Staff Pick: The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
Published on 12th August 2025
Yukio Mishima’s The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea is a fascinating, provocative novella. The writing is very descriptive, often beautifully so. On its face, the book tells the story of a widowed woman, Fusako, who meets and falls in love with a man, Ryuji, and the impact this has on her teenage son. The son, Noboru, and his group of intellectually precocious friends initially admire Ryuji. He is a sailor who seems to have rejected onshore life and its banality in favour of the sea. However, as the story progresses, the boys begin to doubt Ryuji and his legitimacy.
Nowadays, those who are aware of Yukio Mishima are likely aware of his attempted coup d’etat and subsequent death by seppuku (or ritual suicide). In this book, Mishima’s strident views are rarely far from surface. Noboru and his group of friends, who all consider themselves geniuses, are intent on “breaking … society’s loathsome taboos”. There is, for example, one passage of animal cruelty which will be too much for some readers. The boys are deeply critical of the world that surrounds them and consider themselves superior to it. Like Mishima himself, they eventually act on these convictions.
The novella is a critique of post-war Japan’s embrace of Western culture and values. It rejects those attitudes and instead seeks to valorise ideals such as honour and glory. More important than the views espoused is the quality of the writing. Mishima is an excellent writer whose challenging ideas will turn many off but whose work is worth engaging with as a particular perspective on Japan in the middle of the twentieth century.
Submitted by Peadar C in LMS.