The Temple of Dawn: The Sea of Fertility, 3

Yukio Mishima

Apr 2013 · Sold by Vintage

About this ebook

The third novel in the masterful tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility, in which a brilliant lawyer will go to nearly any length to discover whether a young Thai princess is in fact the reincarnated spirit of his childhood friend. • “Surpassingly chilling, subtle, and original.” —The New York Times

Here, Shigekuni Honda continues his pursuit of the successive reincarnations of Kiyoaki Matsugae, his childhood friend. Travelling in Thailand in the early 1940s, Shigekuni Honda, now a brilliant lawyer, is granted an audience with a young Thai princess—an encounter that radically alters the course of his life. In spite of all reason, he is convinced she is the reincarnated spirit of his friend Kiyoaki. As Honda goes to great lengths to discover for certain if his theory is correct, The Temple of Dawn becomes the story of one man’s obsessive pursuit of a beautiful woman and his equally passionate search for enlightenment.

Ratings and reviews

I first read this book in 1971 when it was first published in the English-language translation. After the sensuous, languid "Spring Snow" and the searing, doomed "Runaway Horses", I was let down by this, the 3rd installment in "The Sea of Fertility" quartet. It didn't have a clearly reincarnated hero and Honda was becoming more degenerate. Now, years later I see how misguided I was as a reader. If the true visceral power of the fourth novel is to work, then this is the most important book of the quartet. It speaks to an ending (of the novels and Mishima) in an elliptical style that doesn't attempt to draw the reader in (as the first two books most assuredly do) . It stands apart from the first two books in its unwillingness to keep the quartet narrative flowing. TL:DR This is IMHO the center of the quartet. It takes far more attention to detail but the payoff in "The Decay of the Angel" is worth the effort.

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.