Product Description

One of the landmarks of Japanese literature: traditional aesthetics mixed with sado-masochist, coprophilic and homo erogenous fantasies. From the ashes of post-war defeat comes the true face of a tortured psyche trapped in a stiflingly conformist society - Mishima's earliest work and a defining self-portrait. This brand new Peter Owen Modern Classic comes with a new introduction by Paul Binding

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #113731 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-31
• Original language: Japanese
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Times Literary Supplement
'A terrific and astringent beauty . . . a work of art'

Sunday Times
'Never has a "confession" been freer from self-pity and emotional over-indulgence.'

Glasgow Herald
'A lyric masterpiece. Peter Owen is to be congratulated for bringing it back into print.'

Customer Reviews

a fantastic book.
Before reading this book I was told it was 'seriously screwed up, but good.' Not a desciption too far wrong, but nonetheless could be elaborated on.
Confessions of a Mask is an autobiographical novel recounting Mishima's childhood upto about the age of twenty-five. He was born in 1925, so there is ample insight into Japanese life before and during the Second World War. Though Mishima was apathetic in regard to the war, he cared much about it from an individual point of view: for him the war represented the perfect chance to end his life, both heroically and alone.
His private fascinations with death, blood and gore pervade the book, and are inseparable from his suppressed homosexuality. Sexuality is the crux of this work; the book starts with Mishima's sexual awakening, and his surprise at its nature. From then on there is a divide between his private life, and his life in public, at school, with family. On his own he dreams of Saint Sebastian, his heroism and his martydom, yet with his friends he wears a mask, pretending an obsession for women. He takes this facade very seriously, and even engages in a catastrophic affair with one of his friends' sister.
The ending is indefinite. That is, one can't tell if he still maintains a barrier between privacy and publicity. However, throughout the book Mishima always claimed that facade would become reality; it is with the rejection of this theory, and the acceptance of his own sexuality, that the book ends.

Essential Mishima.
This book is a most direct and crisp window onto Mishima's world and along with Sun and Steel represents an essential insight into his life.

The passive past tense of uncertainty
Kamen no kokuhaku is a claustrophobic account of the experiences of a man unable to come to terms with his own desires and identity. It is a powerful work on the stranglehold that conventionality has on personal growth. Kochan, the novel's protagonist reflects Mishima's own troubled personality in this work but this is much more than an autobiographical novel. Kochan's struggle with his homosexual impulses comes about because of his desire to conform to 'social norms.' His failure to accept his own nature has unfortunate consequences not only for his own happiness but that of others, in particular, a friend's sister. Kochan may present an extreme case, being obsessed with bondage and suicide as he is, but we all wear a mask to some extent in our daily lives. This becomes apparent to us when we are unexpectedly confronted with 'contradictions' in our behaviour which varies in different social settings. 'You are who you pretend to be', at least to others. One message from this novel is that if you sacrifice your own nature to social conformity the result is self-destructive behaviour and regret. Kochan is an extreme example, but the suppression of personal feelings for social acceptability is a universal theme which this novel evokes in a compelling fashion. This book is nothing should of a masterpiece.