The Story Archive

Confessions of a Mask

Yukio Mishima · 1949 CE · Novel · Japanese · Contemporary

A sickly boy in wartime Tokyo works out that his desire runs toward the bodies of men and toward pictures of martyrdom, and sets about assembling the performance of normality his school and family expect of him. He courts a friend's sister, tests himself in a dance hall, and reports each sensation with clinical exactness. The book that made Mishima at twenty-four, and the first fitting of the mask he wore for the rest of his life.

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Attributes

Genre
PsychologicalComing-of-Age
Theme
Identity & SelfAppearance vs RealityForbidden LoveIsolation & Alienation
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
EverymanThe Double
Plot structure
ConfessionBildungsroman
Symbol / motif
The MaskThe MirrorBlood
Conflict
vs Selfvs Society
Mode / tone
ModernistIronic
Culture / tradition
Japanese

Closest analogues