Review by Booklist Review
Revered writer of dozens of novels, plays, short stories, and essays Mishima was an iconic master of the performative existence. A literary sensation by 24 for Confessions of a Mask (1949), a semi-autobiographical bildungsroman about a young homosexual's hidden identity, fame would be Mishima's ""normal"" throughout his short life. As model, actor, and filmmaker, he was also intimately familiar with the camera. His 1970 death by ritual suicide at 45 after a failed coup d'etat attempt was a meticulously staged event. Unsurprisingly, performance drives Mishima's protagonist here: on-screen, 23-year-old superstar Rikio is filming a yakuza thriller surrounded by relentless fans; off-screen, he's doubting his very existence, propped up by his older, hardly attractive assistant, who's also his secret lover and partner in this artifice. Written shortly after Mishima himself starred in the yakuza-centered Afraid to Die, his slim novella smoothly translated into English for the first time by prize-winning Sam Bett is a raw, scathing examination of fame: The very thing that makes a star worth watching is the same thing that strikes him from the world at large and makes him an outsider. --Terry Hong Copyright 2019 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Mishima's ethereal 1961 novel, published for the first time in English, showcases the strains of fame on a young movie star. Twenty-three-year-old Rikio Mizuno plays a hardened yakuza in a series of successful films. He has a large, devoted fan base among women egged on by the romantic, wholly fabricated stories from the studio's public relationship department. In his short nights between long, grueling production days, he finds respite and sexual release with his assistant Kayo. She mocks everything, including their differences in age and beauty, the confessional letters of fans, and a desperate, unstable starlet who ambushes a set in an attempt to land a larger role. Rikio shuns all other trappings of a personal life and defends his choices as necessary to remain a star. Mishima is a master of the psychological: he blurs distinctions between Rikio's identity and the characters he plays in disorienting but never jarring transitions between movie scenes and reality. Even decades after its original publication, this nimble novella about the costs and delusions of constant public attention will resonate with readers. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Mishima, the would-be samurai who committed suicide nearly half a century ago, turns to modern pop culture in this sardonic novella.Rikio Mizuno is in his early 20s, but in some ways he's still a child; he needs constant care and feeding and attention, in the way ofwell, a pop star, in this case a budding film idol. Mishima, who had tried his hand at film acting and evidently didn't think much of the experience, opens this slender story on a note of complaint on Mizuno's part: "The fans were relentless. They leaned with all their weight over the rope lines, reaching to get just a little closer to me, cheering and screaming to catch my attention." What's a fellow to do but retreat into the willing arms of his assistant, who isn't so very good-looking, her ankles "like knots in old wood," but who's always on hand? In Mishima's world-weary view, the political power on a film set runs downhill from producer to director to star to supporting actors like snow melting into the sea, the players interchangeable features on a landscape; Mizuno would be disgusted at the sight of those ankles were he able to feel disgust, but, he says, he's abandoned "that sort of reflex to the real world, the world I had forsaken." Mizuno may live in his own world, "all hollow, all faades and make-believe," but the others on the set are grounded enough in the here and now to keep him hoppingthe director, for one, who is a master of filming scenes out of order but with the same set: "When we're tight on time, he has no qualms about burning through shots from completely different sections of the movie." Time, Mizuno learns, is not a star's friend. If Mizuno's problems are of his making, Mishima's stance seems merely ill-tempered, and the weightless story is mercifully brief.A minor work by Mishima, whose Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea and Death in Midsummer remain classics of modernist Japanese literature. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
