![]() And make sure your kaishaku is up to the job. He married and fathered children, because that's what real men do, but slept with men discreetly but not secretly.Ģ.Samurai wore rouge! Because, obviously, pale cheeks are a sign of cowardice.ģ.If you ever decide to commit seppuku, remember the anal plug. Teased at school for being effeminate, he decided to become super-masculine, bulking up with muscle, studying martial arts and cultivating a macho image. Raised pretty much as a girl, born a sickly child not expected to live, he had issues not just with his masculinity but with life/death. Can't say I will be seeking out any of Mishima's writing however.ġ.Mishima was messed up. Those interactions and the authors experiences earlier in life, which he shares keep the book interesting.Ī solid 3 stars. It was interesting that the author threw in (as those short chapters) other interactions he had in Japan which were seemingly quite irrelevant to the principle story. The author travels to Japan with two (three?) goals - to track down Mishima's sword that he used to commit suicide, and to speak to those who knew Mishima and understand him, (and to write this book?). They jump around in the topics noted above, and are not really chronological (although, for example, all the authors present experiences in Japan researching this book are presented in chronological order), so it all makes some sense. It is presented in short sections (not even chapters) some a few sentences, some a few pages, most in between. This book suited my reading (at this time). There is also background on Japanese martial arts and of course some of the authors past and present experiences in Japan. It also outlines (in what was the more interesting aspect for me) information about Samurai swords, their manufacture and use. The book outlines Mishima's life, his writing, his politics, and his death by Seppuku in 1970. This was an interesting book, and despite not knowing who Yukio Mishima was, I have a minor interest in Samurai, and Japan in general, but no solid knowledge. Mishima's Sword is a dazzling read-the perfect book for all those intrigued by things Japanese, from gangsters to Genji, from manga to Mishima. ![]() The trail Ross follows inspires a travelogue of the most eye-opening-and occasionally bizarre-sort, a window into the real Japan that is never seen by tourists and the occasion for digressions on, among other things, socks and the code of the samurai, nosebleeds and metallurgy. While searching for the fabled sword, Ross encounters the rather startling range of those who knew Mishima.a world, or perhaps more accurately a demimonde, of craftsmen and critics, soldiers and swordsmen, boyfriends and biographers (even the man who taught Mishima hara-kiri). It was a country Ross knew well after nearly five years of living there-but nothing could have prepared him for this. Christopher Ross wondered, What on earth happened to Mishima's sword? And so Ross sets off for Tokyo on a journey into the heart of the Mishima legend-the very heart of Japan. In the decades since, people have asked endless far-ranging questions about this spectacular suicide. In 1970, the world-famous Japanese writer Yukio Mishima plunged a knife into his belly and was decapitated using his own antique sword. ![]()
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