ABSTRACT
Shocking, “outlaw”1 publications detailing various (homosexual and heterosexual) perverse eroticisms bound to sadism, masochism, and death, such as Confessions, Patriotism (YEkoku, 1960) or the differently perverse Forbidden Colors (Kinjiki, 1951; 1953), which makes an aesthetic of betrayal, were, as I have already noted, radically different sorts of texts among Mishima’s corpus. The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (Kinkakuji, 1956; hereafter, Golden Pavilion), The Sea of Fertility (HDjD no umi, 1960-1970), his epic tale of transmigration in the tetralogy, and many short stories de-emphasized Mishima’s “perverse” erotics to focus instead on his nihilistic aesthetics. Many of these texts took up ontological-philosophical matters at some remove from sex or sexuality. An even more stark difference distinguishes his “outlaw” narratives from his so-called minor works, immensely popular, commercially viable narratives, and his celebrated The Sound of Waves (Shiosai, 1954), which depicted what one could call, in general, more “normal” heterosexual romances (although some perverse quirk is endemic to Mishima). John Nathan calls The Sound of Waves “neither perverted nor sardonic. Except for a passage or two which lingers more lovingly on the body of the handsome fisherman than the young girl, the book is unremittingly normal in the most conventional sense; in fact, it is Mishima’s most assiduously healthy work.”2
