Mishima: A Vision of the Void [Paperback]

Marguerite Yourcenar (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1987

On November 25, 1970, Japan's most renowned postwar novelist, Yukio Mishima, stunned the world by committing ritual suicide. Here, Marguerite Yourcenar, a brilliant reader of Mishima and a scholar with an eye for the cultural roles of fiction, unravels the author's life and politics: his affection for Western culture, his family and his homosexuality, his brilliant writings, and his carefully premeditated death.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Motives for Mishima's ritual suicide in 1970 at age 45 have been interpreted as esthetic, erotic, exhibitionistic, political and desperate (the waning talent syndrome). In this essay, novelist Yourcenar (The Abyss, Fires shows convincinglyvia an examination of Mishima's novels, plays and other writings, as well as the movie, Patriotism, in which Mishima plays the role of a suicidethat his life was "an exhausting climb . . . to his proper end," proper in his own view, at least, his seppuku carefully premeditated. Although Yourcenar's study helps one to appreciate the strength of Western influence on Mishima and trace his obsession with death as it appeared in what he wrote, it is marred by fuzzy thinking dressed in pretentious or merely vapid language"that powerful plexus which controls in us all our actions and emotions"; "Confessions of a Mask . . . fits all young people between 1945 and 1950"; "the ozone odor of pure energy." She has, in effect, done little more than show us that the best interpreter of Mishima is Mishima.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In a subtly reasoned, immensely absorbing, and indispensable essay, Yourcenar rejects familiar accounts of Mishima as psychotic or fascistic. Instead, she carves an image of a visionary whose sensibility transcended love, politics, and even art. Without attempting a detailed analysis of his life or art, she focuses tellingly on their interplay and ultimate fusion. In The Sea of Fertility , his final tetralogy, Mishima developed the Buddhist notions of "detachment, impermanence, and void" crucial to his determination to achieve the ultimate fullness in lifedeath. Simultaneously, he disciplined his body ruthlessly, seeking to move through visceral to spiritual knowledge. That the final outcome was violent suicide, Yourcenar argues, inspires awe rather horror. The mystery lies beyond our understanding. Arthur Waldhorn, English Dept., City Coll., CUNY
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux (September 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374520615
• ISBN-13: 978-0374520618
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 4.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,591,814 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars I should have listened to the previous two reviewers, May 24, 2004

By 

Ryan B. Smith (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mishima: A Vision of the Void (Paperback)

As a fan of Mishima Yukiyos work, I hoped that the other two reviwers of this book were mistaken, perhaps close minded, or otherwise wrong. However, they are right on target. Part biography and part "literary analysis", the book does neither well. The first half of the book is almost exclusively summaries of Mishima's major novels, with lengthy qoutes and plot summaries with no serious analysis. As a reader I get the feeling that Yourcenar wishes to bath in the literary sucess of Mishima by retelling his novels. I would be willing to forgive the first half of the book if the second had contained sharp, clear analysis. Instead the book makes wild claims with no support (I particularly enjoyed the line to the effect of "Confessions of a Mask describes all young people in Japan between 15 and 25 after world war 2"). The Sea of Fertility - Mishima's masterpiece - recieved a page of discussion after a length plot summary.

Since I didn't listen to the other reviewers, I hope others will.

20 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not very good., March 24, 2003

By 

Angry Mofo "angrymofo" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mishima: A Vision of the Void (Paperback)

This book is of little value to both Mishima fans and novices. The novices will want biographical information, of which Yourcenar gives precious little - sure, all the really important stuff is there, but it's outlined in a very sketchy, couldn't-be-bothered way - and certainly far less than either John Nathan or Henry Scott-Stokes. The fans will want information that isn't available anywhere else, of which there is none whatsoever in this book. So what does Yourcenar talk about? The literature, primarily. That would be good, if not for one thing - Yourcenar is an author herself, and she seems to be out to prove her own literary worth. Thus, the book is made of torturedly "sophisticated" sentences, bizarre assertions of the nature of "those who love life love death the most" (not an exact quote, but a very accurate paraphrase), and of course, some namedropping. Yourcenar mentions D'Annunzio, Cocteau, Lautreamont, and others, with very little cause. She also knocks down a few straw men here and there (randomly, in one footnote, she spontaneously accuses nameless people of accusing Mishima of being a snob, and proceeds to prove them wrong), and once proudly proclaims that Mishima was a reader of her own literary work. Bully for her, I guess.

The literary analysis really isn't that good, either. Admittedly, a cursory read may have the effect of helping people see why they like or dislike Mishima's writing, even if Yourcenar's own musings on the matter aren't very inspiring, but it really doesn't say anything. Some of the man's works are barely given a mention - the "discussions" of After the Banquet and The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea take up about a page, combined. Others are given whole chapters, but even then, there is little serious attempt at character analysis - for instance, Ying Chan, the doomed beauty of The Temple of Dawn, is described as "careless" or "thoughtless" or something to that effect, with no justification for this whatsoever, and no further attempt is made to understand her. The part dealing with The Decay of the Angel is effective, but only because it makes the reader remember that incredible novel - it is Mishima who is responsible for the effectiveness, and not Yourcenar.

So what's Yourcenar's point? Apparently, that Mishima had a special vision of a "Buddhist Void" unique to him that inscrutably exhorted him to commit suicide. That's about it. To this end, she gives probably a lot more attention than is necessary to some of Mishima's lesser, later political works - but almost none, paradoxically, to his essay Sun and Steel. This is why she glosses over biographical details - because in her opinion, they have little to no bearing on Mishima's life. A few anecdotes, such as the "green snake" incident, are related with much self-conscious weightiness, as if they held some kind of magical key to Mishima's work. All of these anecdotes are also related by either Nathan or Scott-Stokes in their respective biographies with much less sophomoric interpretations. Yourcenar continues with a rhapsodic summary of the story "Patriotism," which has no value to any reader who has read the source material, and only ends up conveying the impression that Yourcenar is far more fond of blood and death than Mishima ever was. She ends with a poetization of Mishima's last day, in which she waxes eloquent and ecstatic on the subject of ritual disembowelment and decapitation. This culminates in the last paragraph of the book, a completely unnecessary and grotesque extended metaphor that says nothing and isn't even worth reading.

When the book doesn't make goofy conclusions from its superficial collection of facts, it resorts to just praising Mishima's work. On this there is no argument from me, as I am a big fan of Mishima and agree wholeheartedly with Yourcenar's praise. However, her book contributes nothing new to the exciting field of praise, either. Truth be told, I have a hard time understanding why this book was even written. At 150 pages, it's barely even a book; it fails as a biography and as literary criticism. Even at its best, it just isn't very good; you'd do much, much better with either of the two primary Mishima biographies.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Is it a biography? Is it literary criticism? What is it?, March 25, 2010

By 

P. J. Owen (Atlanta GA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mishima: A Vision of the Void (Paperback)

Having recently finished Spring Snow, which perked in me a keen interest in learning more about Yukio Mishima, I made the mistake of picking up the first book about the author that I came upon, which happened to be this slender volume. Granted, given the size of the book, I didn't expect it to be the definitive biography of the man. But somehow this book managed to disappoint. It somehow failed to deliver on even my modest expectations.

The first problem is that I don't know exactly what the book is. It begins at the beginning of his life and ends with his death, yet it's not a biography. The author makes some interesting observations and provides some insight to a number of his books, but it's too inconsistently done, with a few sentences used to discuss some books and pages for others, to be considered literary criticism. It's sort of like an essay, ( I noticed after I finished reading it that the dust jacket claims it's an essay) yet it doesn't have a premise, or at least not a firm one, and doesn't end with a conclusion other than Mishima's death. So the result is that I never really felt grounded in this book.

Further, sometimes her writing is annoying, like when she lectures us about fascism in the West, (displaying either a lack of historical education or a skewed interpretation based on political biases) or when she tells us Mishima liked one of her novels.

I won't say I hated it as much as other reviewers, because given the subject, there were points in the book that interested me. But next time when I want to read a biography, I'll go right to the authoritative ones.