In the late 1960s, Honda, now 76 years old, encounters a 16-year-old orphan, Toru, whom he believes to be the next reincarnation of Kiyoaki. He decides to adopt him and take him into his home as his heir, offering an education, wealth, and status, all the while wondering and waiting whether Toru will die at twenty years of age like his predecessors did. I did not know what to expect after the surprising turn the story took in the third book, and it would have […]

On a business trip to Thailand, 6 years after Isao’s death and shortly before Japan enters WWII, Honda encounters the young princess Ying Chan who claims to be the reincarnation of a Japanese man. 12 years later, in 1952, he meets her again, but is unsure whether she really is the reborn Kiyoaki or not. After focussing on Kiyoaki in the first book, and his reincarnation into Isao in the second one, the third book surprisingly shifts its gaze to Honda instead of the next […]

20 years after the death of Kiyoaki, Honda, who has become a judge in Osaka and lives a quiet and uneventful life, meets the 19-year-old Isao and believes him to be the reincarnation of his old friend. When he finds out that Isao, possessed by the desire to save Japan from the ever-growing Western and capitalist influence, is on a path of self-destruction he tries to save him from suffering the same untimely fate as Kiyoaki. In the first book of the tetralogy, Japan had […]

Set in Tokyo in 1912, this is the story of Kiyoaki, an 18-year-old member of the upper class, his best friend Honda, and the aristocratic Satoko who invokes feelings in him that he struggles greatly with. Tragedy begins to take its course when she becomes engaged to a royal prince. Ostensibly a rather conventional story about the hardships of an impossible love, underneath the surface, the nuance and finesse Mishima brings to his reflections on the faults and failures of human existence and the inevitability […]