The Sea of Fertility
by Yukio Mishima
Tomorrow marks 100 years since the birth of Yukio Mishima, one of the most important Japanese authors of the twentieth-century – and certainly the most controversial. Mark the occasion by reading his final and greatest masterpiece, The Sea of Fertility.
As a child, Kimitake Hiraoka was banned from playing with other boys or in direct sunlight. As a teenager, his father ripped up his stories and held him up to the side of speeding trains, but he continued to write secretly and began publishing under the pseudonym ‘Yukio Mishima’. In 1944, he left school with a commendation from the emperor, and in 1946 he visited the novelist Yasunari Kawabata, who became his mentor.
Inspired by Georges Bataille and Witold Gombrowicz, Mishima wrote novels that broke social taboos, in a Japan that was changing rapidly. His interests included modelling, acting, bodybuilding, karate, kendo and training as a samurai. He founded a civilian militia, the Tatenokai (‘Shield Society’), which was dedicated to restoring power to the emperor of Japan and overturning the parliamentary constitution of 1947.
In 1970, he and four members attempted a military coup, which failed. After a rousing speech from a balcony, which was greeted with jeers, Mishima stepped inside and performed seppuku, ritual disembowelment and suicide.
‘Mishima is lucid in the midst of emotional confusion,’ wrote Christopher Isherwood, ‘funny in the midst of despair.’
Mishima wrote his last great work over several years. The Sea of Fertility is a tetralogy that spans six decades in the life of Shigekuni Honda, who starts as a law student in 1912 and eventually becomes a judge. The four volumes were first serialised in the magazine Shincho (New Tide): Spring Snow (1965-7), Runaway Horses (1967-8), The Temple of Dawn (1968-70) and The Decay of the Angel (1970-1). Mishima frequently said that he would die when the sequence was complete.
In each instalment after Spring Snow, Shigekuni Honda encounters a different reincarnation of his school friend Kiyoaki Matsuagae, who returns as a terrorist, an indolent Thai princess and a manipulative, sadistic orphan.
‘Finishing [The Sea of Fertility] makes me feel as if it is the end of the world,’ wrote Mishima in October 1970. He finished writing the last page of The Decay of the Angel on 24 November, the day before he performed seppuku.
‘These four remarkable novels are the most complete vision we have of Japan in the twentieth century,’ says Paul Theroux.
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Awesome, Henry, thanks. The New Yorker just published a new essay about Mishima that is worth reading: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/01/13/yukio-mishima-voices-of-the-fallen-heroes-book-review
They also published a story that Mishima wrote in 1966 that had never been translated into English until now. It's based on an actual incident that happened to Mishima, and apparently the story is openly autobiographical in a way that most of his fiction isn't. Really good: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/11/04/from-the-wilderness-fiction-yukio-mishima
Absolutely a great classic, and I’ve read the tetralogy about three times. I will admit, though, that I found The Temple of Dawn to be just a mite confusing.