2008 books
64) Yukio Mishima, Patriotism, 1966
As a result of Japan's February 26 incident, an army lieutenant finds he is unable to carry out his orders, and both he and his young wife of six months must commit seppuku together, planning their joint suicide in a disquietingly matter-of-fact manner. There is a surprising lack of morbidity to Patriotism, quite the opposite in fact, as Mishima's writing indulges openly in the physical sensuality that comes before the act and their anticipation of the liberation that will come after. Echoes of Mishima's right wing nationalism and intertwining obsessions with sex and death are all found here aswell, his own public suicide in 1970 having been secretly planned for around a decade, and this is an open book on the kinds of deep-seated feelings that must have occupied him in his last years.