Mishima’s Sword: Travels in Search of a Samurai Legend.

Ross, Christopher (author).

In his time, Yukio Mishima was Japan’s best-known and best-selling novelist, but he will always be remembered for his spectacular death, when he committed seppuku after a spectacularly unsuccessful coup attempt. Ross (Tunnel Visions, 2001) wanted to know what happened to Mishima’s sword, the one that was used by a cohort to lop off his head as the coup de grace. What follows is an utterly unique journey, part travelogue, part biography, part history lesson, and part philosophical treatise. Mishima was a complicated, contradictory man, and Ross explores his mind and his work through the lens of Japan’s challenging culture. Though the search for the sword impels the journey, this is no archaeological thriller. The sword as object is less important to the book than the sword as symbol, of Japan’s militaristic past, of Mishima’s desire to reinvent himself from effete aesthete to virile man of action. Does Ross find the sword? Who cares? As with all great journeys, the most memorable moments lie en route to the final destination.