Product Description

The second book in Mishima's landmark "The Sea of Fertility" sequence, this is the chronicle of a conspiracy, a novel about the roots and nature of Japanese fanaticism in the years that led to war.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #209140 in Books
• Published on: 1999-03-11
• Original language: Japanese
• Binding: Paperback
• 421 pages

From the Back Cover
"The Sea of Fertility is a literary legacy on the scale of Proust's" National Review

Runaway Horses is the chronicle of a conspiracy, a novel about the roots and nature of Japanese fanaticism in the years that led to war - an era marked by depression, the upheaval of radical social change, political violence and assassination.

Isao, the driven hero, is a young, engaging patriot-fanatic. His father, a corrupt and temporising spouter of nationalist pieties, instils in him the ancient samurai ethos. In its service Isao organises a violent plot against the new industrialists who he believes are usurping the Emperor's rightful power and threatening the very integrity of Japan. As the conspiracy unfolds - and ultimately unravels - Mishima brilliantly dramatises the conflicts of a decade that saw the fabric of Japanese life torn apart.

Customer Reviews

The template of a long held dream ...
This is my favourite book ... not just of those produced by Mishima , but of all authors . As a Westerner , I can only guess as to the workings of the great man's mind , but to me , I humbly submit that in both this title , and the excellent " Forbidden Colours " , there is the baring of a haunted man's soul , and fantasy ... his disgust with himself at being born too late , for which he never forgave himself . The story stripped down to its most basic premise , is almost one of " if you want something doing , then you must do it yourself " , whatever the obstacles ... the story exposes the chasm between the rhetoric of revolution , and the actions required to actually accomplish it . Isao is betrayed by all of those who purport to , and maybe do , love him ... but honour and truth are causes beyond simple human emotions . If you are not moved by the account of the exploits of the " League of the Divine Wind " , then you are , or might as well be , already dead . I can only hope that any other reader draws at least a fraction of the inspiration that this book has given me ... or , in truth , burdened me with . Please read it ...

The key to Mishima's quartet
For a student of the Mishima phenomenon, the second volume in his tetralogy is interesting in the extreme. The protagonist of "Spring Snow", Kiyoaki Matsugae, is reincarnated as the son of his tutor, Iinuma. The young Isao is the converse of the effete, introspective Kiyoaki. He is consumed by a ferocious, impatient physicality which finds expression in kendo and in his devotion to ultra right-wing patriotism. Isao comes to the notice of Prince Toin, a member of the imperial family, and of a hot-headed army officer who, for a while at least, goes along with the naive dream of a kamikaze coup: for Isao's ambition is to see the Emperor restored as the spiritual leader of a martial Japan.

Isao's idealism is rendered in intense, homoerotic detail. He is perhaps what Mishima most yearned to be -- an anti-intellectual, motivated by love of the Emperor. Above all, Isao dies young. His suicide is a compressed version of that of the young soldier in Mishima's short story (or, rather, masturbation fantasy), "Patriotism", a lascivious account of seppuku.

Mishima's version of Japan in the 1930s reads suspiciously like the turbulent, westernizing sixties, during which he assembled his corps of fascist dimwits and body-builders. This private army had less to do with politics than the author's own, increasingly deranged, exhibitionism: culminating, of course, in his bizarre and very public demise.

Even if Mishima was not someone you might care to have as a neighbour, he was indisputably a terrific writer. He understood perfectly that imagination lies in the detail. There are some longueurs in "Runaway Horses", but also many passages of electrifying brilliance: for instance, Shigekuni Honda on Mount Miwa; or the scene in which Isao, having taken a rifle and shot a pheasant, fulfils a prophesy from his former life; or the prison-dream which presages his next as a woman.

This book repays careful reading. It consolidates not only much of what Mishima seemed to be about, but also the whole quartet. "Spring Snow" is a little too mannered and controlled, too lush; "The Temple of Dawn" too cynical and abstruse; and "The Decay of the Angel" is a clearly the work of a man going off his rocker. In "Runaway Horses", though, we find Yukio Mishima at the peak of his form. It is one of his most successful novels and is, by any measure, a masterpiece.