Customer Reviews

Mishima: A Biography

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Prof. John Nathan, the first American to graduate from the prestigious Tokyo University, offers his insight and brilliant observations based on his extensive research and personal accounts of his interaction with the enigmatic Japanese author. This book is a much more coherent account of the psyche of the tortured soul than any other biography published about him simply because he is able to position himself into finding information about Mishima's secretive past by interviewing Mishima's associates using his close ties with the inner circles of Japanese culture. A must read for people who are interested in understanding the darker and the one of the most spectacularly secretive side of Japanese literature.

The moment that convinced me to buy this biography was in the introduction when John Nathan mentions that he not only translated one of Mishima's novels and knew his works better than most non-Japanese, but that he also spent time with Mishima in such pursuits as arm wrestling and running huge bills at posh restaurants. Here is a biography written with subjective experience and great attempt at historical objectivity. A year after Mishima's suicide, John Nathan received passive permission from his widow to write a biography. Allowed access to his parents and friends, Nathan tells a story of a very curious and passionate man from a very personal perspective.

But, with the case of a man who not only founded his own private army and obsessively bulked up his skinny body, but also wrote thirty-five novels, a dozen plays, and over four hundred essays and short stories, it is hard to write about such a visible life that was based on such deep thoughts and ideas. Nathan uses copious excerpts from Mishima's writings, sometimes translated by himself, that the biography leaves the reader satisfied that Mishima the author, the man who sought to resolve his contradictions of life with words, is given justice in his frequent quoting.

It is a great summary of Mishima's life. Though admittedly the best way to get into the mind of Mishima is to read his own works, and this biography knows it. The story of his suicide and reasons for it is told exceedingly well and adds great insight into the mentality of Mishima and how it changed over the decades. Though Nathan tries to postulate theories about Mishima and Japanese society like many authors seem obsessed to do when writing about Japan, it does not weigh down the story of Mishima's life, and the shining enigma it was.

In his introduction, Nathan admits that Mishima would probably be furious that these facts regarding his life had been brought to light. Though it is debtable whether he was arrogant or only proud, sensitive to other people or contemptous of them, Mishima certainly seemed to have very little interest in being understood, and had a carefully crafted public image. I think, though, that if there has to be a biography, we could hardly hope for a better one.

Nathan knew Mishima personally, and his occasional self-referencing serves to make the account more relatable, instead of stealing attention from Mishima. He approaches the subject as humbly as possible, both in regard to Japanese culture, as a westerner, and in regard to Mishima, in trying to reserve judgment. Mishima's actions may be difficult to understand, and it would be all too tempting to describe them as bizzare or wrong, but Nathan slips up on very few occasions (near the end, he does say something in reference to Mishima's suicide along the lines of, 'otherwise, it must seem a terrible waste' -bleah). His sincere desire to understand is evident. Of course, intention alone doesn't make a good biography; 'Mishima' is also liberally packed with information, highlighting incidents which must have had an influence on Mishima's work, reproduced passages from his earliest, unpublished stories, and the views of family members and friends. His occasional attempts to analyze Mishima's work are also interesting, and he never seems to overstep his bounds (as, say, Walter Kauffman does with Nietzsche); his verdict is always tentative and presented as only one man's opinion. 'Mishima' succeeds as both a straightforward biography for anyone who wants the facts, and a sensitive commentary from someone who had the right to comment.

Once you've read a couple of books by Yukio Mishima, it is inevitable that you will be filled with an insatiable desire to learn about the man and try to understand what on earth possessed him to write the way he did. Well, no one knows for sure, but John Nathan has a pretty good idea, and so Mishima: A Biography is the perfect place to start. Be advised that answers don't come easily. Nathan is a Westerner, after all, trying to research a uniquely Japanese and particularly complicated figure, and so some important things will clearly elude him, either lost in some forsaken archive or concealed from him by Mishima's family. However, among Westerners, Nathan is probably the most qualified of all of them to undertake this sort of task - he was a friend of Mishima's for a time, and actually translated some of his works. He doesn't undermine his credibility with gushing praise or half-baked theorizing - for the most part, he does stick to the facts, and the facts do seem to illustrate the conclusions he draws. And what a slew of facts there is! I tore through this book, hungrily devouring episode after episode of the life of an exceptional, charismatic man who, at least for a time, lived life exactly the way he wanted to.

However, I wanted to gain insight into the relevance Mishima's works had to his life, and while I gained some, it wasn't as much as I had hoped to gain. Nathan's reluctance to waste his and your time with unsubstantiated notions is admirable, but unfortunately he often neglects Mishima's literature in his biography. This is a shame, since when he does talk about the books, he provides invaluable insight - for example, in an excellent section, he identifies Mishima's novel Kyoko's House as one of his key works, making me howl with rage at the fact that this novel is just about the only one of his key works to stay untranslated (even Mishima's flawed bid for the Nobel Prize, Silk and Insight, has been released in English!). His discussion of Mishima's very early (also untranslated) work is equally useful, and from him I learned of the existence of such works by Mishima as Death of a Man and the critically acclaimed filmed version of "Patriotism". However, just when it really counts, he stops talking about literature altogether - though he correctly identifies the Sea of Fertility tetralogy as Mishima's masterpiece, he doesn't talk about it at all! There's not even the briefest of plot summaries, just a quick mention that the last volume of the tetralogy was "rushed." I found myself pining for Henri Troyat's frighteningly extensive biographies of great writers, with their equal emphasis on both life and works.

But there's not much of a market for Mishima biographies in the West, and Nathan's book remains a very good effort. If you're as intrigued by Mishima as I am, I urge you to purchase this book. Just don't expect all your questions to be answered.

I have read the Stokes bio and personally I believe this is the better biography to date. I don't believe this bio to be tawdry at all. Nathan takes the reader on a fascinating trip into the live of the personal and somewhat bizarre world of Mishima, without being tawdry. A must!

John Nathan's MISHIMA: A BIOGRAPHY was the first biography in English of the Japanese novelist, whose 1970 death by seppuku after a failed coup d'etat is just as much a part of his legacy as his works.

In an introduction Nathan briefly summarizes the circumstances of Mishima's death and lists the numerous people interviewed, and then he begins with a history of Mishima's family. From the very start Nathan tries his hand at psychological analysis, feeling that the center of Mishima's being was masochism, and his entire life right up to his suicide itself was a search for pain. Consistent with the early 70's date of Nathan biography is the perspective that Mishima's homosexuality was an expression of mental illness.

Nathan knew Mishima well as a graduate student in Tokyo in the early-to-mid 1960's, and was entrusted by the writer with translating two of his works. There is a lot of rich information from this period. However, Mishima broke contact with Nathan after he refused to translate the second work given to him. From this point, when Mishima became increasingly political, essentially a different person, and Nathan could no longer rely on reminisces of the simple writer he knew, the details become sparser and sparser. Another biography in English, THE LIFE AND DEATH OF YUKIO MISHIMA, by Henry Scott-Stokes offers a better, first-hand perspective on Mishima's final years.

There is a wealth of information about Yukio's early books, and it can be depressing for the English reader to hear about so many novels and plays which will probably never be translated out of Japanese. A grievous omission, however, is that of The Sea of Fertility. Mishima's masterpiece, and to a certain extent a literary manifesto of the ideas that lead to his coup, this tetrology deserved greater attention and analysis.

A curious matter about the life and death of Yukio Mishima is that the more one learns, the more questions one has. And nothing suffices to explain the way he chose to end his life. Nonetheless, John Nathan tries his best in MISHIMA: A BIOGRAPHY, and I would recommend it to fans of Mishima's work.

youve got to read both bios for a full picture, though both books obviously had to be written through the filter of a foreigner. nathan was given the ok by mishima's wife, and has a much better list of anecdotes with mishima than scott-stokes. most interesting is the depiction of a trait id read bob dylan also had: mishima was known for entering a literary or artistic scene, rising up as the darling of that movement, then cutting everyone off, publicly deriding that movement and moving onto another one. there are also examples of mishima's homosexuality, which scott-stokes leaves entirely to conjecture.

theres a greater focus on mishima's youth than scott-stokes, but the most questionable issue is the inconsistency between the two books' presentation of mishima's suicide. scott-stokes gives the gritty of it, and the mistakes, while nathan gives an idealised, historicised version. like i said, nathan's is the better written biography (he translated the sailor who fell from grace with the sea, then broke with mishima when he changed camps to translate future nobel laureate kenzaburo oe's a personal matter, instead of silk and insight), but even after reading both bios, well, someone still needs to learn japanese and write a new one, along with translating kyoko's house. it was also a pretty fast read. it was good enough, held my attention.

While Mishima's suicide took those who knew him by surprise (or so it is said), who could not read "Confessions of a Mask" "Thieves" or "Patriotism" without noting the author's fascination with suicide? In this book John Nathan reviews his life and work and in doing so shows how clearly Mishima's writings show his intent.

Nathan takes the reader through Mishima's oppressed childhood, his life during and following the war, his marriage and eventually the workouts, the gravitation to the right wing and his personal army of young men. As you read this book, you draw the conclusion that Mishima's life was his own work of art, building to his ultimate suicide. His political ideas are so disjointed they appear to be his attempt to find a rationale for his final act, which he had decided upon long ago.

Nathan had been on the cold end of Mishima's practice of freezing out those who crossed his lines, deserved or not. In Nathan's case this was translating a novel (which eventually won a Nobel Prize) for another Japanese author at the time he had a verbal commitment to translate a novel of Mishima's. Nathan left Japan for the US without an attempt to reconcile. After Mishima's death, Nathan returned to Japan under contract to write this biography. Mishima's friends and family did not freeze him out, quite the contrary, they cooperated.

I held back a star because I don't think Nathan put all his resources into this. While having known his subject, he doesn't use this insight much, relying instead on Mishima's writings and interviews with others. Also, while he explained some of the changing dynamics of Japanese society I don't think he fully used his nearly unique capacity to interpret in Japan for western audiences.

It's sad how John Nathan, who was trusted by Mishima sensei, wrote this biography mostly based on Mishima's sexual tendencies, and aimed to make money from the scandal, like a cheap paparazzo. Maybe that's what the mainstream, vulgar reader wants to learn about. But Mishima's life and work is far from that. His work is a struggle on the paradox between the spirit and the body. That's the main subject of his work. Nathan never mentioned this, he never understood Mishima. Nathan just made money and gained recognition from translating Mishima's "The Sailor who fell...." Then Mishima, before his death, asked Nathan once more to translate another one of his books. Nathan agreed and Mishima trusted him. But then Nathan was offered another easier translation (Kenzaburo Oe's) and better money, so he said no to Mishima at the very last moment. After Mishima's death, John Nathan saw that he could make good money by writing a scandalous bio, selling some private information he had about Mishima. Why was Nathan so interested in writing about that? (making clear and insisting that he is not sexually ambiguous himself, makes me doubt about his sincerity) Is this the work of an honorable man? I can't see your moral health, Mr. Nathan, you'll have to explain this to Yamaraja.....for the reader interested in Mishima: I recommend to read Henry Scott Stoke's biography of Mishima. He was accurate and honorable in his work, and he was Mishima's real friend.

A wonderful, detailed, intimate look at Mishima. This biography made me want to reread his books so I could get another angle on them.