Forbidden Colors [Paperback]

Yukio Mishima (Author), Alfred H. Marks (Translator)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Published in the United States during the 1960s but written years earlier, this Mishima trio, while vastly different in plot, all sport the common theme of idealism destroyed by reality. Nearly three decades after his death, Mishima continues to be a compelling novelist. (LJ 1/15/63, LJ 3/15/68, LJ 9/1/69)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Japanese

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1st VintageInternatonal ed edition (February 22, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375705163
• ISBN-13: 978-0375705168
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #130,289 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #33 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Japanese

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Subtle evil is more beautiful than coarse goodness, and is therefore moral.", January 6, 2007

By 

frumiousb "frumiousb" (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Forbidden Colors (Paperback)

Bitter and brilliant, Forbidden Colors is a tough book to like. Someone asked me if I enjoyed it, and I honestly cannot say that I did. It moved me. It filled me with both admiration and pity. It depressed me, and ultimately troubled me. Mishima at his best is a writer of terrible vision. Even though I might not have liked what he had to say in Forbidden Colors, I believe that it is one of his best works.

Forbidden Colors is a relentlessly bitter book. When the imperfect and intellectual collide with beauty, nobody comes off well at all. Women are shrill, easy to manipulate, and stupid. Gay men are grasping and shallow. Even the intellectual writer who starts the whole plot is pilloried for his age, perpetual failure, and incompleteness of his vision. Only the beautiful emerge relatively unscathed, their shortcomings in other areas obviously unimportant put next to their aesthetic value. It is an unhappy and unkind view of the world. It becomes an unpleasant experience to read since Mishima is such a skilled writer that by the end you suspect that this perspective may be right after all. And which of us can lay claim to the beauty of Yuichi?

This is not an uplifting novel. I gave it five stars despite myself. I admired it tremendously, but when I was done I still almost wished that I had not read it. Recommended for people interested in Mishima, the Japanese modern novel, and representations of gender and sexuality in modern literature. Although sex is at the center of the book, it is not explicit or graphic. Many of the ideas are similar to those in Mishima's essay book Sun and Steel, but Forbidden Colors has the advantage of being much more readable than the non-fiction.

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A dark and subtle story, December 16, 2000

By 

Chad M. Brick (Ann Arbor, Michigan USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Forbidden Colors (Paperback)

Mishima's "Forbidden Colors" is in some ways a dark, homoerotic, post-modern allusion to Dickens' "Great Expectations", with the beautiful Yuichi replacing the outwardly-impeccable Estella. Unlike Dickens more direct style, however, Mishima's writing is challenging to read, with layer upon layer of metaphor and allusion.

This is not a happy story. The characters are deeply flawed, and their struggles to overcome their lackings are often futile. The most deserving characters wind up with the least, while Yuichi's beauty carries him through a whirlwind of undeserved fortune.

While reading this book is a substantial investment of time, the sordid beauty of writing, as well as its unusual themes, made me feel as if my time was spent wisely. A great book for anyone interested in Japanese counter-culture!

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Signature Mishima, January 14, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Texas,USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Forbidden Colors (Paperback)

This compelling book strings the usual subtle tones of homoeroticism that run through most of Mishima's work. Lyrical and engrossing, there are many themes parallel to his own life at the time: fraught mother, beautiful and subservient wife, decadent secret life of the Japanese homosexual underground. The existential end punctuates this almost journal-like tale.