/lit/ - Literature

>>3819210

豐饒の海

>>3819229

Thanks!

By coincidence, I bought Confessions of a Mask and The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea this week.

>>3819314

Cool! I will start with Sea of Fertility. I have high hopes.

>>3819321
These were recommended to me by a random woman on the train. On the same day I bought 1Q84.

>>3819210
i liked his short stories op.

death in midsummer and other short stories or after the banquet. despite his macho man appearance he's only good when he's writing about women or trannies.

and if you were really not a pleb you would be reading tanizaki or oe.

>>3819321

dash those hopes son. half way through it, long periods of utter tedium punctured by the odd flash of brilliance, but not enough to make up for the rest.

People don't appreciate enough forbidden colors. That book was amazing,

Start with The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, then Sound of the Waves or Temple of the Golden Pavilion. Starting with the Sea of Fertility is a terrible plan.

I personally find Temple of the Golden Pavilion to be his masterpiece. I think its a perfect execution of his aesthetic vision

>>3819623
As a j-lit grad student, I would definitely second these authors. Both are brilliant writers. I also highly recommend Shiba Ryotaro. Not only are his works epic in length, they are highly engaging and easy to read

>>3819662

This. I've read most of Mishima's stuff, and this one still stands out as one of his best. The Sea of Fertility sort of blows hot and cold. I think Runaway Horses in the best of the four, and that the Temple of Dawn is mostly dreadfully boring.

>>3819692
Runaway Horses>Spring Snow>Decay of the Angel>Temple of Dawn

Death in Midsummer is a good place to start. It'll give you a sense of perspective before going into Confessions or the Sea of Fertility which, despite its disastrous publication history in English, really is his magnum opus.

>>3819738
>disastrous publication history in English, really is his magnum opus.

What's the disastrous history?

>>3819708

wow runaway horses was so bad though. makes me not want to finish the tetralogy.

>>3819673

what Shiba should i start with?

>>3819749
It'll seem that way to plebs. Nothing I can do to fix genes.

>>3819755

admittedly the parts where honda is speaking are nice, and the dream about becoming a woman in the end was great, but other than that it was just so bloody tedious. full of thinly veiled homo/nationalist fantasies. and why did that female character only get like 2% of the books attention? she could have made it great, but there was too much homolust and machismo to bother with a real relationship.

I read Confessions of a Mask and The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. I liked them but I didn't think they were exceptional. I think that's due to the fact that a hell of a lot was lost in translation. Otherwise, the stories and characters were pretty enjoyable. I got a weird fixation for Sonoko from Confessions of a Mask and it makes me a feel like a bit of a fag.

I also liked how even though virginity was kind of a big deal in both books, it wasn't portrayed the same exact way that it is now, at least in the US. Dudes did a few years and college and only then worried about fucking someone. Now it seems like if you haven't fucked 20 people and contracted AIDS by age 10, you're an outcast.

>>3819754
There's a short story collection called "Drunk as a Lord," which contains a couple of great historical fiction stories. For a major epic novel, I'd recommend Clouds Above the Hill, which is in the middle of being fully translated (over 2000 pages). It's a novel retelling the Russo-Japanese war

>>3819776

think i'll start with the one that isn't 2000 pages, thanks.

>>3819744
Disastrous was too strong of a word. I was referring to the fact that Donald Keane, who Mishima requested as his sole English translator, only does one (two?) of the volumes.

Ctrl+f
Sun and Steel
0 results

C'mon is that the pleb answer?

No love for The Sound of Waves except:
>>3819670
??

I loved it. Given his tough-guy image I could hardly believe he wrote it.

what's his most indulgent (sexually, not sailor who fell's emotional feminine bullshit), degenerate work? I was disappointed with confessions of a mask, "homosexual and masochistic fantasies... Sex, Beauty, Destiny and Death-- here, in their starkest and most terrifying form" my ass, way to oversell.

>>3819623
>>3819628
Are those real?
Who took those pics?

>>3820174
His coup buddy.

>>3820174
Tamotsu yato

http://5election.com/2011/01/07/tamotsu-yato-%E7%9F%A2%E9%A0%AD%E4%BF%9D-born-of-homoerotic-photography-in-60s-japan/

http://hawkinsology.org/ty/

Photographer friend of Mishima and Donald Richie, was faggot lover of Mishima's publisher/translator, Weatherby. Together they spread homosex and body building across the land. pls answer my question >>3819825 oh j-lit fanatics

sailor who fell from grace with the sea. it's spare, poignant, and perverse.

oh, and for all the people saying Oe but not recommending a place to start--i'd say go with A Personal Matter. It's his best treatment of the retard-child theme and one of his more concise works.

Mask and Golden Pavilion are good separately, but if you read them both it sounds like you're listening to the exact same narrator.

>>3819662
Agreed 100%. Forbidden Colors deserves a lot more attention than it gets. Sad, considering it's one, if not the best, of his novels.

>>3819776
Too bad those books are expensive as fuck if you don't have access to a college library.

I will keep holding out hope that someone will transcribe them into epubs. Someone did it for The Records of the Grand Historian (Sima Qian), so it could happen.

>>3819254
That says The Sea of Fertility.
The Tetralogy.

>>3820922

Er, I know.

>>3820922
He knows dude.

>>3820950
>>He knows, dude
>>,
>>,
>>,

>>3821009
No, I meant that he knows dude.

>>3819623
There are a couple good stories in the Death in Midsummer collection (Patriotism and Onnagata), but most of them verge on the generic.

The order I approached Mishima's work was: The Sailor Who Fell from the Sea, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Confessions of a Mask, Death in Midsummer and Other Stories, and then the Sea of Fertility series. I think it was a good order.

>>3821248

I've only read Spring Snow and The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. Spring Snow is in my top 20 novels.

Personally I didn't really think 'Confessions of a Mask' was one of his more inspired works. Not a bad read by any means, but short and maybe a kind of easy intro.

Or go full bad ass and dive straight into the sea of fertility. You really want those books in order though or you'll miss out on a lot.

>>3819210
A somewhat off-topic question: other than Confessions of a Mask and No Longer Human, are there any other good "I-novels" that have been translated?

>>3821581
Soseki's Kokoro.

>>3821581

The Setting Sun by Dazai
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Mishima
Akutagawa's late autobiographical short stories (Spinning Gears, Fool's Life)

>>3821598
>As the critic Donald Keene wrote, "After reading 'Spinning Gears', we can only marvel that Akutagawa did not kill himself sooner."

Well, I'm sold. Thanks very much.

Ones I've read:

Temple of the Golden Pavillion
Sailor That Fell with Grace
half of Spring Snow

Ones I recommend you read:

Temple of the Golden Pavillion
Sailor That Fell with Grace
all of Spring Snow

>>3821639
Also sun and steel if you can find it

>>3821222
I know dude dude.