Forbidden Colors

by Mishima, Yukio; Marks, Alfred H.

• ISBN13: 9780375705168
• ISBN10: 0375705163
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-02-22
• Publisher: Vintage

Summary

Irresistible to women, the beautiful, young Yuichi embarks on a loveless marriage while he enters a homosexual underworld during postwar Japan.

Author Biography

Yukio Mishima was born in Tokyo in 1925. He graduated from Tokyo Imperial University’s School of Jurisprudence in 1947. His first published book, The Forest in Full Bloom, appeared in 1944. He established himself as a major author with Confessions of a Mask (1949). From then until his death he continued to publish novels, short stories, and plays each year. His crowning achievement, The Sea of Fertility tetralogy—which contains the novels Spring Snow (1969), Runaway Horses (1969), The Temple of Dawn (1970), and The Decay of the Angel (1971)—is considered one of the definitive works of twentieth-century Japanese fiction. In 1970, at the age of forty-five and the day after completing the last novel in the Fertility series, Mishima committed seppuku (ritual suicide)—a spectacular death that attracted worldwide attention.

Alfred H. Marks (1920–2014) was a professor of early American literature at the State University of New York at New Paltz, who published works on Nathaniel Hawthorne and Walt Whitman. He served in Japan during World War II as part of the military intelligence, and was a visiting and Fulbright scholar in Kanazawa in 1965. He was a translator of modern Japanese literature, including works by Yukio Mishima.

Table of Contents

1 The Beginning	3	(23)
2 Mirror Contract	26	(14)
3 The Marriage of a Dutiful Son	40	(8)
4 Forest Fire in the Distant Twilight	48	(13)
5 The First Steps Toward Salvation	61	(8)
6 The Vexations of Womanhood	69	(16)
7 Entrance to the Stage	85	(5)
8 The Jungle of Sentiment	90	(13)
9 Jealousy	103	(7)
10 The False Accident and the True	110	(15)
11 Family Ritual: Tea with Rice	125	(20)
12 Gay Party	145	(7)
13 Courtesy	152	(12)
14 Alone and Independent	164	(6)
15 Blue Sunday	170	(12)
16 Flight in Formation	182	(9)
17 One's Heart's Desire	191	(9)
18 Sightseer's Misfortune	200	(10)
19 My Helpmate	210	(16)
20 Calamity to Jane Is Calamity to John	226	(16)
21 Chuta in Old Age	242	(9)
22 The Seducer	251	(21)
23 Days of Ripening	272	(5)
24 Dialogue	277	(8)
25 Turnabout	285	(10)
26 Sobering Summer	295	(25)
27 Intermezzo	320	(14)
28 Hailstones from a Clear Sky	334	(20)
29 Deus ex Machina	354	(12)
30 Heroic Passion	366	(8)
31 Problems Spiritual and Financial	374	(17)
32 Grand Finale	391