A monumental work that removes the mask Yukio Mishima—one of Japan's foremost literary voices—so artfully created to disguise his true self.
Yukio
Mishima was a brilliant writer and intellectual whose relentless
obsession with beauty, purity and patriotism ended in his astonishing
self-disembowelment and decapitation in downtown Tokyo in 1970.
Nominated for the Nobel Prize three times, Mishima was the best-known
novelist of his time and his legacy—his persona—is still honored and
puzzled over.
Persona, the first full biography to appear in English in 30 years, traces Mishima's trajectory from a sickly boy named Kimitake Hiraoka to a hard-bodied student of martial arts. In detail, Inose and Sato examine Mishima's family life, war experience and enormous literary output. Persona reveals the ideologies, conflicts and occasional petty backbiting that shaped the literary and political culture of postwar Japan.
Naoki Inose is a prize-winning Japanese author and vice governor of Tokyo.
Hiroaki Sato is a prize-winning translator of classical and modern Japanese poetry into English. He has also translated Mishima's novel, Silk and Insight, and his dramas, My Friend Hitler and Other Plays. Since 2000, Sato has written a monthly Japan Times column, "The View from New York." He lives in Manhattan.
Persona, the first full biography to appear in English in 30 years, traces Mishima's trajectory from a sickly boy named Kimitake Hiraoka to a hard-bodied student of martial arts. In detail, Inose and Sato examine Mishima's family life, war experience and enormous literary output. Persona reveals the ideologies, conflicts and occasional petty backbiting that shaped the literary and political culture of postwar Japan.
Naoki Inose is a prize-winning Japanese author and vice governor of Tokyo.
Hiroaki Sato is a prize-winning translator of classical and modern Japanese poetry into English. He has also translated Mishima's novel, Silk and Insight, and his dramas, My Friend Hitler and Other Plays. Since 2000, Sato has written a monthly Japan Times column, "The View from New York." He lives in Manhattan.
November 2012
$39.95 US / $43.99 CAN
Hardback, 858 pages
Distributed by Consortium
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