Patriotism (Pearls)
One of the most powerful short stories ever written: Yukio Mishima’s masterpiece about the erotics of patriotism and honor, love and suicide.By now, Yukio Mishima’s (1925-1970) dramatic demise through an act of seppuku after an inflammatory public speech has become the stuff of literary legend....
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One of the most powerful short stories ever written: Yukio Mishima’s masterpiece about the erotics of patriotism and honor, love and suicide.By now, Yukio Mishima’s (1925-1970) dramatic demise through an act of seppuku after an inflammatory public speech has become the stuff of literary legend. With Patriotism, Mishima was able to give his heartwrenching patriotic idealism an immortal vessel. A lieutenant in the Japanese army comes home to his wife and informs her that his closest friends have become mutineers. He and his beautiful loyal wife decide to end their lives together. In unwavering detail Mishima describes Shinji and Reiko making love for the last time and the couple’s seppuku that follows.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780811218542 (0811218546)
Publish date: February 24th 2010
Publisher: New Directions
Pages no: 60
Edition language: English
Category:
Novels,
Literature,
Cultural,
Historical Fiction,
Romance,
Literary Fiction,
Philosophy,
Asian Literature,
Japan,
Short Stories,
Japanese Literature
First things first—the book, the physical book, has some problems: what appears, to me, as occasionally awkward translation and very unfortunate copy-editing. I wanted to get that off my chest each of those problems bugged me right from the beginning. I soldiered on, but the experience of reading wa...
If I'd had to rate this directly after first reading it, in my late teens, I would have been impressed enough to have given it 4 or 5 stars.However, I have since had time to think about the Mishima/samurai/seppuku debacle, and now I'm not so impressed anymore.Besides general issues that I may have w...