{"product_id":"9781611725247","title":"Persona: A Biography of Yukio Mishima","description":"\u003cp\u003eYukio Mishima (b. 1925) was a brilliant writer and intellectual whose relentless obsession with beauty, purity, and patriotism ended in his astonishing self-disembowelment and decapitation in downtown Tokyo in 1970. Nominated for the Nobel Prize, Mishima was the best-known novelist of his time (works like \u003ci\u003eConfessions of a Mask\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Temple of the Golden Pavilion\u003c\/i\u003e are still in print in English), and his legacy—his \u003ci\u003epersona\u003c\/i\u003e—is still honored and puzzled over.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWho was Yukio Mishima really? This, the first full biography to appear in English in almost forty years, traces Mishima's trajectory from a sickly boy named Kimitake Hiraoka to a hard-bodied student of martial arts. In detail it examines his family life, the wartime years, and his emergence, then fame, as a writer and advocate for traditional values. Revealed here are all the personalities and conflicts and sometimes petty backbiting that shaped the culture of postwar literary Japan.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWorking entirely from primary sources and material unavailable to other biographers, author Naoki Inose and translator Hiroaki Sato together have produced a monumental work that covers much new ground in unprecedented depth. Using interviews, social and psychological analysis, and close reading of novels and essays, \u003ci\u003ePersona\u003c\/i\u003e removes the mask that Mishima so artfully created to disguise his true self.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eNaoki Inose\u003c\/b\u003e, currently vice governor of Tokyo, has also written biographies of writers Kikuchi Kan and Osamu Dazai.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eNew York–based \u003cb\u003eHiroaki Sato\u003c\/b\u003e is an award-winning translator of classical and modern Japanese poetry, and also translated Mishima's novel \u003ci\u003eSilk and Insight\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Stone Bridge Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47139168911600,"sku":"9781611725247","price":19.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781611725247_p0.jpg?v=1763846827","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781611725247","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}