{"id":1245,"date":"2008-11-11T16:26:35","date_gmt":"2008-11-11T23:26:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/?p=1245"},"modified":"2008-11-11T17:23:54","modified_gmt":"2008-11-12T00:23:54","slug":"confessions-of-a-mask","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/2008\/11\/confessions-of-a-mask\/","title":{"rendered":"Confessions of a Mask"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"confessions<\/a>After reading The Temple of the Golden Pavilion<\/a><\/em> I felt like I needed more of Mishima so this is where I randomly turned next. Unless you are into S&M or a homosexual you probably won’t fully appreciate the first half or so of this book. I found the last half of the book to be far more enjoyable myself. This is Mishima’s first major work, and in some ways it shows. I liked The Temple of the Golden Pavilion<\/em> more, but I still found much of Confessions of a Mask<\/em><\/a> to be interesting–fascinating even, and I have no regrets about reading the whole thing.<\/p>\n

In fact, those two works weren’t enough for me so now I’m reading The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea<\/em> which was much later than either of the above two books. Well, maybe not much later but Mishima’s career was so short that it was relatively much later given his brief life.<\/p>\n

The setting for Confessions of a Mask<\/em> is from pre-World War 2 through just after the war. Therefore, those interested in Japan during the war years from the Japanese, common-person perspective will at least like this account for that reason.<\/p>\n

How much of this is autobiographical? I don’t know. You do see many similarities between the main character in this book and the main character in The Temple of the Golden Pavilion<\/em>. Given Mishima’s later views you can certainly see his troubled, earlier mind in his early works. Mishima’s end should have been very predictable by those who read his works and considered them to be at least partially autobiographical. From his account here, his later militaristic views almost seem as if they could have partially been the result of guilt–guilt over avoiding service time in WW2.<\/p>\n

In summary, if you plan to start reading Mishima, Confessions of a Mask<\/em> is probably not the best place to start. Don’t skip it entirely though unless you are seriously homophobic and can’t stomach such thoughts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After reading The Temple of the Golden Pavilion I felt like I needed more of Mishima so this is where I randomly turned next. Unless you are into S&M or a homosexual you probably won’t fully appreciate the first half or so of this book. I found the last half of the book to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[44,157],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1245"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1245"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1249,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1245\/revisions\/1249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}