is a 1951 novel (禁色 Part 2 was published in 1953) by the Japanese writer

Yukio Mishima , born , was a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor, model, Shintoist, nationalist, and founder of the , an unarmed civilian militia. Mishima is considered one of the most important Japanese authors of the 20th century. He was considered fo ...

, translated into English in 1968. The name ''kinjiki'' is a euphemism for same-sex love. The

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subse ...

禁 means "forbidden" and 色 in this case means "erotic love", although it can also mean "color". The word "kinjiki" also means colors that were forbidden to be worn by people of various ranks in the Japanese court. It describes a marriage of a Gay man to a young woman. Like Mishima's earlier novel '' Confessions of a Mask'', it is generally considered somewhat

autobiographical An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life. It is a form of biography. Definition The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English p ...

Plot summary

Aging, cynical Shunsuke is one of postwar Japan's most respected authors. While vacationing at an exclusive Japanese resort, he meets Yuichi, a stunningly gorgeous young man of limited means and intellect who is engaged to a prim, conventional young woman from a very well-to-do family. While he needs the marriage for financial reasons, Yuichi innocently confides to the older man that he feels no real physical desire for his bride, or for any woman. The crafty Shunsuke senses an opportunity to mold the malleable, gullible young man into an exquisite weapon of revenge against the female sex as a whole. He tells Yuichi that his inability to feel desire for women is not a weakness but potentially a tremendous source of strength. He advises the young man to go through with the marriage and gain financial security, but also to omit no opportunity to experiment with the emotions of others, and to have as many affairs as possible with both women and men.

Themes

There are many elements Mishima touches on. Two involving the main characters, Yuichi and Shunsuke, are: * Same-sex love: Yuichi's open and unashamed nature is a driving force of the narrative. Shunsuke's contempt for women leads him to admire Yuichi, who, he feels, is incapable of loving women. * Misogyny: Shunsuke's contempt for women drives his behavior to use Yuichi as a tool of his revenge. The most basic thematic element is the clash of opposites: * Beauty and Ugliness: Yuichi is considered the pinnacle of beauty, while Shunsuke considers himself to be extremely ugly. * Youth and Aging: The young and old are played against each other. The youthful Yuichi and elderly Shunsuke are at odds, though they are conspirators. The young Kyoko and the mature Mrs. Kaburagi are played against each other for Yuichi's affection. * Life and Death: Shunsuke is obsessed with death and feels it is more powerful than life.

Reception

Hortense Calisher said the book had a poor reception in the west, but also argued that Mishima "is never limited enough to treat of sex alone."

Adaptations

The first

butoh is a form of Japanese dance theatre that encompasses a diverse range of activities, techniques and motivations for dance, performance, or movement. Following World War II, butoh arose in 1959 through collaborations between its two key founde ...

piece was an adaptation of ''Kinjiki'' by

Tatsumi Hijikata was a Japanese choreographer, and the founder of a genre of dance performance art called Butoh. By the late 1960s, he had begun to develop this dance form, which is highly choreographed with stylized gestures drawn from his childhood memories o ...

, which premiered in 1959. The title of the novel was used by

David Sylvian David Sylvian (born David Alan Batt, 23 February 1958) is an English musician, singer and songwriter who came to prominence in the late 1970s as frontman and principal songwriter of the band Japan. The band's androgynous look and increasingly ...

and

Ryuichi Sakamoto is a Japanese composer, pianist, singer, record producer and actor who has pursued a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). With his bandmates Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi, Sakamoto i ...

as the name of their

theme song Theme music is a musical composition that is often written specifically for radio programming, television shows, video games, or films and is usually played during the title sequence, opening credits, closing credits, and in some instances at s ...

for the film soundtrack of '' Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence'', a film set in a Japanese POW camp in Java which includes exploration of homoerotic themes.

Notes

{{Yukio Mishima 1951 novels Alfred A. Knopf books 20th-century Japanese novels Japanese-language novels Novels by Yukio Mishima Novels set in Japan Novels with gay themes Japanese LGBT novels 1950s LGBT novels Works originally published in Gunzo (magazine) Works originally published in Bungakukai