Mishima's Sword: Travels in Search of a Samurai Legend

I had always been fascinated by Yukio Mishima. I loved Confessions of a Mask and Forbidden Colours. He was famous/notorious both for his fiction and his suicide via harakiri in public in 1970. Christopher Ross, a travel writer who lived and taught in Japan (and is also the author of the excellent Tunnel Visions regarding London's Underground), is superbly placed to write on Mishima and the unique cultural circumstances that pervaded his life. Ross brings an outsider's ‘inside’ perspective, seeing familiarity in the unfamiliar across Japan and vice versa. The work is part memoir, biography, travelogue and cultural criticism. Ross has the persistence to meet many who knew Mishima and forms some fascinating conclusions. I had always assumed Mishima's suicide was a reflection of how homosexuality was not tolerated in Japan. However, it becomes clear from reading this work that Mishima had a curious upbringing, was always fascinated by death, was acutely conscious of creating an (often artificial yet very postmodern) ‘image’ or persona and saw dying honourably as a point of principle. Reading Mishima's Sword straight after Boyd's novel of a life, it is hard not to see a commonality. More clearly than most, Mishima believed his life had ‘purpose’. He lived true to his principles and had a clear and rational plan through to death. Not Rated.

By Christopher Ross