Product Description
The Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea
Author: Yukio Mishima
Format: Paperback
Vintage Quarterbound Classics
Noboru spies on his widowed mother, Fusako Kuroda, as she begins a relationship with Ryuji Tsukazaki, a merchant sailor he idolises as a hero.
Set in post-war Yokohama, Japan, in the late 1950s, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace from the Sea follows thirteen-year-old Noboru and a secret gang of schoolboys who have sworn to reject the adult world as sentimental and corrupt. Under the cold authority of their leader, they train themselves in what they call 'objectivity,' suppressing emotion in favour of ruthless judgement.
When Ryuji abandons the sea to pursue a settled life with Fusako, Noboru and the boys see this not as love, but as weakness. The sailor they once revered becomes, in their eyes, a traitor to heroic masculinity. Their disillusionment curdles into a calculated plan to restore what they believe is honour.
As twentieth-century Japanese historical fiction grounded in the social aftermath of the Second World War, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace from the Sea builds towards an act of chilling violence, exposing adolescent absolutism, misogyny, and the fragile myth of male heroism.
'Mishima's greatest novel, and one of the greatest of the past century' — The Times
About the Author
Yukio Mishima was born into a samurai family and imbued with the code of complete control over mind and body, and loyalty to the Emperor – the same code that produced the austerity and self-sacrifice of Zen. He wrote countless short stories and thirty-three plays, in some of which he acted. Several films have been made from his novels, including The Sound of Waves; Enjo, which was based on The Temple of the Golden Pavilion; and The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea. Among his other works are the novels Confessions of a Mask and Thirst For Love and the short-story collections Death in Midsummer and Acts of Worship.
The Sea of Fertility tetralogy, however, is his masterpiece. After Mishima conceived the idea of The Sea of Fertility in 1964, he frequently said he would die when it was completed. On November 25th, 1970, the day he completed The Decay of the Angel, the last novel of the cycle, Mishima committed seppuku (ritual suicide) at the age of forty-five.
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