward human body and masculine virtue, as masterfully related by the author, in his amazing discovery of San Sebastian depiction made by Guido Reni. To sum up, this a memorable short novel written in elegant style composed by delightful prose, where Mishima paid great homage to the strange and mysterious nature of beauty.
Yasunari Kawabata (Mishima's former mentor), 1968 Noble Prize, once said that he did not deserve to be awarded with the aforementioned prize if Mishima was still alive, by reading this book anyone can agree with his honorable judgment.
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| A psychologically sexual journey |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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Yukio Mishima is one of Japan's most famous modern writers, having written over twenty books, forty plays, ninety short stories, and numerous poems, and having earned three nominations for the Nobel Prize before he committed seppuku (ritualistic suicide) in 1970 at the age of forty-five. Confessions of a Mask was his very first novel (arguably semi-autobiographical), but it is still considered one of his classics. The story is about a nameless homosexual narrator and his attempts throughout his life, from a young child to a grown man, to try to understand himself, his desires, and why exactly he feels so different from everyone else. He comes to the conclusion that he can fit easily into society if he just hides his true self behind a "mask", but he soon finds out it isn't that simple, and before long he begins to lose his firm grip on who exactly his "true self" really is.
The book begins with the narrator describing certain instances from his childhood, memories that he feels have had a significant effect on who he is now. I thought this was just the story's introduction, Mishima's way of introducing the character and letting us get to know him better, but after many pages of these memories, I began to realize that this was the story. It doesn't have a clear beginning, middle, and end as much as it is just a series of events. After all, isn't that closer to the way real life is? Some of the events might seem random at first, but they are all strung together by the highly precise and articulate narrative.
However, even though I thoroughly enjoyed Confessions of Mask, it is definitely not for everyone. There is not very much action in the narrator's life compared to what is going on in his head. And every time something exciting or dramatic does happen, the intensity is constantly being cut down by the narrator's analysis of exactly what psychological or philosophical importance the event has, and occasionally he goes off on tangents that lead to another event entirely before making his way back to where he started. This type of narrative style could easily have been botched by a less skilled writer, making the story sound messy and awkward, but Mishima knows from the beginning where he is going, and he arrives there successfully, detours and all. His psychoanalysis of himself comprises a lot of the book, but he keeps himself from sounding too self-centered by also offering his philosophical insight into human nature in general, not just his own.
There are still a few times when his psychology begins to get tiresome or repetitive, but the beauty of Mishima's writing and the yearning to know what happens next still kept me reading without many complaints. Confessions of a Mask is depressing in how negatively the narrator views himself, but unfortunately the feeling of not fitting in is something that most everyone can relate to. The ending might not seem completely satisfying or conclusive at first, but it fits fairly well with the style of the rest of the novel. I recommend this fascinating and psychologically complex story to anyone who prefers reading books where there's more happening internally than externally, or to anyone else who is interested in trying something different.
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