"Nothing rots a man faster than pity."
This one hit different. I went in expecting a sea story with some Japanese aesthetics layered on top and what I got was something far more unsettling, mishima uses the ocean not as backdrop but as metaphor for a kind of pure, untamed existence, and the moment his sailor Ryuji steps off that ship and into domesticity, you feel the slow suffocation begin.
The boy, Noboru, is the real horror of the novel. He and his crew of adolescent philosophers, cold, clinical, utterly certain, are Mishima's most chilling creation, theyve built a whole worldview out of it and the scary part is how airtight their logic is nd Mishima doesn't editorialize. He just lets it play out.
The love story between Ryuji and the widow Fusako is tender but doomed in the way only Mishima can pull off. You root for it while understanding it's a kind of death sentence for everything the man stood for. The tension between glory and comfort, between the sea and the house, between myth and mediocrity, is the whole book.
It's short. You can finish it in a day or two but it stays with you in an uncomfortable way. Not a book that makes you feel good. A book that makes you think about what you've traded away for safety and routine. Very Mishima. Very bleak. Loved it.
Gonna read Sun and Steel now
This one hit different. I went in expecting a sea story with some Japanese aesthetics layered on top and what I got was something far more unsettling, mishima uses the ocean not as backdrop but as metaphor for a kind of pure, untamed existence, and the moment his sailor Ryuji steps off that ship and into domesticity, you feel the slow suffocation begin.
The boy, Noboru, is the real horror of the novel. He and his crew of adolescent philosophers, cold, clinical, utterly certain, are Mishima's most chilling creation, theyve built a whole worldview out of it and the scary part is how airtight their logic is nd Mishima doesn't editorialize. He just lets it play out.
The love story between Ryuji and the widow Fusako is tender but doomed in the way only Mishima can pull off. You root for it while understanding it's a kind of death sentence for everything the man stood for. The tension between glory and comfort, between the sea and the house, between myth and mediocrity, is the whole book.
It's short. You can finish it in a day or two but it stays with you in an uncomfortable way. Not a book that makes you feel good. A book that makes you think about what you've traded away for safety and routine. Very Mishima. Very bleak. Loved it.
Gonna read Sun and Steel now
