Confessions of a Mask

Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780586037249.

One of the classics of modern Japanese fiction. Confessions of a Mask is the story of an adolescent who must learn to live with the painful fact that he is unlike other young men. Mishimas protagonist discovers that he is becoming a homosexual in polite, post-war Japan. To survive, he must live behind a mask of propriety. Christopher Isherwood commentsâ "One might say, Here is a Japanese Gide,....But no, Mishima is himselfâ a very Japanese Mishima; lucid in the midst of emotional confusion, funny in the midst of despair, quite without pomposity, sentimentality or self-pity. His book, like no other, has made me understand a little of how it feels to be Japanese. I think it is greatly superior, as art and as a human document to his deservedly praised novel, The Sound of Waves."