The Five Decays of a Deity/Author: [Japan] Yukio Mishima/Publisher: Liaoning People's Publishing House/Producer: Ichiyefuo/Subtitle: The Sea of ​​Plenty (IV)/Original title: The Five Decays of a Deity/Translator: Chen Dewen

The Four Parts of the Sea of ​​Plenty - The Final Work

【Editor's recommendation】

The four parts of the series are respectively about "Wa-kon", "Ara-kon", "Ki-kon" and "Kyou-kon". These "four souls" interpret four kinds of life through the cycle of life and death, forming a spiral cyclical world.

This work, which the Japanese call "the great river novel", interrogates the fundamental issues in life one by one, such as survival, love, war, death and fate with Buddha, and finally interprets the theme of "everything in the world is an illusion, and life is nothingness". Mishima Yukio himself believes that the world looks like a magnificent "sea of ​​abundance" on the surface, but in fact it is a moon sea without water or air. Although it is called "abundant", it is actually scarce.

"The suffocation in the book is due to the author's fierce struggle with the emptiness in his heart." - Shibusawa Ryuhiko

【Content Introduction】

The last part of "Sea of ​​Fertility" - the last work completed the day before suicide, the epitome of Mishima's aesthetics and philosophy

"An 80-year-old man and a 20-year-old youth may be engaged in a life-and-death hand-to-hand fight."

In 1970, the 76-year-old Honda adopted a handsome boy named Yasunaga Toru who worked as a signalman at the port. Honda also believed that this boy was the reincarnation of Kiyoaki. After Toru was admitted to university, his cold and cruel side was revealed and he abused Honda in every way. Honda's friend Keiko told Toru the secret of why Honda adopted him. After Toru found out that he was just the reincarnation of someone else and not a person who could freely choose his destiny, he committed suicide by taking poison...

Mishima Yukio

(1925-1970), formerly known as Hiraoka Kimitake, is a contemporary Japanese novelist, playwright, and film actor. He has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature many times. This outlier in the Japanese literary world worshipped martyrdom-like death throughout his life. In his short life, he tried his best to interpret the diversity of beauty with words. Donald Keane, an American authority on Japanese literature, believes that Mishima is "an unparalleled genius writer in the world."

Chen Dewen

Born in Pi County, Jiangsu Province, he is a professor at Nanjing University. He graduated from the Department of Oriental Languages ​​and Literature of Peking University with a major in Japanese in 1965. In 1985, he went to Waseda University for study and research. He is currently a full-time professor at Aichi Bunkyo University in Japan. He has translated and published many famous works by famous Japanese writers.