Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Mishima-----a master craftsman., March 30, 2000
Mishima is undoubtedly a fine writer. His technique and style are amazing. He can even make a two page description of kimono fabric interesting to an NFL linebacker! Many will certainly question the motivation of his writing (a return to samurai codes [Bushido], restoration of emperor, expelling all things western from Japan, etc.), but they cannot deny the accurate portrait Mishima paints of a mid-20th century Japan that is straddling the lines between traditional culture (buddhism/shinto/etc.) and western industrialization. Mishima takes a grand-scale problem and puts it into a specific setting. Obviously readers that have an understanding of the greater context of Japanese history from the mid-20th century will appreciate this novel more. I do think, however, that even someone that couldn't point to Japan on a map, but likes good writing and story-telling will be able to appreciate the book on those merits alone. While not as enjoyable as the first installment of the "Sea of Fertility" tetrology, it is an enjoyable book.
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A brilliant masterpiece on its own..., October 6, 2003
The Runaway Horse has been criticized unfairly for its glorification of nationalistic and even fascist views. The word Kamikaze has become such a taboo in the modern western world that anything that touches even slightly on the subject would be condemned. In this amazing book, Isao symbolizes the purity of life. All that's good is pure, and all that's pure is good. Thus is the belief of Isao, and eventually, of Mishima himself as evident of his suicide in 1970. Having said that, I do not expect this book to be understood by its English readers. The translation proves to be a great barrier but more importantly, the philosophy that is the core of this particular book is too distant for the modern Japanese readers, let alone readers in North America who have been sheltered from different cultures. Runaway Horse describes meaning of the true Japanese samurai, or at least of what Mishima believes it is. A samurai is not after his own glory or achievements. His only goal is to be loyal to the Emperor and to God. He is a mere servant of these goals and his life could and should be given up to the Emperor upon request. Isao believes that the blade and the blood of the corrupt politicians will be a wake-up call to the Emperor to restore feudal Japan. Although naive and violent at times, Isao is a one-dimensional human being that follows the human goal of "being yourself", Being true to yourself is an impossible task for most people, and therefore Isao is the idealized human being. It also reflects the Japanese philosophy of simplicity. The problems of the modern day world are so complex that only the simplest actions would resolve them, complex actions would not only take time to execute, but would entangle the matters even more. This book also displays the obsession with beauty that Mishima has. In his mind, beauty is worth giving up your life for. His ideas of beauty are expressed with the most sensuous and colorful images shaped by adjective upon adjectives. Mishima's writing style, especially when it involves this matter, is not for everyone. Patient readers with deep imaginations, though, will find it joyful as descriptions from the book spring from the wells of their minds and take flight before their eyes. Isao's suicide is a painting that has been painted a thousand times in my mind, along with the rising sun.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Continues the themes of SPRING SNOW with expanded form and new perspectives, June 28, 2006
In RUNAWAY HORSES, the second volume of Yukio Mishima's "Sea of Fertility" tetralogy, we are presented with a remarkable turn of events. Kiyoaki Matsugae, the tragic protagonist of SPRING SNOW, has been born again. Those who wondered why the first novel in the cycle had those long debates on the transmigration of the soul will be pleased to see the consequences of the Siamese princes' beliefs.
The year is 1932. RUNAWAY HORSES unfolds through the thoughts of Shikeguni Honda, once Kiyoaki's best friend, who is now thirty-eight years-old and a judge in Osaka. Honda encounters a young man, Isao, who is almost as old as Kiyoaki was when he died, and Honda comes to believe that this boy is his old friend come again, whose life contains events that Kiyoaki foretellingly dreamed of and wrote in his journal. While Kiyoaki's fatal flaw was excess love, his reincarnation is an obsessive patriot, who seeks to purge Japan of foreign ideals and the vices of a capitalism which denied the Emperor. RUNAWAY HORSES is, essentially, a novel of political extremism. The Japan of this era seems poised on the verge of either Communist revolution or, what actually came to pass, military dictatorship, and the uncertainty of the times makes for a very engaging setting. Some knowledge of Japan history comes in handy, although the novel can still be read as it is. The form of the work is also rather more varied than in the first volume of the cycle. RUNAWAY HORSES contains a fifty-page long imagined political tract praising the leaders of a 19th-century rebellion, which inspires the protagonist, and a courtroom scene recounted in dialogue form.
I found so much of this novel supremely agreeable. Mishima expertly causes the reader to feel the long years that have passed for Honda, and the shock that comes in being jerked back to the death of Kiyoaki. Some of the people and places linked with Kiyoaki are seen again in this novel, and often the characters have little idea of the connection, but the reader knows the haunting truth. Nonetheless, the novel is not entirely perfect. One common objection may be that Mishima gushes too much over the purity of Isao, for the author's own political ideals where much the same. Still, anyone concerned with issues of globalization and the existential crisis of the West and westernized nations will have some sympathy for Mishima and his protagonist, even though much about them is deplorable. And Isao is certainly more nuanced than the protagonist of Mishima's gory nearly-pornographic novella "Patriotism" of three years before. My own dissatisfaction about the matter comes from Mishima giving his protagonist, toward the end, the opportunity to rather unrealistically give a long speech to an audience that in truth probably wouldn't hear it.
Still, these are relatively minor complaints. I underestimated the beauty of SPRING SNOW the first time I read it, and I'm quite happy that I re-read it and moved onto RUNAWAY HORSES. The "Sea of Fertility" cycle is indeed an impressive work of fiction.
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