Volume 32, Number 15 · October 10, 1985
Rambo-san
By Ian Buruma
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters
a film written by Paul Schrader, by Leonard Schrader, directed by Paul Schrader
Barakei: Ordeal by Roses
photographs of Yukio Mishima by Eikoh Hosoe
Aperture, 50 pp., $35.00
Mishima ou la vision du vide
by Marguerite Yourcenar
Gallimard (Paris), 124 pp., fr50 To be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in January 1986.
A strange article appeared last year in the Japanese edition of Penthouse magazine. In between photographs of half-undressed Japanese starlets and fully nude Western models (public hair carefully air-brushed away) was a story about Mishima Yukio. A housewife named Ota claimed to have been in close touch with Mishima's spirit for the last seven years. He appears to have dictated all kinds of messages, manuscripts, and plans, one of which was to stage a musical of the Kojiki, an eighth-century chronicle of ancient myths. It is unlikely that even Mishima would have stooped to quite that level of bad taste. But the article and its presentation are rather typical of the way Mishima is regarded by many Japanese: a combination of ridicule and unease, of reverence and titillation.
Review, 3568 words
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