Sun and Steel (essay)
20th century Japanese essay From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sun and Steel: Art, Action and Ritual Death (Japanese: 太陽と鉄, Hepburn: Taiyō to Tetsu) is an autobiographical essay by Yukio Mishima detailing his artistic relationship to his body. Meditating on his transformative experiences with bodybuilding and martial arts training,[1] Mishima considers their impact on his creative practice and concludes that literature, in its ideal form, is inextricable from physical exertion.[2][3]
Cover of the first edition | |
| Author | Yukio Mishima |
|---|---|
| Original title | 太陽と鉄 Taiyō to Tetsu |
| Language | Japanese |
| Genre | Essay |
| Publisher | Kodansha |
Publication date | 1968 |
| Publication place | Japan |
First published in 1965 by Hihyō, a magazine founded by Takeshi Maramatsu, the essay was published in book form by Kodansha in 1968. An English translation by John Bester followed in 1970, less than a year before the author's death.[4][5] In 1972, the American fiction writer Hortense Calisher billed the book as "a classic of self-revelation" and Mishima as "a mind of the utmost subtlety, broadly educated". Calisher wrote, "To paraphrase him in words not his, [...] is to try to build a china pagoda with a peck of nails. [...] only the frivolous will not empathize with what is going on here; this is a being for whom life—and death too—must be exigeant."[5]
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