Confessions of a Mask

Confessions of a Mask is the story of an adolescent who must learn to live with the painful fact that he is unlike other young men. Mishima's protagonist discovers that he is becoming a homosexual in polite, post-war Japan. To survive, he must live behind a mask of propriety. Christopher Isherwood comments-"One might say, 'Here is a Japanese Gide,'....But no, Mishima is himself-a very Japanese Mishima; lucid in the midst of emotional confusion, funny in the midst of despair, quite without pomposity, sentimentality or self-pity. His book, like no other, has made me understand a little of how it feels to be Japanese. I think it is greatly superior, as art and as a human document to his deservedly praised novel, The Sound of Waves ."Mishima, Yukio is the author of 'Confessions of a Mask', published 1958 under ISBN 9780811201186 and ISBN 081120118X.