Acts of Worship – Seven Stories –

“When Mishima died a ritual death in November 1970, he was only forty-five. He had written forty novels, eighteen plays, and twenty volumes of short stories, and was nominated three times for the Nobel Prize. During his lifetime, he had seen almost all his major novels appear in English and other languages. An actor, a movie and theater director, he had also conducted a symphony orchestra, and become an accomplished swordsman and a muscle man.

The flamboyance of his life and the apparent fanaticism of his death have dominated the public’s perception of his achievement. But now, twenty years later, it is time for a reassessment, one that asks: does Mishima really have anything to offer the world that is of lasting value when stripped of the sensationalism associated with his name?’

And the answer is provided in these seven stories, which are important for several reasons:
Mishima is probably at his best in the shorter forms, and it is the flower of these that appears here for the first time in an English collection.
They span his entire career.
They are all consistently interesting as stories, and each has its own distinctive atmosphere.
The psychological observation, particularly in what it reveals of the turnmoil of adolescence, is meticulous.
There is great variety of mood – from the semi-surrealistic to the historically romantic.
The style, with its skillful blending of colors and surfaces, its carefully planned set pieces of description, shows Mishima in top form.
And, unlike much of his compatriots’ fiction which can seem curiously haphazard, these pieces are brilliantly organized, yielding deeper layers of meaning with repeated readings.

No further proof is need to remind us that Mishima was a consummate writer whose work is an irreplaceable part of world literature.”