Runaway Horses - (Vintage International) by Yukio Mishima (Paperback)

About the Book

Runaway Horses is the chronicle of a patriotic conspiracy, a novel about the roots and nature of Japanese fanaticism in the years that led to war, in a Japan marked by depression, the confusion of changing social patterns, political violence and assassination. Second in The Sea of Fertility tetralogy.

Book Synopsis

The second novel in the masterful tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility--and "a modern masterpiece" (The Baltimore Sun)--narrated by a judge in Osaka who believes he has met the successive reincarnation of his childhood friend Kiyoaki Matsugae.

In 1932, Shigekuni Honda has become a judge in Osaka. Convinced that a young rightist revolutionary, Isao, is the reincarnation of his friend Kiyoaki, Honda commits himself to saving the youth from an untimely death. Isao, driven to patriotic fanaticism by a father who instilled in him the ethos of the ancient samurai, organizes a violent plot against the new industrialists who he believes are usurping the Emperor's rightful power and threatening the very integrity of the nation. Runaway Horses is the chronicle of a conspiracy -- a novel about the roots and nature of Japanese fanaticism in the years that led to war.

Review Quotes

"A modern masterpiece."
--The Baltimore Sun

"Mishima is like Stendhal in his precise psychological analyses, like Dostoevsky in his explorations of darkly destructive personalities."
--Christian Science Monitor

"One of the outstanding writers of the world."
--The New York Times

"An outstanding writer not only of Japan, but of the world."
--The Atlantic

About the Author

YUKIO MISHIMA was born in Tokyo in 1925. He graduated from Tokyo Imperial University's School of Jurisprudence in 1947. His first published book, The Forest in Full Bloom, appeared in 1944 and he established himself as a major author with Confessions of a Mask (1949). From then until his death he continued to publish novels, short stories, and plays each year. His crowning achievement, The Sea of Fertility tetralogy--which contains the novels Spring Snow (1969), Runaway Horses (1969), The Temple of Dawn (1970), and The Decay of the Angel (1971)--is considered one of the definitive works of twentieth century Japanese fiction. In 1970, at the age of 45 and the day after completing the last novel in the Fertility series, Mishima committed seppuku (ritual suicide)--a spectacular death that attracted worldwide attention.