the main plotline of this story may not sound very compelling, but this is not the main attraction - what draws you into the story is the way that Mishima is so deft in his character portraits. he give descriptions of things like hand movements and facial expressions in such a subtle way that very early on in the novel you feel as if you intimately know and understand the main characters - so much so that you can see them clearly in your minds eye - not just their appearace, but expressions, feelings, and mannerisms. i think that this is a great strength of mishima's in the novel - in presenting a psychological portrayal of his characters.

After the banquet tells the story of a mature, successful japanese woman who gives up her restaurant business to devote herself to marriage with a politician. a politician you say - how boring - but noguchi is different, he has an honesty and vitality about him -"Why don't we drop all this talk about the old days? We're still young after all."

however the relationship is doomed because of an impotant diference - kazu has had to work very hard to gain success in life, even if it meant acting in an immoral way. her husband, on the other hand, has been born into an easier life; therefore respect and integrity are more important to him than 'commercial' success. this all comes to a head when kazu tries to revive her husbands ailing political career, using methods he cannot approve of.

even if you find the plot incredibly boring, you just HAVE to love Kazu. she's not just successful and streetwise - she can act despicably at times, causing us to wonder if she has any feelings at all. you'd think this would make you hate her, but it does just the opposite because although her behaviour can be devious and manipulative, it is at the same time chidish and has an innocence about it. if you've read Chaucer's Wife of Bath then you'll know wht i mean; somtimes you want to strangle her, at others admire her.
even if yu find yourself really not liking kazu, you have to admire her if only for the fact that she managed to make herself so successful having come from a very poor backround - she is a woman before her time.

i just gotta say one more thing - its very interesting to see hoe kazu and nouchi can both be innocent, but in different ways - noguchi in his trust in so-called 'friends', and kazu in her manipulation of people - although it could be argured this shows qualities that are anything but innocent and childish.

ultimately, kazu has to make a choice; unfortunately, she cannot have the successful career and 'wifey' role at he same time. she must choose between conforming and resisting, between acting in her own or others interests.

i loved the main character of this book,Kazu,who burned with ambition without an outlet until she met and married an elderly politician. She risked everything to help him succeed in office,with disasterous results. Her energy and optimism are an inspiration,especially when placed in the setting of post WW2 Japan.

i always enjoy a novel that leaves me reflecting upon emotions in relation to the cultural setting. this book is wonderful in the way the characters relate and try to grow within the confines of japanese society of the times.

Do you know Noh? If you don't know Noh then you don't know Japanese culture. In these modern Noh plays by the great Yukio Mishima, you can find a deep spiritual meaning. In Japan Noh is a kind of religion. No one undersood the Japanese soul as well as Mishima. The themes reveal his own obsessions, such as his fascination with beauty and death. In Sotoba Komachi, we have the Faustian story of the femme fatale. Works of such classical beauty are a welcome change from bestseller novels like Harry Potter. If you have an interest in the Japanese soul then you missing this book is a no-no.

These plays represent some of the most advanced, haunting and enchanting writing to be found in dramatic literature. A must for anyone involved in the theatre.

Stark and startlingly beautiful, these plays will grace, enchant, mesmerize and haunt you as long as you live. The No play is here proven to be a fully contemporary vehicle for the exploration of abiding existential questions even while tearing your heart out with the beauty of it all

(Before I get into my review of this book, I would like to point out that some of the unheralded treasures in this collection are found in the extra pieces. These include the prefaces written by Bataille for "Madame Edwarda" and the "Dead Man", and two critical essays, one of which was written by another equally intriguing author, Yukio Mishima, who wrote The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea and The Sound of Waves, among other things. The information in these pieces is quite helpful in understanding the philosophy and intent of Bataille's three short stories, and also serves as a great springboard to his other writings. I would also like to mention that I stumbled upon Bataille through the movie "Before Sunrise" - this was the book she was reading on the train - so if you like this book, you might like that movie.)
To start my review, I would like to say that the previous reviewer appears to have understood the broad strokes of Bataille's writing, but failed to see the finer points of it. Their descriptions are accurate, but the conclusions they draw seem to be results of their own moralizing and do not necessarily reflect the basic themes of the stories.
For example, while "My Mother" is a study of the mother's search for destruction and the influence of this on her son (as mygotta has pointed out) it is not a moralistic fable revealing the inevitable pitfalls of a profligate life. This kind of puritanical idea in regards to human sexuality is completely antithetical to the philosphy Bataille espoused in this and other texts. In the case of "My Mother," the libertine lifestyle and sexual openness of the characters is not the result of a slow, fatalistic slumping towards the gutter, but rather is a quest for transcendence through intense experience, especially sexual experience. This attitude is revealed, for example, when the mother writes to her son, telling him that, "I have absolutely no interest in this world where they scratch about, patiently waiting for death to enlighten them. As for me, it is the wind of death that sustains the life in me," or when the son realizes that, "Again and again during those interminable days of my solitude and of my sinfulness I would stiffen as though from an electric shock when the thought thrilled through me that my mother's crime elevated her into God, in the very way in which terror and the vertiginous idea of God became identified. And, wanting to find God, I wanted to burrow down and cover myself with mud, so as not to be more unworthy of Him than my mother." The juxtaposing of base sensuality with divinity, and the constant invocation of taboos in this story are interwoven with what seems to be an ultimate moral ambiguity. And these themes are continued in the other two stories as well.
Bataille's writing is terrific stuff if you can handle its pornographic imagery and blasphemous intonations. His stories and essays question not only the foundations of religion, morality and social norms, but also the fabric of reality itself. This stuff is not just well-written erotica: it is profound and provocative philosophy .

Sometimes erotic, other time incestial, and more times than not this book is shocking and curious. The narratives of a boy, Pierre, and his minglings with his mothers reckless lifestyle. The book is a study of a mothers destruction after she was raped at a young age. It is also a study of the contradictions of the hedonic world how it creates problems and destroys rather than forgets. Its not always a passive life. Pierre learns about this and we see how it hampers his psyche into being passivle controlled, not just by mother, but by women in general. The lack of the father figure, and the hatred towards him allowed him to feel worthless. The second and third story, Madame Edwards and Dead Man are shorter variations on the same theme. A different type of storytelling than I am used to reading, nonetheless I found it completely intriguing (despite at times I did yawn). Once you read this, it will be one of those books that you will remember.

Yukio Mishima has written a strange and disquieting novel concerning a bitter old man who uses a beautiful youth as a narcisstic cold conqueror of the woman who left him. In turn, this 'cold conqueror' becomes so enamored with himself that he gets caught up in a web of sexual duality. This would be an ideal film project for controversial Japanese director Nagisa Oshima. For those not offended by a rather lurid study of bisexuality and revenge.

A work of utter splendor, Spring Snow is the first installment of Yukio Mishima's magnificent tetralogy.

I read the 4 books as in a trance in the fleeting light of a long gone summer. And like Mishima, finishing the Sea of Fertility made me feel as if it were the end of the world.

Shatteringly beautiful, lined with infinite grace, agonizingly moving, Mishima's last work is perhaps the crowning achievement of 20th century world literature.

Mishima has the ability to get underneath the skin of his readers. What seems like an innocent and harmless story of adolescence gradually becomes one of fundamental importance. In my view, this is the most brilliant of the three Mishima novels I have read. It is a masterpiece which leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. None of Mishima's characters seem happy and even the 'heroes' are ambiguous, despite the fact that many of them are perfect in physical terms. We have to judge the character for ourselves without help, rather like a film without background music. There is a strong homo-erotic undercurrent in Mishima's work, even though the central relationship in this novel is heterosexual. The focal character, Kiyoaki, seems to be massochistic and derives a form of pleasure from his own destruction.

I would strongly recommend anyone who is interested in the complexities of relationships and the specific cultural life of Japan to read this novel. Above all, it should be read for the intricacy and skill of its literature.

This work is mesmerizing - so much so that I read it instead of studying for the Bar exam. It is not a fast read by any stretch of the imagination but it is difficult to put down once you are drawn into the world Mishima draws. It took me two attempts to get past the first twenty pages but four years later it is the last book I read which had the potential to transform. I also confess that the novel is confusing and I don't believe that I understand the subtle dream world that Mishima writes of on a conscious or intellectual level. But the novel is haunting and presents a story of love (not, I believe, the one that is portrayed on the novel's surface) in such indescribable complexity and depth that the novel is felt in and remains in the heart of the reader who will walk away from the novel with a profound sadness. The novel is one of the few worth the effort of reading. And the title, a beautiful image, is a perfect recapitulation of the work.

Given the other reviews, this seems a dissenting opinion, but Mishima's "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion" was a pretty laborious read. I read the entire book out loud to an audience and found myself wishing it would come to an end.

All apologies to those who liked this book. I respect that, but the problem for me came in the amount of endless introspection that overflows the pages of "The Golden Pavilion." I don't mind some philosophical pandering in my literature and thoroughly enjoy it when it's done with the uniqueness of Don DeLillo or Milan Kundera. But here, Mishima takes whatever plot is involved in this tale of a temple student gone awry in the face of foreign influence, loss of values, poverty, and psychosis and sucks the life blood right out the marrow of it. This leaves the book with no skeletal structure, no bones, just a big lethargic mushy mass of meandering thoughts and not even well-worded or unique ones at that.

Here's what I mean, we get no less than 5 pages of a bee landing on a Chrysanthemum...somebody help me please. We get laboriously repetitive words (not sure if that's the translators fault or Mishima's) with a mention of the character's Kashiwagi's clubfoot about every other sentence. We get 7 counts of the use of the word, "adumbration" in one paragraph...7 mind you. Who uses the word "adumbration", much less 7 times in a paragraph, 3 in one sentence? Don't get me started.

Not a detail goes by without Mishima turning it over in the character's mind endlessly until we are no longer remotely interested. It's your typical boy loves temple, temple is too beautiful, boy must destroy temple sort of story. And where the plot starts moving along towards the end, Mishima interjects some inane meandering ethereal philosophy that seems to lead nowhere, just to kill the momentum.

On page 255 there's the line, "I was overcome by intense weariness." So true, so true. That's how this book grabbed me through and through.

I reckon The Temple of the Golden Pavilion to be one of the best novels of Mishima. This book is therefore quite something since Mishima in my opinion is one of the best writers of the 20th century. The protagonist is Mizoguchi a shy boy with a speaking problem(or has he problem speaking?). Mizoguchi is mentally and phisically overwhelmed by the building of the Golden Pavilion to such an extent, that it leads to disastrous consequences. If you want to read a great book by one of Japanese finest writers try this one.

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion is a book that stayed with me since I first read it, and in particular certain lines by Mizoguchi and Kashiwagi, two of the principal characters, are often so perfect in describing the events of life that I am again filled with admiration for Mishima's incredible philospohical and literary skills. The thing about Mishima, though, is that his protagonist will almost invariably be a young, introspective male - of course, this is a mirror image of Mishima himelf. I am reading "Confessions of a Mask", his "coming-out" autobiography right now, and it brought me back to thinking about the "Temple"; "Confessions" was one of his earliest books and it certainly set the stage for a work like "Temple" to come. It's clear from the autobiography that the themes of beauty (in particular masculine beauty), death, and war are Mishima's obsessions. Of the four Mishima novels i've read (Sound of Waves, Thirst for Love, Spring Snow, and the TOFTGP), some of these themes are always present. In every novel, too, he is using a different approach to them; in the Golden Temple, there is a heightened awareness of sprirituality and beauty of divine origin, i.e. the Golden Temple itself, the object of the acolyte Mizoguchi's obsession, which progressively takes over his life. ("Did I possess the Golden Temple, or was I possessed by it?")
It is hard to imagine Mishima's characters - like the stuttering teenage acolyte Mizoguchi of The Temple, with his keen aestheticism or his crippled friend Kashiwagi with his brilliant philospophical insights - in real life, whether it be Japan or any other country. Mishima's works, even his autobiography, are all surreal in nature. The "Temple" very effectively built up such an aura around the actual Golden Templein Kyoto that when I later saw a picture of it (it has been rebuilt since its destruction described in the book) I was very disappointed by its real image. It is certainly a beautiful building, but to me is not mysterious or hypnotic like it is to Mizoguchi. It is not alive, and certainly doesn't look like it can manipulate the hearts and minds of people, as it did with Mizoguchi. In general, Mishima's works, as was he - seem otherworldly. If this appeals to you, then his books, and this one in particular, will be unforgettable. Mishima's gift for beautiful, descriptive prose and powerful analogies shines through Ivan Morris's excellent translation. If you have never read a Mishima book, and are looking forward to a hypnotic/intellectual journey, "The Temple" is a great book to start with.
Also, the Everyman's Libraby edition is very good, with historical notes, an introduction by Donald Keene, thick paper and a built-in bookmark. Get it over the others.

A lot of this was pretty confusing too understand but he wrote one really great story dealing with Buddhism.He definitely has a gift for details and dialouge.

A friend recommended Mishima to me, and this was the book I picked up. First, to respond to a reviewer below, this book (at least my copy) has no introduction, no preface, no afterward, and has numerous translators. The stories were selected by Mishima himself, and the book was published in New York. Reading any "leftist" intentions on the part of the publishers of this book, then, is certainly very strange, unless it was gleaned from the three paragraph synopsis on the back.

That having been said, I was immensley impressed by this book. After the first three stories ("Death in Midsummer", "Three Million Yen", and "Thermos Bottle") I was ready to admit the genius of the author. The title story is abridged, and the translation on all three is awkward -- I don't know a bit of Japanese, but the English itself lacked lucidity and had some confused grammar. Nevertheless, there's a remarkable detail to the deliniation of character, a mesmorizing lyrical style, and a powerful look into the psychology of man when confronted with tragic and absurd circumstances. The stories, also, are brilliantly subtle satires of middle class values. The author clearly intends to show the decline in the Japanese character as a result of Westernization and modernization. At some points it hints at leftist values -- a dislike of the bourgeois, a sympathy for the poor, etc. But Mishima's strange and anachronistic political beliefs show us that his work is best read as insight into the identity crisis facing modern Japan, and not as leftist, or even entirely rightist. (I read, while glancing through a biography of the author, a statement he made after speaking to a group of leftist students. He said something to the effect of "We shared a friendship and an understanding, embracing through a barbed fence...")

As much as I appreciated the first three stories, however, I found the rest of the book to be much better, revealing an incredible diversity of style and theme. "The Priest and His Love" is a beautiful Buddhist fable exploring the paradox and power of beauty and sensuality. The style of writing reminded me a lot of Pär Lagerkvist. "Patriotism" caught me completely off-guard, and undoubtedly represents the greatest work in the book. Its the story of an officer who commits seppuku (ritual suicide) and his wife, who follows. With great fluidity and poetic grace, Mishima describes their final night together, then, in a frustratingly objective prose, describes the morbid end of the two. Violence and sensuality are tied in with finality, duty and beauty. Mishima was an aesthete, but of the rarest kind -- much in the spirit of Poe, perhaps. The story had an enormous impact of me.

"Dojoji," auspiciously set after "Patriotism," is one of Mishima's Noh plays, and shifts entirely to the languid, allegorical style that characterizes the Noh (contrasted by the turbulent, grotesque realism of the previous story). The play is about the auction of a giant wardrobe that has a gruesome past. Mishima's attempt to reinvigorate the tired Noh theatre was a noble effort, and (in my opinion) a successful one. The spiritual quality of the theatre proves a profound vehicle to the pessimism and spiritual despondency that characterizes modern literature and thought. After reading this play, I went out immediately and found a copy of "Five No Plays by Mishima" which I very much look forward to reading. The next story, "Onnagata," deliberately takes us to the other side of Japanese theatre, the kabuki. Its a homoerotic tale of obsession and infatuation, and a love triangle between three men (or rather, two men and an onnagata -- a man who plays, or rather lives, as a woman in kabuki theatre). One man seeks the elusive love of a famed onnagata by joining the kabuki theatre. The onnagata, for Mishima, is "the illicit child born of a marriage between dream and reality." As infatuation drives him further and further into the world of the kabuki, it has the strange effect of driving him further and further away from the onnagata's love, who, in the end, falls in love with a pretentious young guest director who knows nothing of the kabuki.

"The Pearl" completely surprised me. Of all things, its a social comedy, the type I had suspected, from reading the other stories, that the author was incapable of. To my delight, I was proved wrong. Again poking tremendous fun at the middle class, the story is about five middle aged women, and a lost pearl and a silly mischevious act that explodes into a tale of deciet, head games, and irony.

After reading this, I am a confirmed Mishima fan. It has also excited me into exploring contemporary Japanese literature. Very highly recommended!

The writer is great, his book is great. But the publisher of this edition is NOT great or even mediocre. W.W. Norton AKA New Directions is a trendy San Francisco based publisher that needs to cut back on their own morbid, introspective, over-edited, leftist interpretations. I'm not interested in the phobias and insecurities of such people. They need to relax and understand that whatever personal choices they make have little impact on the world at large. As opposed to the confined quarters of the coffee house or similar yuppie agora.

"Patriotism" is a story by Yukio Mishima, and has been translated into English by Geoffrey W. Sargent. This is a short book (57 pages), but powerful. The story, which takes place in 1936, opens by announcing that Lieutenant Shinji Takeyama, a Japanese army officer, has committed ritual suicide together with his wife Reiko. "Patriotism" tells of the days leading up to and including the double suicide.

This is a simple story, but in its simplicity lies great artistry. Mishima's prose, as interpreted by Sargent, is striking, vivid, and ultimately quite beautiful. "Patriotism" is a tragic love story that is rich in eroticism. The graphic, violent details will, I imagine, shock and even disgust some readers, but I found this story to be ultimately a haunting, and strangely compassionate, work of art.

My short story class was assigned to read "Patriotism," and I was so thankful because now I've been introduced to yet another fantastic writer.

Yes, maybe the idea of a wife following her husband in suicide out of honor and devotion seems preposterous today, but the way it was written was so undeniably beautiful. Mishima writes in a way that makes the reader completely understand why his characters do what they do. No one could argue that the whole act was utterly noble and selfless. The descriptions of the love and mutual respect in Shinji's and Reiko's marriage was heavenly, almost unreal--yet its rarity doesn't make the reader laugh. Again, it was written so that one is convinced that this is a marriage exemplifying the "harmony" we all seek between two people.

Basically I was in awe of the descriptions in this story--such beautiful, powerful imagery in the lovemaking scene, as well as the final act of death. Mishima fills his phrases with so much emotion, that as Shinji's end drew near, I was literally brought to tears.

Part of the beauty in this story was in the translation. I'll bet that Sargeant probably best captured the essence of Mishima's words more than anyone could. I've heard that there are some pretty bad translations of foreign work so I think it's safe to say that Sargeant would be the translator to look for when reading Mishima's work.

Though this story was set in the 30s, Mishima wrote it in 1966. I wonder what inspired him to write it. I don't know what was going on politically in Japan in the 60s. Perhaps the political turmoil in the United States may have affected Japan's psyche. Either way, what surprises me even more is the fact that this story was written so late in the 20th Century!

I highly recommend "Patriotism." It's a wonderful illustration of devotion in its many forms. I loved it, and now I'm going to read other stories by this author!

"Patriotism," a short story by one of the 20th century's most talented and notorious authors, cannot be adequately described within the constraints of language. It has a raw power that, like all of Mishima's works, is profoundly delicate in construction and exquisite in tempo.

The plot of "Patriotism" is simple enough -- it is, in fact, unimportant. An officer in the Japanese military is given orders to disrupt a renegade political group that he happens to hold allegiance to. What else does one do in such a quandry (particularly a character of Mishima) than commit seppuku? The bulk of "Patriotism" is the last night that this officer and his wife spend together before they both commit ritual suicide. What sets "Patriotism" apart from virtually all other literature is its portrayal of a couple's last night and their gruesome, graphic, horrific deaths in glorious and ecstatic terms.

Many writers are capable of vividly depicting a scene of death and horror, and this story is more disgusting and graphic than anything I've read in Stephen King. But the literal description of what happens has an unpredictable and unbelievable impact in this story, where one man's act of disemboweling himself is described in the most ecstatic terms. It was that juxtaposition of glory and death that made me nearly double over when I'd finished. "Patriotism" is not for the weak heart nor the weak stomach, but in 50 pages or so it creates an effect you are not likely to see executed so well elsewhere.

...get away with it. Hmm...when I heard the argument of the story, about the house of the sleeping beauties (if you still don't know it read the reviews below), I was seduced by it, I thought it had a lot of potential, and that it could be something really good, refreshing and erotic. The result was not that far from my expectations, but didn't reach them either. The story is very predictable, offers no surprises, a little dull. The best part are Kawabata's descriptions on the female anatomy of the sleeping beauties, from the point of view of the main character, and old man who feels old, but still young enough to be embarrassed to attend such place. As I said, don't expect surprises, the best attitude to approach the book is to try to enjoy the author's descriptions. Don't expect much from the plot, nothing really happens. The other stories are alright, but not much more honestly.

Enjoyable, but you won't miss much. Maybe I set my expectations to high because Yasunari Kawabata is a Nobel prize.

Every time I enter the realm of magical realism I feel as though there's no going back. The intense and sometimes disturbing descriptions in the stories make you think and reflect on the surrealism and powerful message behind the writing. Having read House of the Sleeping Beauties, I realize that no other category of literature is as profound as this one. I love all of the stories in this book, especially "One Arm." This incredible and strange story awed me. There is a recurring theme in the stories: men's perverse obsession with women, particularly young girls. The message is very ambiguous, which means that you have to read between the lines in order to grasp the meaning. Yasunari Kawabata's work is very similar to Banana Yoshimoto's. These Japanese authors write stories filled with interesting language and mystical messages. I strongly suggest that you read this!

This is one of the most elegantly written stories in and outside of Japanese Literature. Kawabta's writing style is so subtle and enticing, it doesn't matter if you are completely turned off by his subject matter, you'll still want to read to the very end. Fortunately for this book, as well as the majority of his other works, that is far from the case. This tale of an old man, who avoids comming to terms with his aging by spends nights at a brothel with young girls put on heavy sleeping medicine, examines the dark truth of loneliness and self-loathing. It is a metaphor for what every person fears in the inevitability of aging, and with Kawabata's unique form, it is a 5 star novella.

Mishima's sadomasochistic homosexuality asserted itself early. While still a tiny child he responded instantly to certain kinds of masculine beauty and found a mysterious fascination in images and narratives of heroic men being tortured and, ideally, killed. The supreme example was a picture of the martyred St. Sebastian, bound and riddled with arrows, which the child Mishima experienced as the world's heaviest turn-on. Naive as he was, the young author still knew somehow that his interests were unusual and disgraceful, so he kept them secret. The story of his early inner life, with its crushes and fantasies, takes up the first half or so of the book and is fascinating.
But then, during young manhood, Mishima tries to become "normal" and fall in love with a girl. Though he likes her very much, he isn't attracted to her physically. The story of this doomed relationship takes up the second half of the book. Being more or less devoid of incident, and (obviously) lacking in erotic passion, it's much less interesting than the foregoing chapters.
Confessions of a Mask ends disappointingly but the earlier section of the book gives a candid, moving, and memorable account of a child's confused and troubled emerging sexuality.

As a student of the history of homosexuality, Yukio Mishima's Confessions of a Mask is one of the seminal pieces of twentieth century gay literature and a wonderful primary source for historians. It is also an easy read and incredibly insightful and powerful book. I highly recommend it.

I've never been much a reader of Mishima. The only books of his that I had red before this one were Death in Midsummer and The Sound of Waves, and although I enjoyed reading both of those books they did not impact me as much as say reading the works of Tanizaki. That however was until I read this book. Not having read one of Mishima's biographies but knowing that he had homosexual tendecies I can not say if this book is semi-autobiographical or not, however, if it is it gives the reader a glimpose at his internal demons. The book seems to be more of a memoir than anything else. The writer speaks of his early years and his emerging homosexuality. It is quite moving in some parts because he depicts his inner struggles in good detail. However, his desires are also quite disturbing because of the way he self gratifies himself. he does not think of intercourse, but of inflicting wounds. Criteria of fantasy include stomach muscles that would look good with blood flowing down them. an interesting book.