![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/2869225.jpg\")
<\/a>A Japanese edition of Kinkakuji (The Temple of the Golden Pavilion) by Mishima Yukio. (\u00a9\u00a0Shinch\u014dsha)<\/p>\n
Mishima Yukio<\/a> (1925\u201370) was 24 years old and an employee at the Ministry of Finance in 1949, when he burst on to the literary scene with his semiautobiographical novel Confessions of a Mask. With The Sound of Waves (1954), he became a bestselling author. His next major work\u2014The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (1956), which takes inspiration from the real-life burning of the pavilion at the Kyoto temple of Kinkakuji\u2014is a daring attempt to tear down traditional ideas of beauty in Japan.<\/p>\n The main character Mizoguchi was born on a lonely cape projecting into the Sea of Japan. From an early age, his father, the priest of a temple on the cape, tells him that there is nothing on this earth so beautiful as Kinkakuji. Mizoguchi has a stutter and an inferiority complex about his appearance, so other children laugh at him and he becomes withdrawn.<\/p>\n Mizoguchi\u2019s father entrusts the boy\u2019s future to the head priest of Kinkakuji, with whom he had studied before entering the priesthood. After his father dies in the later stages of World War II, Mizoguchi follows his wishes and becomes an acolyte at the temple. While its overwhelming beauty comes to capture his heart, his emotions are complex, combining hatred with his longstanding adulation. He becomes ecstatic with visions of the temple consumed by flames in a firebombing raid.<\/p>\n Beauty and destruction are two sides of the same coin. But Kyoto is spared firebombing and the temple does not burn. \u201cNever had the temple displayed so hard a beauty\u2014a beauty that transcended my own image, yes, that transcended the entire world of reality, a beauty that bore no relation to any form of evanescence,\u201d Mizoguchi thinks in astonishment after the announcement of Japan\u2019s surrender (taken from the translation by Ivan Morris).<\/p>\n Mizoguchi becomes a priest and studies at a Buddhist university, but starts to run wild. He distances himself from the head priest who has been looking out for him, and speeds toward catastrophe, obsessed by the thought, \u201cI must set fire to the Golden Temple.\u201d<\/p>\n In 1970, Mishima killed himself by seppuku amid a botched attempt to instigate a coup. There is a scene where Mizoguchi says, \u201cKnowledge can never transform the world . . . What transforms the world is action.\u201d What question was Mishima trying to ask through his depiction of beauty?<\/p>\n
Season of Violence by Ishihara Shintar\u014d<\/p>\n The Korean War broke out in June 1950, and even as Japan regained its independence from occupation in the San Francisco Peace Treaty in September the following year, the Cold War was intensifying. In 1960, Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke signed the Japan-US Security Treaty, sparking mass protests that drew in young people.<\/p>\n Around this time of volatile politics, Ishihara Shintar\u014d (1932\u20132022), while still a student at Hitotsubashi University, shot to fame with the publication of the novella Season of Violence (1955), which shocked Japanese society as an \u201cimmoral\u201d work that shattered the values of the day. While it drew mixed reactions, the story was chosen as the winner of the Akutagawa Prize, making Ishihara the youngest recipient of the award. The Japanese title literally means \u201cseason of the sun,\u201d and the story became associated with a subculture of rebellious young people called the \u201csun tribe.\u201d<\/p>\n The main character, Tatsuya, is a high school student who spends his days boxing and sailing. He is preoccupied by women, deals, fighting, and intimidation. He has people he spends time with, but his relationships are calculated and he does not believe in friendship.<\/p>\n Tatsuya\u2019s girlfriend is called Eiko, but she means nothing to him. He thinks that love is not a lasting emotion, but just something that burns during physical passion. Throughout, Tatsuya lives his life as a rebel, acting only for the moment. Ishihara writes of how the young people detest adult morals and think of virtue as dreary and boring.<\/p>\n What are they seeking from the era? After Tatsuya gets Eiko pregnant, the work builds to an ending that expresses Ishihara\u2019s macho attitudes.<\/p>\n
The Age of Our Own by \u014ce Kenzabur\u014d<\/p>\n Another early starter, \u014ce Kenzabur\u014d (1935\u20132023) made his literary debut while studying French literature at the University of Tokyo. He was still just 23 years old when he started writing Warera no jidai (as yet, it has not been translated into English, but the film adaptation has the English title The Age of Our Own). This wild work, with the freshness of youth, deliberately incorporated extreme sexual expressions and violent descriptions, and it was met with a scathing reception from the literary establishment.<\/p>\n Five years later, when it appeared in paperback, \u014ce wrote of how deeply he loved the novel, and that he was the only person who could write it. \u014ce would go on to win the Nobel Prize in 1994, and among his creative output, this work is an unpolished gem.<\/p>\n It tells the story of two brothers in parallel. Yasuo is a French literature student at university who lives with a middle-aged prostitute called Yoriko who caters to foreign clients. Although he is weary of his sex life with her, with no future prospects, he resigns himself to the situation.<\/p>\n His one faint hope is that if he can win an essay contest that he entered\u2014then he will have the chance to study in France for three years. If he escapes from Japan, he will be able to break up with Yoriko and start a new way of life.<\/p>\n His 16-year-old brother Shigeru is the pianist for a jazz trio called the Unlucky Young Men, alongside the 16-year-old clarinetist K\u014dji and the drummer K\u014d, a 20-year-old ethnic Korean who has returned from the Korean War. The young musicians perform at underground clubs, seeking excitement and pursuing hedonism.<\/p>\n By chance, they get involved in a demonstration by a right-wing group and catch sight of the emperor in his motorcade. They want to shock this \u201cquiet man\u201d who, for them, symbolizes exhaustion and weakness. Based on this motivation alone, they plan to throw a hand grenade\u2014which K\u014d has been hiding\u2014in front of the motorcade.<\/p>\n \u014ce writes that \u201cthere was no future for young people in Japan.\u201d but seems to long for his characters to overturn the status quo. He asks whether escapism is all that is left for them.<\/p>\n Yasuo\u2019s and Shigeru\u2019s choices lead them to their respective fates. This powerful work depicts the life of young people of the era in a way that is quite different from Ishihara\u2019s novella.<\/p>\n The Woman in the Dunes by Abe K\u014db\u014d<\/p>\n Abe K\u014db\u014d<\/a> (1924\u201393) was born in Tokyo, but raised in Manchuria, where his doctor father worked. He studied medicine at Tokyo Imperial University, but although he graduated following the end of World War II, he did not himself become a doctor, instead pursuing literary activities. He won the Akutagawa Prize for \u201cThe Crime of S. Karma,\u201d the opening story in his 1951 collection The Wall. While he focused on writing plays in the early days, the 1962 novel The Woman in the Dunes became one of his best-known works.<\/p>\n \u201cOne day in August a man disappeared.\u201d In the book\u2019s opening, we hear of how a man had set out for the seashore to collect specimens of insects living in the sand dunes. If he discovered a new variety, his name would be immortalized in books alongside the Latin name of the insect that he found.<\/p>\n However, the man falls victim to the designs of local villagers and is trapped in a dilapidated house at the bottom of a hole; it is 20 meters up to ground level, but the rope ladder has been taken away. An uncommunicative woman lives in the house and each night she silently shovels up sand. The villagers lower a basket from above, into which the woman puts kerosene cans packed with sand.<\/p>\n The sand flows into the hole like a living creature. If it is left uncleared, the man and woman will be buried alive\u2014the sand could even swallow the village. The woman cannot handle the work alone, which is why the man was shut in with her to assist with her task.<\/p>\n A hellish life begins. When the man tries to climb out of the hole, his feet sink into the soft sand. He is in anguish, but he takes on the mindless labor of shoveling in exchange for food and water. There is a superb scene of attempted escape. What will happen to the man in the end?<\/p>\n While the novel is a fantastic, bizarre fable, it has a convincing universality. In the real world, we are unable to break free from lives shackled to the thinking of our day. Is our only option to compromise and cling on to hope? The Woman in the Dunes has now become part of world literature, with translations into more than 20 languages. After Abe\u2019s death, it emerged that he had been considered as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature.<\/p>\n
Tokyo Express by Matsumoto Seich\u014d<\/p>\n
\nKinkakuji is translated as The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Ivan Morris.
\nKamen no kokuhaku is translated as Confessions of a Mask by Meredith Weatherby.
\nShiosai is translated as The Sound of Waves by Meredith Weatherby.
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A Japanese edition of Taiy\u014d no kisetsu (Season of Violence), a collection including the title story by Ishihara Shintar\u014d. (\u00a9\u00a0Shinch\u014dsha)<\/p>\n
\nTaiy\u014d no kisetsu is translated as Season of Violence by John G. Mills, Toshie Takahama, and Ken Tremayne.
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A Japanese edition of Warera no jidai by \u014ce Kenzabur\u014d. (\u00a9\u00a0Shinch\u014dsha)<\/p>\n<\/a>
A Japanese edition of Suna no onna (The Woman in the Dunes) by Abe K\u014db\u014d. (\u00a9\u00a0Shinch\u014dsha)<\/p>\n
\nSuna no onna is translated as The Woman in the Dunes by Dale Saunders.
\n\u201cS. Karuma shi no hanzai,\u201d from Kabe (The Wall), is translated as \u201cThe Crime of S. Karma\u201d in the collection Beyond the Curve by Juliet Winters Carpenter.
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