As the dramatic climax of The Sea of Fertility
, The Decay of the Angel
brings together the dominant themes of the three previous novels: the meaning and decay of Japan's courtly tradition and sumurai ideal; the essence and value of Buddhist philosophy and aesthetics; and underlying all, Mishima's apocalyptic vision of the modern era, which saw the dissolution of the moral and cultural forces that throughout the ages nourished a people and a world.
The time is the late 1960s. Honda, now an aged and wealthy man, discovers and adopts a a sixteen-year-old orphan, Touru, as his heir, identifying him with the tragic protagonists of the three previous novels, each of whom died at the age of twenty. Honda raises and educates the boy, yet watches him, waiting.
Original title: 天人五衰 (Tennin Gosui) [The Five Decays of Man and God]
Genre: Fiction→ General Fiction→ Literary Fiction/classics
- Upon completion of The Decay of the Angel, the author, Yukio Mishima, attempted his coup d'etat and comitted seppuku, ritual disembowelment, also known as hara-kiri and often bastardized incorrectly as hari-kari