confessions of a mask

Confession of a Mask by Yukio Mishima (New Directions, 1958)

Mishima’s novel/memoir about growing up in war-time (and post-) Japan.  A boy with a sickly constitution, the young Mishima lives with, and is cared for by, his doting , and often ailing, grandmother.  As a child, he develops an obsession with images of the tortured St. Sebastian, and in this way discovers his erotic fascination with male bodies and pain/blood/violence.  Mishima is brutally honest about his disturbing fantasies, which involve the bondage and bloody torture of nubile young men (ephebes).  At the same time, he chronicles his hopeless and desperate attempt to fall in love with a friend’s sweet and pretty sister, in an effort to achieve (at least the semblance of) normalcy.

Mishima’s writing is packed with similes and metaphors and is sometimes opaque, but that may be a result of the translation.  This is an unusual and disturbing book, but something about the narrator (or the narrative voice) kept me feeling distanced and unsympathetic.  But if nothing else, Confessions of a Mask is a vivid portrait of Japan during, and immediately after, WWII.