“Mishima Yukio: Towards the Sea Poetics of the Flowers, “Flower-Scale Forest” by Suzuki Fusako (Torikagesha, 2860 yen)

This year marks the 100th anniversary of Mishima Yukio’s birth. Born on January 14, 1970, Mishima committed suicide by leaselessness at the Ichigaya Garrison of the Self-Defense Forces on November 25, 1970. Although he lived for 45 years, he left behind some extraordinary works such as novels, criticisms, and plays, and even after the second half of his death, his work has been passed down. On the morning of his suicide, he wrote on his desk, “If there is a limited life, I want to live forever,” but as he asked, Mishima Yukio is “living” today.

This book explores the secret of his genius during the author’s inaugural period, and depicts in detail the book’s experiences that young boy Mishima has grown and developed his precocious talent. The author is also an English literary scholar, but here, not only influenced by the fairy tales of Wilde known for “Salome”, but also published prewar prewar publications such as the song and nursery rhymes, as well as the magazine “Shonen Club” during Gakushuin Elementary and Middle School. The process of how he greedily turned words into my own things is revealed. Careful and empirical research results are truly portrayed in beautiful, flowing text.

Many research and criticisms on Mishima literature have been published up until now, but this book sets apart because the author’s own sensibilities deeply resonate with the young Mishima’s aspirations and emotions, and shares a clear image. It’s where I’m doing it.

At the beginning of the book is Rimbo’s poem “Eternal” which is the light emitted by the “sea that blends with the sun”, and it is this diverse and shining “sea” that runs through Mishima’s magnificent works. be. The first work of 16-year-old Hanazakari no Mori, which first used Mishima Yukio’s pen name, is not actually a story about the forest, but rather a motif of the sea, and within this, the artist sought the Japanese fertility for his lifetime. It is pointed out sharply that there is a landscape. There, Mishima, a six-year-old sang “New Revised Elementary School Song” along with his friends in a pre-war elementary school classroom.

His natural talent was miraculously formed from the elegant lyrics of this literary style to poetry from ancient and modern times, and Japanese translations of Wild, Radige and Rilke.