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Yukio Mishima was born into a samurai family and imbued with the code of complete control over mind and body, and loyalty to the Emperor - the same code that produced the austerity and self-sacrifice of Zen. He wrote countless stories and thirty-three plays, in some of which he performed. Several films have been made from his novels, including The Sound of Waves, Enjo which was based on The Temple of the Golden Pavilion and The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea. Among his other works are the novels Confessions of a Mask and Thirst for Love and the short story collections Death in Midsummer and Acts of Worship. The Sea of Fertility tetralogy, however, is his masterpiece. After Mishima conceived the idea of The Sea of Fertility in 1964, he frequently said he would die when it was completed. On 25 November 1970, the day he completed The Decay of the Angel, the last novel of the cycle, Mishima committed seppuku (ritual suicide) at the age of forty-five. The Sea of Fertility tetralogy, however, is his masterpiece. After Mishima conceived the idea of The Sea of Fertility in 1964, he frequently said he would die when it was completed. On November 25th, 1970, the day he completed The Decay of the Angel, the last novel of the cycle, Mishima committed seppuku (ritual suicide) at the age of 45.
In this final part of Mishima's tetralogy, Honda has become a rich old lawyer sustained by his lesbian friend Keiko, whose shallow dabbling in Japanese antiquity Mishima mocks as a failure to reach the dark blood spring of the empire's roots. Honda is impotent from beginning to end, though he finds spasms of joy in control - one of Mishima's preoccupations - of a young man, Toru, who Honda thinks may be one of the chosen, a tribe of beautiful and fierce people mystically marked to die at 20. Instead of dying, Tom becomes blind and inert; Honda finds an eerie extinction in an abbey. A lore of angels - sentient, superior, but mortal beings - permeates the book, along with Mishima's cult of the body and muted throughts about suicide. Toru's inhumanity and utter selfishness is what draws Honda to him: a workerless factory, polished to a perfection of utter bleakness, Honda's mature self-awareness in juvenile form. Mishima killed himself in 1970 at the age of 45, the morning he wrote the last word of this book. The title of the tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility, betokens the dead sea of the moon, said Mishima, and superimposes the image of cosmic nihilism. Fastidiously, distantly written, conscious of its atmosphere of evil, the book ends with a device, as the abbess tells Honda that perhaps sixty years of his life did not exist. A better key to Mishima is found in the young man's diary - I have put together a delicate machine for feeling how it would be if I were to feel like a human being. (Kirkus Reviews)
