Utage No Ato

AFTER THE BANQUET
(UTAGE NO ATO)
Yukio Mishima
Tuttle Publishing Singapore 1967
Twelfth Printing 2001 – 271 pages
Pustaka SemburatJingga 27090325000

Yukio Mishima, born in Tokyo on January 14, 1925, was probably the most spectacularly talented young Japanese writer to emerge after World War II. Mishima’s first novel was published in 1948, shortly after he graduated from Japan’s prestigious University of Tokyo School of Jurisprudence.

Upon leaving the university, he secured a highly coveted position in the Ministry of Finance, but he resigned after just nine months to devote himself fully to his writing. From the time he put pen to paper until his widely publicized death in 1970, he was a very prolific writer, producing some two dozen novels, more than 40 plays, over 90 short stories, several poetry and travel volumes, and hundreds of essays. His mastery won him many top literary awards, among them the 1954 Shinchosha Literary Prize for his novel The Sound of Waves.

Although critics are naturally divided on which of his many works is the ultimate masterpieces, Mishima himself regarded The Sea of Fertility to be his finest effort. He completed his last volume, , on the day of his death by ritual suicide on November 25, 1970. Mishima’s writings have been compared to those of Proust, Gide, and Sartre, and his obsession with courage mirrors Ernest Hemingway’s.

Today, more than three decades since his death, Yukio Mishima remains one of the pivotal figures of modern Japanese literature.

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Kazu is successful and independent woman who is determined never to fall in love again. That is until Noguchi, a former government cabinet minister, walks into her life. Attracted despite herself by his aristocratic background and intellectual airs, they marry – even as the wide social and moral gulf between them seems certain to lead them to disaster. Determined for her own selfish reasons to resurrect his political career, she secretly funds his idealistic political campaign. When he finds this out, his high and unyielding moral sensibilities are offended. Kazu is forced to choose between his very narrow code of conduct and the independence and way of life she has come to cherish. The outcome reveals Mishima’s full range of power as a master storyteller and novelist.

When it was first published in 1960, After the Banquet was regarded as being very controversial because of the light Mishima cast on Japanese political, social and sexual life. As well as exploring the erotic and psychological issues Mishima has made his own, these book gives us keen insights into Mishima’s political and social beliefs and hopes for Japan. ANDRETHERIQA 150209