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3.92 AVERAGE
3.92 AVERAGE
informative
slow-paced
Great biography, check out my review at Three Percent: http://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/index.php?id=5862
"Oshima (Nagisa), it is said, had Mishima in mind as the model of Capt. Yonoi, the young, intense, homosexual, sword-brandishing commandant of the prison camp."
Yes, that is... very much who Mishima was.
Yes, that is... very much who Mishima was.
At first glance this is a refreshingly chronological biography, but this is not entirely true. While other biographies, written by non-Japanese biographers, open with death and pull back to view the life leading up to it, Inose and Sato open with what Mishima could have become, and go back to investigate why he didn't. A brick I had to rush through at the end (it's an interloan and it's due back tomorrow), exceptionally detailed but still won't justify why no one else has bothered to translate Kyoko's House.
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
slow-paced
A winding, twisting epic detailing in thorough detail seemingly every significant moment of Mishima's life. As seemingly the only Japanese-language biography of Mishima published in English, and one written by the wonderful Naoki Inose no less, this is an extremely valuable overview of the author's life, containing within it thorough analysis of the cultural context of the post-war Japanese era, a detailed reading of history, and even borderline breathtaking analysis and detail of Mishima's entire family tree and his family history going back centuries. If there's a failure here, it's that the book can sometimes spend too much time on tangents, running through essays on Japanese culture and history for dozens of pages before returning to Mishima's life, and so it can read in a perhaps somewhat disjointed way. Inose also never personally had a strong relationship with Mishima, and so this biography lacks some of the more intimate details that can be found in the John Nathan or Henry Scott Stokes attempts.
Nevertheless, this is by far the most fully fleshed biography of Mishima available in English, covering in detail everything found in the other two biographies, along with even more details gleaned from interviews and exclusive access to documents. Likely due to translation, the writing is not as silky smooth as John Nathan's, yet this biography still manages to feel like a long, winding, tragic and poetic journey by it's end.
Nevertheless, this is by far the most fully fleshed biography of Mishima available in English, covering in detail everything found in the other two biographies, along with even more details gleaned from interviews and exclusive access to documents. Likely due to translation, the writing is not as silky smooth as John Nathan's, yet this biography still manages to feel like a long, winding, tragic and poetic journey by it's end.