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The Frolic of the Beasts: Penguin Japanese Classics

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The gripping story of an affair gone horribly wrong, from one of Japan's greatest twentieth-century writers

Koji, a young student, has fallen hopelessly in love with the beautiful, enigmatic Yuko. But she is married to the literary critic and serial philanderer Ippei. Tormented by desire and anger, Koji is driven to an act of violence that will bind this strange, terrible love triangle together for the rest of their lives. A starkly compelling story of lust, guilt and punishment, The Frolic of the Beasts explores the masks we wear in life, and what happens when they slip.

'One of the greatest avant-garde Japanese writers of the twentieth century' New Yorker

Review

This morose little gem boasts its share of sensuous depravity ― Wall Street Journal

Mishima was one of literature's great romantics, a tragedian with a heroic sensibility, an intellectual, an esthete, a man steeped in Western letters who toward the end of his life became a militant Japanese nationalist ― New York Times

Mishima is the Japanese Hemingway ― Life Magazine

A writer of immense energy and ability ― Time Out

A sexually and psychologically complex novel... in a honed translation by Andrew Clare ― TLS

From the Back Cover

Koji, a young student, has fallen hopelessly in love with the beautiful, enigmatic Yuko. But she is married to the literary critic and serial philanderer Ippei. Tormented by desire and anger, Koji is driven to an act of violence that will bind this strange, terrible love triangle together for the rest of their lives. A starkly compelling story of lust, guilt and punishment, The Frolic of the Beasts explores the masks we wear in life, and what happens when they slip.

Review:

4.7 out of 5

94.00% of customers are satisfied

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant

S.F. · 7 April 2023

Mishima changes your life if you read his books as I have many times for 40 years.For Not just visions do you experience but true sensations that convince you that he was a genius and he also truly and genuinlygreatly rewards the reader when he transports you to his world.Your brain will be excerised and refreshed in a unique way created by mishima. The new translation is first class.the U. S. version from vintage has an award winning cover illustration.

4.0 out of 5 stars Definately Mishima

M.C. · 17 April 2019

It's taken 58 years for this Mishima novel to finally get published in an English translation! Worth the wait?Well, it's definately Mishama - the study of his characters' psychopathology is instantly recognisable, and they're as wrong in the head in this tale as any of his others. I guess one might even complain its almost Mishima by numbers. But I've loved Mishima for decades already, and I enjoyed this one too.

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent translation of Mishima's classic story

a. · 1 May 2023

Beautifully crafted translation of this classic Mishima work that accurately and sensitively captures the beauty, cruelty and pathos of the original Japanese.

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic

M. · 20 February 2023

everyone should read Mishima - a good addition to his work in translation

5.0 out of 5 stars Nice new edition

d. · 12 March 2020

Beautiful, clear and sinister as usual in Mishima’s oeuvre

My new favorite Mishima

C.O. · 23 January 2020

I've been eagerly anticipating my return to the traversal of Yukio Mishima's work. I was unprepared for the astonishing beauty of his novel of love-spawned violence and its implications and resonance, The Frolic of the Beasts. The lapidary density of detail, the painting of momentary elemental ambience, Mishima's characteristic narrative illumination through his musings on the ocean, the clouds, the quality of breeze through a mosquitp net, demand close reading; reading aloud would be best. Each phrase is exquisite and demands its space and time. I credit the expert English translation by one new to Mishima's roster of spokesmen to English-speaking audiences, Andrew Clare. His Vintage Original is of quite recent vintage. Would that Mr. Clare seeks to restore the few Mishima translations wrought slap-dashedly by Alfred H. Marks.It might just be a question of absence making the heart grow fonder, but I credit Andrew Clare with his contribution to making The Frolic of the Beasts my new favorite Mishima.

Honest and excellent product

T.T. · 7 March 2021

Great book! Fast shipping. Book arrived earlier than expected. Will purchase from again!

Quietly compelling study of powerlessness.

A.M. · 9 November 2019

The past couple of years have seen an unexpected bounty of new Mishima translations. "The Frolic Of The Beasts," now available in English for the first time, was written in 1961 (after "Kyoko's House" and "After The Banquet") and thus belongs to Mishima's mature period. It is by far the best work among the new crop of translations (the others being the 1962 novella "Star" and the rather bizarre 1968 farce "Life For Sale") and warrants close attention from anyone with an interest in this author.The first chapter of this novel describes a young man named Koji, who becomes infatuated with an unhappily married woman and brutally assaults her cruel husband, leaving the latter partially paralyzed. After serving his prison sentence, Koji is sought out by the woman, who is still married to the same man, and invited to come and live with them in the nominal role of hired hand. Most of the book describes their uncomfortable coexistence; while there is still some attraction between Koji and Yuko, she does not allow it to develop, and their life together is mainly driven by what seems like her deep-rooted desire to inflict pain on herself and both men.The quality of the writing is very high (quite unlike "Life For Sale"). Mishima takes a slow, restrained tone, evoking the discomfort of this strange relationship through Koji's day-to-day ennui and the persistent feeling that all three of the principal characters are brooding on something that they are unable or unwilling to express. In one chapter, the focus moves away from Yuko and Ippei altogether, and Mishima instead shows Koji spending his free time with the local village youths. This chapter has a curious meandering quality, but although it is not clear where the author is going with it, tonally it makes a perfect fit with the rest of the book. There is a pervasive sense of ponderous discontent beneath the youths' outwardly carefree gatherings -- their own unsatisfied desires, their feelings of loneliness or abandonment, seething under the surface, at once mirror Koji's alienation and make it impossible for him to overcome it.The setting in which all of this takes place also makes a powerful impression. The mountains and seaside are rendered with short, but very precise descriptive phrases, creating images of vast, indifferent stillness: "Similarly, the silver oil tanks standing on the opposite shore intermittently appeared small and white, and then disappeared from view again. Above this vantage point, countless stars filled the night sky." (90) These images have an insidious, lingering effect on how the psychological collision between the characters is perceived. Their pettiness and cruelty look especially empty in this beautiful setting, but at the same time are reflected in its uncaring coldness.The main characters, particularly Koji and Yuko, are powerfully drawn. Koji is shown sympathetically, as a tough guy who has no inclination for intellectual navel-gazing, but who nonetheless has a lot going on in his head. Many of the memories and images that go through his mind are very affecting, for example when he recalls how, in prison, he was forced to manufacture holiday supplements for magazines. The memory is not altogether bad ("How he had adored the colors -- like the gaudy plumage of a cockatoo!") but leads him to the following conclusion: "He resolved never to have children. He wouldn't be able to bear watching his child delightfully fingering the paper toys. He felt sure he would be a hard-to-please, disagreeable father." (84-85) Koji's reflections have a down-to-earth, understandable character, in deliberate contrast with Ippei's artificial, heavily intellectualized, deliberate cruelty. Of course, that's a purposeful philosophical point by Mishima, who was known for praising the virtues of the body over the mind.Yuko's cruelty, on the other hand, is much more primal in nature -- in fact, she very much shares Koji's capacity for gratuitous violence, it's just more understated (but no less shocking, as when she deliberately jabs a local girl's hand with a needle). Yuko is in some sense the one completely inexplicable, irrational character in this novel. Her actions are outwardly contradictory, the only coherent thread that could possibly hold them together is sadism mixed with self-hatred -- she diligently takes care of her paralyzed husband, only to insult and humiliate him, and likewise she invites Koji to live with them, only to torment him. Mishima never explains this in any remotely satisfying way, since her married life with Ippei prior to Koji's arrival is sketched out with almost no detail. Perhaps he deliberately avoided providing anything that could be regarded as an explanation. Perhaps it is an artistic failure on his part, or maybe a success, or some of both. But in any case, even if Yuko is only a two-dimensional image, in a way that image is very believable and makes a deep impact, even if it is lacking in other aspects.The weakest parts of the book are those where Mishima attempts to handle the main conflict directly. Dialogue, at least in this book (but if you think about it, probably in others as well), seems to bore him. Koji's declarative monologue, directed at Ippei towards the end, is quite flat and, in my opinion, cheapens his suffering and makes him look like a self-absorbed boor. Ippei's response, on the other hand, comes across as less of a philosophical realization (which, I think, is how it was intended) and more of a simple and desperate cry for help from a person who is forced to depend on these two crazed sadists, which by now seems like excessive punishment for his old misdeeds.But, even if "The Frolic of the Beasts" contains artistic flaws, one can also find them in "After The Banquet" and "The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea." This is clearly Mishima in his artistic prime, and English-speaking readers should be very pleased with this addition to the available catalogue.

Compelling read

A. · 17 March 2019

This darkly brooding story has all the hallmarks of a classic Mishima tale. It deals with death, crime and punishment in a compact setting. Well worth the read.

Good novel

F. · 9 June 2022

A great novel about a love triangle.

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The Frolic of the Beasts: Penguin Japanese Classics

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Product origin: United Kingdom

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