The Decay of the Angel by Yukio Mishima 1970 Book Four of The Sea of Fertility Tetrology

Yukio Mishima is one of the acknowledged by all masters of post WWII Japanese literature. I have read all the others novels in The Sea of Fertility Tetrology, several of his plays and short stories as well as other novels.  Post WWII Japanese literature is one of my core interests.  (There is background data on Mishima in my other posts on him.)   He and Kenzaburo Oe, who I do put above him, are my highest regarded Japanese authors, so far of the 100 or so I have read.  

The Decay of the Angel probably will only be read by hard core devotees of his work who have read the first three books in The Sea of Fertility Tetrology.  It is a book only for those really into his work. It is the most "philosophical" of his books I have yet read.  At times it did seem he was cudgeling me with his views on beauty, death, cultural decay and the decadence of society.  

I have said before that the dominant theme of the post World War Two Japanese novel is the impact of Japan's defeat in the war.  Japan did not just lose a war, the fundamental belief structure of their society was destroyed and nothing has emerged to take its place.  This is what is behind Mishima.  Mishima is an artist, not a rigorous logician and if pushed his ideas may emerge as incoherent but it is the incoherence of the Sea of Fertility in 6000 year old near atavistic faiths.  

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yokio Mishima

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yokio Mishima   (1956, in translation 1995, 304 pages)




My Prior Posts on Yokio Mishima

Yokio Mishima (1925 to 1970, Tokyo, Japan)  is one of the very greatest of Japanese novelists.  I see two great mountains in the Japanese literary landscape, on the far left we have Mount Oe and on the right extreme we have Mount Mishima.

The plot of The Temple of the Golden Dawn (translated by Ivan Morris) is loosely based on the real life burning in 1950 of the Temple of the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto by a novice monk.   The 500 year old temple was a national monument and of such great beauty that it was one of the reasons the American Air Force refrained from bombing Kyoto.

This really is a brilliant novel .  The novel is told in the first person by the young man who will burn the temple. The story is structured around explaining why he wants to burn the temple and what the events were in his life that made him what to burn what he saw as an amazing beautiful building.   I recently read a very good non-fiction book that deals with Japanese society during the years of American rule, 1945 to 1952, Embracing Defeat:  Japan After WWII and one of the biggest themes of Mishima's novel is the consequences of this occupations of Japan by its conquerors.  In one very terrible scene, a drunken, depicted as huge, American soldier comes on the temple grounds with a Japanese pregnant woman, assumedly a prostitute.  He knocks her to the ground and tells the young monk he will give him two packs of cigarettes if he will jump on her stomach  to abort the fetus.  The monk gives the cigarettes to the head of the temple in order to curry his favor to get a college scholarship.   It works.

The boy's father was also a monk and all through his life he heard how beautiful the temple was.   The boy's father dies and he enters the temple.   He was also a stutter.  There is a lot about the boy's developing sexuality.   There really is just too much in this novel to summarize much of it in a blog post.    The monks are not required to be celibates.  The head monk frequents tea houses and one of the novices uses his club foot to seduce women.  In one powerful scene he tells a sixty year old woman that if she kisses and caresses his club foot she will enter Nirvana.   He becomes sexually aroused by this and has sex with the woman, it is close to a rape but the monk sees it as a hilarious scam and he uses it all the time.

The Temple of the Golden Dawn is an education in Zen Buddhism.   In a way the novel can be seen as a commentary on a famous Shinto Text, The Rinzi Roku whose most famous line is "If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha".   The young monk is driven by his love for the temple or the society's fascination with it to destroy what he loves most, thus freeing himself from its control.

The ending of the novel where the temple burns is very exciting.

Anyone into the Japanese novel, most may have already done so, needs to read this novel.\

I am reading this novel as part of my particpation in two great reading events.


January in Japan

Japanese Literature 5

There are lot of good reading ideas on these webpages as well a links to great reviews by participants.

I do have a serious issue with Tuttle Press's kindle edition of this book.  There are at least fifty spelling errors in the text, errors that any spell checker would have found.  I do not know if this text was set up as a Kindle edition by people for whom English is a challenge or not but some of the mistakes are really bad.   If publisher expect readers to pay the same price for an eBook as they would a paperback, then they owe us much better editing than this.   It makes the translator Ivan Morris look stupid, and I am sure he is not.  Tuttle Publishing is a a very highly regarded publisher of Japanese novels in translation and they must have the resources to pay someone to proof read their offerings.   Just doing a spell check in Word would have found most of the errors.

"Swaddling Clothes" by Yukio Mishima

"Swaddling Clothes" by Yukio Mishima (1953, 4 pages)


"Swaddling Clothes" by Yukio Mishima (1925 to 1970-Japan) is a very strange story that compresses a really lot into just a few pages.   It is really must reading for devotees  of Yukio Mishima as it contains in just four pages much of the basic themes of the work of Mishima.   I am not inclined as of now to make a list of "best Japanese authors" but I will say if one wanted to read the full translated oeuvre of a Japanese writer with the objective of learning as much as you could about all aspects of Japanese culture I would say read Mishima (no small task with nearly fifty works available in translation) over all other authors.   (There is some additional background information on him in my prior posts.)


"Swaddling Clothes" begins with a woman from a good family recalling with great embarrassment the story her actor husband told a number of their friends.  A lot of the themes of Mishima can be dug from these remarkable lines:

Earlier that evening, when she had joined her husband at a night club, she had been shocked to find him entertaining friends with an account of “the incident.” Sitting there in his American-style suit, puffing at a cigarette, he had seemed to her almost a stranger.        “It’s a fantastic story,” he was saying, gesturing flamboyantly as if in an attempt to outweigh the attractions of the dance band. “Here this new nurse for our baby arrives from the employment agency, and the very first thing I notice about her is her stomach. It’s enormous—as if she had a pillow stuck under her kimono! No wonder, I thought, for I soon saw that she could eat more than the rest of us put together. She polished off the contents of our rice bin like that....” He snapped his fingers. “ ‘Gastric dilation’—that’s how she explained her girth and her appetite. Well, the day before yesterday we heard groans and moans coming from the nursery. We rushed in and found her squatting on the floor, holding her stomach in her two hands, and moaning like a cow. Next to her our baby lay in his cot, scared out of his wits and crying at the top of his lungs. A pretty scene, I can tell you!” 

The husband and the doctor he calls have complete contempt for the poor to them totally ignorant servant woman.   They wrap her baby in newspapers just to show their contempt for the baby.    The woman begins to think about how the baby will never have a chance to grow into a successful person of any kind.   She sees him as doomed to a life of poverty and crime by the degrading way he was brought into the world.   She begins to imagine he will one day grow up twenty years hence and will in a random senseless act stab her own son to death.  You can also see the very common theme of Mishima relating to the corruption of Japanese culture by the intrusion of Americans (something very strongly felt in still occupied Japan at the time of the writing of this story).

Now the story in its extreme artistry relies on the reader's help to determine what happens next.   Was the woman murdered that very night in a knifing or has twenty years gone by and has the mother intentionally been guided by paranormal elements to stand in for her son at the time of his murder by at the hands of the maid's baby?


You can read this story online HERE

Mel u

"Patriotism" by Yukio Mishima

"Patriotism" by Yukio Mishima (1966, 17 pages, translated by Geoffrey Sargent)



The Reading Life Japanese Literature Project

"Patriotism" is a horrifying deeply disturbing work.   It adds a coda to the famous lines from Keats

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,- that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

The greatest beauty lies in a pure death.      Some might see the laughter of the  Gods in this story,   I see no laughing, not even Pan's, in the vision behind this story.  
   
"Patriotism" is an erotically charged death driven story that either glorifies or shames horribly a very old revered way of life, that of the samurai.    Or perhaps it does both at the same time, which is where its true power arises.


I have posted on several of Mishima's novels and five of his plays.    (You will find background information on Mishima -1925 to 1970-Japan in my five prior posts on him),     Mishima is firmly on my read everything that is translated list.     Mishima's work has a great deal to teach us about Japanese culture, for better and worse.     In my opinion the samurai culture that helped lead Japan into WWII is a under all the beauty and ritual a slave's religion.     Of course, I take the additional step that this is overall a  horrible flaw in the belief structure, whereas a believer feels that it is mandated by God that all obey God's overlord on earth, the Emperor.    From duty to the Emperor an entire superstructure of obedience follows.   It does not matter whether we like it or not.   A true God  Emperor does not require the affection of his subjects, only their obedience.


The story takes place in 1936 in the home of a 31 year old military officer deeply into the Bushido code of the Samurai and his 23 year old wife.    They are recently married and feel great passion and love for one another.    Mishima's depiction of their feeling for each other is very erotic and moving.   I felt the heat and you will too, I think.    The story opens with a caption on a commemorative photograph which tells us that a young army officer  has been deeply shamed because some of his colleagues in the army have been involved in a mutiny against their commanders.   He took no part in this episode but because other officers in his regiment did so it is now mandated that he commit ritual suicide.     It is further mandated that his wife must also accept her death.    Normally the husband will kill his wife before killing himself in order to insure she will in fact die.   In this case the husband shows great trust and love for his wife by allowing her to witness the beauty of his own self disembowelment (very graphically described) and then kill herself with a special dagger used for female suicides.    As I read this, I wondered what is the fate of children in cases like this (this couple is newly married and childless).   I am assuming it is the duty of the father to kill his children before his own death  but I am open to correction on this.


The story lets us see the real love the couple have for each other.   I felt no cruelty in the motivation of the husband to have his wife die with him, only a very powerful love, carnal as well as deeply spiritual.

There is an unblinking account of what it feels like and the personal and physical power it takes to kill yourself by disemboweling.   We are made to feel the knife slice through his entrails, we see the blood everywhere.   In a very powerful scene both man and wife ritually bathe themselves before committing suicide.     In a very very sad scene, we see the young wife putting on her makeup so she will have a proper appearance in the after world.    You can feel the love as the wife thrusts the knife into her neck (it is not proper for a Samurai wife to die by self disembowelment -to put it delicately, it can be a very messy way to die.)   She is concerned over the terrible mess others will have to clean up when their bodies are found.

There are no "punches pulled" in this story.     It is a glorification of ritual suicide.

It is the things we love most that will  ultimately destroy us.   The only escape from this is a life without passion or love.

"Patriotism" is a deep intense very serious short story.    "Patriotism" is, to me, a great work of art.

Mel u

Yukio Mishima-"The Fountains in the Rain" --A Short Story

"The Fountains in the Rain" by Yukio Mishima (6 pages, translated from the Japanese, 1989, by John Bester)

Japanese literature in translation is one of my reading passions and part of the announced focus of my blog.   I have strayed away in the last few months but I want to post on three stories by world class canon status Japanese authors in the next few days.    For  me the post WWII Japanese novel has opened up an incredibly rich new area of reading.  I will also, I think, post on a very good short story by a second generation Japanese/American writer.

Yukio Mishima (1925 to 1970-Tokyo) is on all lists of top five Japanese novelists of all times.    Some put him at the top of the list,  a list which includes two Nobel Prize laureates.   Mishima is on my "read everything that has been translated list".     I have done four prior posts on him.    His The Sailor that Fell from Grace with The Sea is a brilliant account of the clash of Japanese culture with western values, one of the dominant themes of Mishima.    I also posted on a collection of five of his No plays.    His work in drama is almost a recasting of Samuel Becket as a formalized Japanese theatrical work.    I also posted on the first two novels in his great tetrology, The Sea of Fertility.    Mishima also wrote  a lot of short stories.

"The Fountains in the Rain" was first published in English in a 1989 in a collection of seven of his short stories, Acts of Worship.  (I do not know the date of its original publication -I guess around 1950).   One often sees in the work of Mishima the depiction of acts of cruelty done for no reason than the the pleasure it may bring.   The acts are most of done, it seems, by young men who have begun for the first time to discover the world is not perfect and feel this is all the justification they  need for what I will call "recreational cruelty".     There are only two people in "Fountains in the Rain", a young man and his very much in love with him girl friend.   It is a first relationship for both of them.    The man had one purpose only in mind in entering into the relationship and  doing all he can to make the woman fall in love with him so he could enjoy the sensation of seeing what her reaction would be when for no reason whatsoever he coldly and suddenly tells her he wishes to end the relationship.     Mishima's handling of the emotions of both partners is perfect.    The ending is stunning and beautifully undercuts what we thought was our understanding of the story.   


"The Fountain in the Rain" can be READ HERE.


I highly recommend this story for its own merits and as a way of "trying out" Mishima.


I am always looking for suggestions for short stories so please leave a comment.  

Mel u

Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima

Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima (1968, 389 pages, trans. from the Japanese by Michael Gallagher, 1972)


The Reading Life Japanese Literature Project  


Spring Snow (豐饒の海)  by Yukio Mishima (1925 to 1970-Japan) is the initial work in The Sea of Fertility tetrology, the crowning glory of an incredibility productive life.   The other works in the series are Runaway Horses, The Temple of Dawn, and The Decay of the Angel.   One of the dominant themes of this work (and his The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea which I read last year) is the depiction of the corrupting influence of western culture on Japan in the early part of the 20th century.   


Most of the plot action of Spring Snow is from 1912 to 1914.    The main story line concerns the romance between the son of a newly rich family and the daughter of an aristocratic that is in economic decline that makes it difficult for them to observe the proper formalities.   Shigekuni Honda,  a friend of the male character, is the principal witness to the events.   He will play a role in all of the novels.   Two royal princesses from Thailand (Siam at the time) arrive to study in Japan and stay with the family of Kiyoaki (the male lead).   Watching them learn about Japanese culture is fascinating.   The plot of Spring Snow is fairly complicated though not impossibly so.    


Spring Snow is about loss.   It is about loss of trust in others, in your country and in your faith.    Mishima offers us the opportunity to go deep into classical  Japanese culture.    I really enjoyed the lectures on Buddhism that occur as part of the plot.    One can feel, and his life shows it, the very profound connection of Mishima to Japanese culture and traditions from the years before western culture became dominant.    I felt a very high intelligence and cultivation behind this work.

Mishima lead a life right out of his own works.       There seems to be enough evidence to classify him as a GLBT writer (you might look at my post on "The Tragic Tale of the Love of Two Enemies" a story from 17th century Japan to see how this relates to Samurai culture).

I think and hope that Yukio Mishima will come to be regarded as high canon status writer.    This will happen only if teachers of literature worldwide themselves become well read in the Japanese novel.     The Japanese novel is one of the literary glories of the 20th century.    I do not believe in "balancing the canon" based on the backgrounds of the authors included but a canon list without at least five Japanese authors on it needs to be rethought.

How do you feel about "Balancing the canon"?

Mel u    

Runaway Horses by Yukio Mishima

Runaway Horses by Yukio Mishima (1970, 420 pages, translated by Michael Gallagher)

I am becoming increasingly convinced that one of the defining characteristics of the Japanese novel  is an assumption that the audience for the novels will be familiar with the conventions of various types of Japanese theater.   One of the first Japanese novels I read was Yukio Mishima's The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with  the Sea.    If you merely look at this as a purely European novel the plot line is cliched and the characters are not fully developed.    When I stepped back and came to see this as a novel that assumes the ritualized and representational features of classical Japanese theater I was able to see the brilliance in the work.     This knowledge is not something arcane that only professors would understand , it is (or maybe better said now was) part of the common culture of the Japanese novel reader. 

    Yukio Mishima (1925 to 1970)   is on all lists of the best five Japanese novelists.   One of the themes of his work is the destruction of traditional Japanese culture through the defeat in WWII and the subsequent total adoption of the values of consumerism by most Japanese.    Mishima felt deeply enough about his views to commit ritual suicide in support of them.      


Runaway Horses is the second work in Mishima's tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility.    The Sea of Fertility is unified by having a common lead character in each of the four works, Shigekuni Honda.    When Honda is first introduced he is a law student and at the end he is a distinguished retired judge.   In each novel the plot action centers on a young man that Honda believe to be the reincarnation of a school friend of his.    


Not long ago I was browsing in Fully Booked, a book store with branches all over Manila.    I was happy to see they had a lot of books by Yukio Mishima, one of the Japanese novelists I for sure want to get to know better.      I guess i should have looked more carefully at the book before I bought book two in The Sea of Fertility before book one.      I set the book to the side thinking I will go back and buy book one, Spring Snow.    As luck would have it, book one is not available anywhere in Manila I can find.   I am running very low on unread Japanese  novels on my shelves so after researching the over all plot of the tetralogy I decided to read it out of order though I will not post much on it until I read the first part at least.    I am planning for sure to read all of it this year, if possible.   


I am noticing a common theme in the works of Mishima.   In his works young idealistic men in their teens or early twenties rebel, often violently, against what they see as corrupt older men who have obtained power through a betrayal of the ideals they espouse but no longer embody.    He also uses this as a way of showing the general falling away of Japanese society from its core values   through an over attachment to the material values of the west. (This is a common theme in the post war Japanese novel.)   This is exactly what happens in Runaway Horses.     I liked Runaway Horses a lot.    The story  takes place in 1932 and 1933 and involves a plot against the government, though not against the Emperor, by a group of young men.  The planning of the plot is told in a very exciting way.   There is a lot to be learned about pre-WWII Japanese society from this book.  


I would really suggest that one read the first part of this tetralogy before the second and I will do a longer post once I have read part one, Spring Snow .    


Mel u

Five Modern No Plays by Yukio Mishima

Five  Modern No Plays by Yukio Mishima (1957, trans. and introduced by Donald Keene, 199 pages)

I am becoming increasingly convinced that one of the defining characteristics of the Japanese novel (and I think there is more to this concept than just the language) is an assumption that the audience for the novels will be familiar with the conventions of various types of Japanese theater.   One of the first Japanese novels I read was Yukio Mishima's The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with  the Sea.    If you merely look at this as purely European novel the plot line is cliched and the characters are not fully developed.    When I stepped back and came to see this as a novel that assumes the ritualized and representational features of classical Japanese theater I was able to see the brilliance in the work.    After reading Kenzaburo Oe's Somersault I read a number of the Amazon and Goodreads reviews.    Many said the characters are not well developed and seem almost like cartoon figures.  Somersault is also, in part, a theatrical novel which assumes a familiarity with the conventions of Japanese theater.   This knowledge is not something arcane that only professors would understand , it is (or maybe better said now was) part of the common culture of the Japanese novel reader.

A year ago or so when I read my first Japanese novel I was just looking for some new to me good books.   Then I moved on to looking for the best of  the Japanese novel.  Now I am trying to understand the Japanese novel as a cultural entity.  That is why I was very happy when I saw this book in a local bookstore.   Donald Keene, the translator  and author of the very informative and well written introduction,  deserves much of the credit for opening up Japanese literature to the English language world through his translations of many books and through the scholars and translators he educated and inspired in nearly 50 years as a professor.    Yukio Mishima (1925 to 1970)   is on all lists of best five Japanese novelists.   One of the themes of his work is the destruction of traditional Japanese culture through the defeat in WWII and the subsequent total adoption of the values of consumerism by most Japanese.    Mishima felt deeply enough about his views to commit ritual suicide in support of them.

Each of the five plays in this book could be performed or read in an hour or so.   The plays have from three to ten characters.    The actors' lines in the plays range from one line to paragraph long dissertations.    Some of the plays border on the drama of the absurd (they probably owe a lot to  the post WWII French theater) and others are simple encounters.   The essential action in the first drama in the collection comes from the conversation of a man who claims to be a poet and a very old woman (she claims to be 99) who says she was once a great beauty.  It is up to the reader to decide if they are what they say they are.  Some of the lines have a brilliant epigrammatic quality that made me read them several times.    I would love to see these performed though the odds of that are pretty low.

I recommend this book to devotees of Mishima (which I have now become also), those who want to acquire a bit of the cultural background to more deeply appreciate the Japanese novel  and to those interested in modern drama.   I am grateful to Vintage International Press for keeping in print so many of  Mishima's works.     There is convincing biographical evidence in the form of reports from multiple sources that Mishima can be listed as a GLBT author.   There are it appears 13 novels in print from Vintage and three collections of plays.   One of  the plays is entitled "My Friend Hitler".    I hope to eventually read all of his translated works.

Here is a link to some more Japanese posts

Mel u

"The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea" by Yukio Mishima

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima (translated by John Nathan-1965) is a central novel in the post World War II Japanese canon.

The plot of the novel is simple and easily admits of restatement and almost parody. A wealthy young beautiful widow with no man in her life for five years picks up a sailor and brings him home. At first her horrible brat of a 13 year old son likes the sailor then he comes to hate him. The son does some despicable things. The widow’s high fashion friends do not approve and she fears they may be snickering at her behind her back. The widow tries to turn the unpolished but not unthinking sailor into a slick clone of her idea of an English gentleman, even sending him to English lessons. Things do not work out well  in the end.

The characters in the novel at first seem like pure stereotypes. Fusako, who inherited a high fashion gift and clothing store that services the ultra rich:

Among the clientele were wealthy foreigners..a large number of dandies and movie people from Tokyo, and even some buyers from the small retail shops on the Ginza who came down to forage: Rex enjoyed a reputation for uncanny discernment of fine quality, particularly in imported men's wear accessories.

One day a ship arrives carrying a lot of imported goods. Fusako is invited to the ship to take her pick of the items for her shop. She takes her son along with her. The second mate of the ship tours them around and somehow the widow and the sailor ended up spending the night together in her very beautiful house in a high tone neighborhood. (We can already hear the neighbor's maids telling their employers what they saw come out of Fusako's house in the morning.)

At this point I took a look at what seems to be happening in the novel. It seems at first just a clichéd plot line-lonely rich widow with monster brat of a son meets a sailor and trouble follows. Once I thought about the cultural tradition of which the novel is from, I came to see this as very shallow reading of the work. The three main characters in the book, the widow, the sailor and the son are not to be seen as whole characters as they might in a novel from a purely European tradition but as ritualized figures in a Kabuki play. The original readers of this work would, I think, see the characters as meant to be ritually styled stereo types and the predictability of the plot is meant to be reflective of the inevitability of events.

If we accept this, the widow represents a consumer mad Japan that has forgotten its roots and now worships tokens of wealth and beauty with no understanding of what they mean. We see her wear a kimono only to show it off in the bedroom for the sailor. She is a mockery of the values an older world held sacred with regards to proper behavior of women. She represents the decadence of post war Japan. She is portrayed as an intelligent educated business woman without any form of self awareness.

The sailor is a bit more complicated and cast in a bit of a better light.

Whereas most men choose to become sailors because they like the sea, Ryuji had been guided by an antipathy to the land...He found himself in the strange predicament all sailors share: essentially he belongs neither to the land or the sea. There must be a special destiny in store for me; a glittering, special order kind no ordinary man would be permitted.

Ryuji the sailor, among other possible interperations, represents a Japan at sea with itself unrooted, belonging neither in its own past or in the west. The sailor tries to live by old stoic values. He falls prey to a love of comfort and easy sex and allows himself to be dressed up in English tweed suits and sent to English lessons.

The widow begins teach him about the merchandising business. He knows he is losing sight of his old values but he takes the offers life has seemingly made for him.

The widow has a 13 year old son. He is nasty and despicable. You will dislike him for sure. He has a group of same age friends who feel all adults are idiots. The son and his friends are to be seen as the future of Japan in a cultural in which the old values are destroyed.

I do not wish to give away the plot line of the novel. Remember the plot is supposed to be predictable. A predictable plot is essential for the novel to work. There are numerous usages of flower images in this work.

(I talked a bit about flower symbolism in the Japanese novel in my post on "The Crazy Iris" by Mesuji Ibuse.)

There are beautiful descriptions of nature, the sea as well as a highly erotized detailing of the body of the widow. (I should note that one chapter in this work will make cat lovers like me cringe.)

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea is a great novel. I saw this once I stepped back from seeing the characters as figures in a novel purely in a Western tradition and instead saw them as beautifully rendered stock figures in a drama echoing back to long ago.

Yukio Misima, like too many Japanese writers, committed suicide. His life story is as strange as any plot line you could find. He got out of military service in WWII by faking the symptom of tuberculosis. He later became involved with a paramilitary group who wanted to restore the emperor to full rule of Japan and reinstate him as a god.  His life story is a fascinating.   

I endorse this book with slight reservations. It is a bit hard not to see the characters as clichés. There is some hard to take cruelty to cats.

I am now starting to strive for an understanding of the post war Japanese novel as a cultural entity. When I first began to read works by Japanese authors I merely tried to understand each work on its own. I accept that in most cases only the best or most popular works are translated.

I will always be grateful to Dolce Bellezza and her Japanese Literature Challenge 3 for the enrichment of my Reading Life that has come to me from her challenge.

My thanks to everyone who has posted a review for the Japanese Literature 3 Challenge

Mel u