This week we’re reading The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with The Sea by Yukio Mishima (who I’ve mispronounced as Yukia Mishima several times.) The book is about a young child named of Noboru, the son of the middle class mother. Noboru and his friends shun the world of adults as illusory and beneath contempt with only a few “permissible” things such as the sea and ships. Noboru’s mother Fusako falls in love with a sailor named Ryuiji who Noboru initially identifies as a hero. Ryuji rises above the domestication of modernity, only to fall from grace as he leaves the life of a sailor to become a husband and, worst of all, a father. Yukio’s grotesque and engrossing tale of Ubermensch children will leave you queasy and contemplative.
Yukio Mishima is perhaps Japan’s best known novelist. Of samurai lineage, he is known for his extreme, nationalist politics and intense devotion to his art. His works range from poetry to theatre, but he is best known for his magnum opus tetrology the Sea of Fertility. After finishing the last words of the Sea of Fertility, Mishima attempted a coup against the Japanese government to restore the Emperor in which he failed and performed seppuku - ritual Japanese suicide.
Next week we're reading the first half of the The Last Samurai by Mark Ravina.
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