Born in Tokyo in 1925, Kimitake Hiraoka - better
known by his pen name Yukio Mishima- became a three-time Nobel Prize
nominee and the outstanding Japanese writer of his generation. In his
short career, he produced hundreds of novels, plays, stories and
essays before ending his life spectacularly in a sensational
public protest and ritual suicide in
1970.
(From the foreword to 'Confession of a Mask', as published in U.K. by Grfton Books 1988. First English edition by Peter Owen ltd. 1960). Photos (background included) © Camera Press.
He wrote this novel in 1949. It was published in 1958 in Japan in the final version and in 1960 in the rest of the world. Ten years later (November the 25th 1970), Yukio Mishima kidnapped a General of the Japanese Army inside the Defence Force Facility in Hichigaya and committed seppuku (ritual suicide) in front of him to testify his protest against the loss of tradition in the Japanese Army after the WWII.
Confession of a Mask "tells, in an autobiographical mode, of the sado-sexual obsessions that were to dominate his life and works, beginning with the angry childhood discovery that Joan of Arc was a woman and an erotic fascination with the figure of Saint Sebastian. Here, in their starkest and most terrifying form, are the preoccupations that found their final expressions in Mishima's ritual suicide as an act of political protest at the direction of modern Japanese society."
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"I began turning a page toward the end of a volume. Suddenly there came into view from one corner to the next page a picture that I had to believe had been lying ther for me, for my sake.
It was a reproduction of Guido Reni's 'St. Sebastian', which hangs in the collection of Palazzo Rosso at Genoa.
The black and slightly oblique trunk of the tree of execution was seen against a Titan-like background of gloomy forest and evening sky, somber and distant. A remarkably handsome youth was bound naked to the trunk of the tree. His crossed hands were raised high and the thongs binding his wrist were tied to the tree. No other bonds were visible, and the only covering for the youth nakedness was a coarse white cloth knotted loosely about his loins.
...
That day, the instant I looked upon the picture, my entire being trembled with some pagan joy. My blood soured up; my loins swelled as though in wrath. The monstruous part of me that was on the point of brsting awaited my use of it with unprecented ardor, upbraiding me for my ignorance, panting indignantly. My hands, completely unconsciously, began a motion that they had never been taught.
..."
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