Voices of the Fallen Heroes

A new selection of lyrically haunting short stories from a Japanese literary icon

A writer is seized by apocalyptic visions; a voyeuristic marquis commits a brutal act; and a trio of beatniks dance to modern jazz in the ruins of an abandoned church. Here, stark autobiography contrasts with pure horror, and the tenderness of first love cedes to obsession, heartbreak and deathly beauty. A new selection of Mishima’s short stories from the 1960s, Voices of the Fallen Heroes traces the final decade of Mishima’s career and offers a unique glimpse into the mind of one of Japan’s greatest writers.

In the title story, a séance brings forth the spirits of young officers in the Imperial Army and the kamikaze pilots of the Second World War, who reproach the Emperor and mourn Japan’s modern decline. In another, Mishima recounts the true story of the time a deranged fan broke into his home at dawn, insisting on meeting the author and imploring him to ‘tell the truth’. Elsewhere, a beautiful youth achieves eternal life through violent murder, and an ill-matched couple seal their fate with a pack of cards, tangled in the web of time and unfulfilled desire.

Available in English for the first time, and carefully selected by expert translators, these captivating stories are the perfect introduction to Mishima's work, on the 100th anniversary of his birth.

Review

Mesmerising... wonderfully realised in English... Each one of the stories merits its inclusion in this collection, but two in particular stand out as masterpieces. 'The Flower Hat' is a miracle of compressed tension and potent socio-political discourse... the title story 'Voices of the Fallen Heroes' presents Mishima's art at its most mesmerising, complex and formidable -- David Vernon ― Spectator

In the turbulent sea of the master Yukio Mishima's literature, these stories are waves of fury, desire and delicious cruelty, always kissed by beauty and death. The ghosts and the violence that haunted his last decade of life also offer a glimpse of post-war Japan, a country full of trauma and grief. He wrote always in a frenzy but his style is so elegant and detailed that it seems, and is, timeless. I loved every page and was shaken by the complexity and darkness of these stories -- Mariana Enríquez

All of Yukio Mishima is on display in these fourteen short stories ― the literary muscle of one of Japan’s greatest ever writers flushed and flexed on every page: all of his phenomenal powers of description; all of the celebrated tenderness and acuity of his writing; all of the man’s gleeful irreverence and originality. Here, too, are the signs of disturbance ― of a reactionary politics and a fascination with violence that would lead to his spectacular demise. An important and timely collection of stories by a writer who casts a long shadow across the present -- Diarmuid Hester

Mishima is the Japanese Hemingway ― Life Magazine

One of the greatest avant-garde Japanese writers of the twentieth century ― New Yorker

He can be funny, even hilarious, but he is also capable of plunging into the dark psychic depths achieved by Hitchcock ― New York Times Book Review

About the Author

Yukio Mishima was born in 1925 in Tokyo, and is considered one of Japan's most important writers. His books broke social boundaries and taboos at a time when Japan found itself in a state of rapid social change. His interests, besides writing, included body-building, acting and practising martial arts. In 1970, he attempted to start a military coup, which failed. Upon realizing this, Mishima performed seppuku, a ritual suicide. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature three times.