Why read The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea?

Book cover of The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

Book description

A band of savage 13-year-old boys reject the adult world as illusory, hypocritical, and sentimental, and train themselves in a brutal callousness they call 'objectivity'. When the mother of one of them begins an affair with a ship's officer, he and his friends idealise the man at first; but it…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Donovan Miyasaki

Author

Nietzsche’s greatest admirers often distort his views. Mishima is no exception. Considering his nationalism, militarism, and ritualistic suicide, it’s little surprise he endorses the popular misconception of Nietzsche as a champion of egoism and power.

In this fascinating, disturbing story, adolescent boys create a club devoted to an amoral, pseudo-Nietzschean ideal. When they encounter a mysterious sailor, they worship him as a living embodiment of their values until he defies the image they’ve created.

Mishima misinterprets Nietzsche but in a critically illuminating way. The boys’ ultimate reaction to their disappointing demi-god proves their hypocrisy, revealing that they idolize precisely the…

From Donovan's list on Japanese novels that illuminate Nietzsche’s philosophy (or distort it in illuminating ways!).

David Leo Rice

Author

This is a great novel about the romance of drifting and the danger (and perhaps also the necessity) of trying to bring your drifting to an end. The story "The Hate Room" in this collection is partly an homage to Mishima's delicate balance of beauty and brutality, as well as my own time in Japan (although it was nothing like that of the characters in the story!).

From David's list on being a drifter or solitary wanderer at large.