Beauty & Sadness - Yasunari Kawabata

This delicately written novel is mainly about suffering and revenge. It is easy and very enjoyable to read. Yasunari Kawabata's skills as a writer are on full display. The story is a simple one but it is told so well that it becomes entirely convincing. The subtle descriptions of love in its various forms is something that stands out in this novel.

Oki, a successful novelist is re-living the past in his mind's eye as he travels to Kyoto for a meeting with an ex-mistress. At that time, Oroko was 15 years old, almost half that of Oki. She became pregnant, but then the extra-marital affair ended. The baby did not survive the birth and Oroko became bitterly depressed. Suffering rejection and loss, she had moved to Kyoto as a form of escape and eventually became a successful painter. The rare chance meeting with the tormentor of the past inspires feelings of acceptance from Oroko. However, it also inspires feelings of revenge in Keiko, her apprentice.

The story follows the actions of Keiko, as she threatens to punish Oki for his treatment of Oroko. To Keiko, Oroko is more than her teacher or master, and the bond between them could well be described as love. Keiko begins to cause fright in Oroko with talk of her plans for revenge, and is often dissauded from doing anything. Unfortunately, Keiko is determined, perhaps due to her own feelings of isolation in the world, to see the drama of revenge through to the end.

Kawabata illustrates the feelings of his characters with intense conciseness. It follows that the reader easily becomes afiliated somehow to particular characters. It is possible that people's thoughts are very different because of the way that we as individuals relate the drama to the circumstances of our own individual lives. For my part, I read with a sense of dread as the reckless Keiko went about her plan.

Japanese Short Stories - Ryunosuke Akutagawa

This selection addresses the themes that Akutagawa often muses about. The path to happiness is about overcoming one's destiny. The stories vary greatly in scope, from the grotesque and bizarre "Hell Screen" that concerns a cruel master painting and his efforts to depict a perfect replication of Hell only to experience Hell itself in life; through to the light and heart-warming tale of "Tangerines" and a metaphysical dissuasion against self preservation portrayed in "A Spider's Thread". In all the stories, Akutagawa demostrates an almost perfect ability to tell a story. It is a complete pleasure to read his light but piercing prose. Devoid of the unnecessery, these stories have pinpoint precision at bringing the reader to the message that Akutagawa wishes to portray.

Thirst For Love - Yukio Mishima

愛の渇き (ai no kawaki), Mishima's third novel tells the story of Etsuko, a young widow, who is living in the house of her father-in-law, Yakichi. Yakichi develops a fondness for Etsuko, since his own wife had died. Etsuko feels virtual repugnance to the old man, but in equal measure indifferently submits to his advances. It is during the time that Etsuko has moved in to share a room with Yakichi that she develops a fondness and later deep love for the young gardener and servant, Saburo. His obliviousness to her feeling causes her much heartache. The socks that Etsuko buys at the offset of the story are a present for the object of her desire; when he fails to be seen wearing the socks, she falls deeper into despair that her feelings will always go unanswered. The discovery that Miho, the maid, is pregnant, presumably by Saburo, all but shatters her dreams, and fires up the ovens of her jealousy.

The novel has the unmistakable fingerprint of Mishima on it. Sinister images and flashbacks such as the gruesome death of her husband to typhoid at the hospital for infectious diseases and Etsuko's lucid thoughts of selling germ-laden blood to healthy people making them sick so as to provide raison d'etre for the hospital. Etsuko's dark ruminations provides the story with a keen sense of approaching calamity.


Thirst For Blood with sado-mashochistic, erotic and violent passion, ultimately sheds more light on the psyche of Mishima himself. It contains elements that can be found in other novels and thus provides part of the picture that Mishima arguably created of himself for himself.