The Decay of the Angel: The Sea of Fertility, 4 [Paperback]

Yukio Mishima’sThe Decay of the Angelis the final novel in his masterful tetralogy,The Sea of Fertility. It is the last installment of Shigekuni Honda’s pursuit of the successive reincarnations of his childhood friend Kiyoaki Matsugae.
 
It is the late 1960s and Honda, now an aged and wealthy man, once more encounters a person he believes to be a reincarnation of his friend, Kiyoaki — this time restored to life as a teenage orphan, Tōru. Adopting the boy as his heir, Honda quickly finds that Tōru is a force to be reckoned with. The final novel of this celebrated tetralogy weaves together the dominant themes of the previous three novels in the series: the decay of Japan’s courtly tradition; the essence and value of Buddhist philosophy and aesthetics; and, underlying all, Mishima’s apocalyptic vision of the modern era.“Mesmerizing. . . . A saga of 20th-century Japan: a story of national decline that nonetheless proposes redemption through the endurance of a certain soul, forceful enough to be reborn ad infinitum.”
—The Guardian(London)

“The end of [Mishima’s]Sea of Fertilitytetralogy. . . is surely one of the best final scenes in the history of the novel.”
—David Mitchell,The New York Times Book ReviewYukio Mishimawas 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 and he established himself as a major author withConfessions 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 Fertilitytetralogy—which contains the novelsSpring Snow(1969),Runaway Horses(1969),The Temple of Dawn(1970), andThe Decay of the Angel(1971)—is considered one of the definlc)