Yukio Mishima: Sea of ​​Plenty

Yukio Mishima is the most famous and widely read Japanese author in the world. He became renowned equally for his works in every conceivable genre (novels, plays, short stories, essays) and for his extravagant lifestyle and death (harakiri following a failed monarchist coup). The tetralogy "The Sea of Fertility" is the pinnacle of Mishima's writing and a sort of creative testament; it is a work in which Mishima, in his own words, "expressed all his ideas" and after which he had "nothing left to write about." Having finished the final novel of the tetralogy, he put an end to his own life as well. "The Sea of Fertility" contains the quintessence of Mishima's own aesthetic system, combining samurai-Shinto elements with images of European antiquity, influences of esoteric Buddhism, and even Hinduism. The cornerstone of this aesthetic always remained the theme of death and beauty; Mishima’s characters strive to grasp the terrible and indefinable mystery of beauty, which exists beyond morality and ethics, capable of enslaving and destroying the human personality. The plot of "The Sea of Fertility" is based on the idea of reincarnation, which unfolds consistently through a story of tragic love, idealistic self-sacrifice, mystical obsession, and the collapse of illusions…

Translation: Elena Strugova

Pages: 1088 (offset). Hardcover

Dimensions: 140х210 mm

Series: Foreign Literature. Big Books