Confessions of a Mask

This book is really not lacking very much. Perhaps some other reviewers came into it with high expectations for some sort of pinnacle of Japanese literature, but I only wanted a story and the story that was delivered was overwhelmingly engaging. As a story of obsession and tragedies of the heart it is certainly comparable to Nabokov. I am not a fan of stories that are just depressing or a mountain of uncomfortable drudgery, but Mishima keeps you out of that pit with his tell-all intellectual writing style, simultaneously mocking all the follies of human existence and pitying himself for being so analytical. The story has its rough edges but you really feel that he focuses on all the right details and nothing is left out, which is the hallmark of a superior writer. This is absolutely a great gift for a gay friend. I am not gay but I felt a very close sympathy for the main character's predicament. It seems to be a thin veil over Mishima's own experience, and perhaps the story is semi-autobiographical. The translation is pretty good and the Japanese experience shines through, although the setting of the story definitely lends a hand to that.

Often people draw a definite line between being homosexual and straight, and once you know who you are you always know. Mishima, in detail, describes the inner conflicts of growing up gay. Dealing with the confusions of being able to find a woman beautiful at charming and yet being able to go no further. It is an excellent book for someone doubting themselves right now or for friends or family to know exactly what their loved one had to struggle with for many years and in some ways may still be struggling with.

--those words only begin to describe this claustrophobic, asphyxiating novel which is really an exercise in language as torture, prose as death sentence. Confessions of a Mask is a remarkable revelation of self and affirmation. It's hard to get a handle on Mishima's influence, but it's harder still to imagine very much of the grim and quite tedious prose coming from "the underground" today without bowing hard in Mishima's direcetion. Highly recommended.

It tells the discovering of Mishima's gay identity, during the second world war and after. Very easy to read, very deep. It should be on everyone's shelf. Loic Barriere