Sun & steel Paperback – 1 Jan. 1970

I've never seen anyone who talks about "aesthetics" and "physicality" actually define and contrast them like Mishima; they usually merely dance around the concepts and spout obscure platitudes.Not so with Mishima - his work is poetic but with purpose. Militant but vulnerable.This is an insight into a man who has learned what it means to build one's own sense of conviction.Most will not be ready for this; as a fencer myself it entered my life at the perfect time to understand it.The print I got was less than stellar with odd font choice and strange formatting which belie the deep value of the words within, but the knowledge itself is worth the price of admission.

I was struggling to find this book and amazon came in clutch. It's a great read this.

One of the many autobiographies that Mishima wrote in his life this book gives you a clear view of who he was at the time it was written. It can be a difficult to understand if you decide to read it all in one breathe. His thoughts and feelings develop in strange patterns and shaped that one can only follow if they take time to think over what they had just read before moving on.Reading this book it is very clear that he was a very disturbed man with a lot of issues that he tried to sort out but not always successfully. People that have read books like "The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima" (highly recommended) will find "Sun and Steal" to be the perfect compliment and to give that extra bit of information that you do not get from the other book.I would recommend this book to people that can appreciate Mishima's unique stile or writing and can understand the self-loathing he went through during the span of his short but creative life.

I have been a Mishima fan for over 40 years and new translations are still being released. This particular book is a re issue of one of Mishimas famous writings toward the end of his life. This is a book that you cannot rush and you can enjoy it if you take your time and then you can appreciate his true nature and uniqueness of his complex visions.

Sun and Steel is finally back in publication by the fantastic Rogue Scholar Press. The cover is great and the content is inspiring. I've purchased both a hard and soft cover. One for annotating and studying, the other for collection.

Lovely book but very thin for the hefty price tag. Felt very ripped off.

WOULD NOT BUY! (I would give it 0 stars if I could.)I had to return it as it masks as the 1970's edition but it is actually a very cheap re-printed copy.The print is low quality on awfully thin and overall bad paper. The print on the cover is blurry and tilted.Overall - it looks more like a cheap magazine than a book.Feels like a scam and it is DEFINITELY not worth the 21£.

A new way of looking at the human condition with many beautiful passages that will provide inspiration especially for those who are working on improving their physical self.

Reading this gives you true schizo aura

Mishima's 'Sun & Steel' is a perplexing journey into the mind of an undoubtedly impressive, yet deeply troubled individual. His philosophy of life, as presented in this work, is as convoluted as it is disturbing, offering a glimpse into a psyche that is as fascinating as it is fractured.While it might have been beneficial to read 'Confessions of a Mask' beforehand for some context, I find myself hesitant to delve further into Mishima's world. The allure of 'Sun & Steel' is akin to a mirage in the desert - it glimmers enticingly from afar, but upon closer inspection, it's clear that not all that glitters is gold... or steel... or sun.

Für alle, die gerne genauer wissen möchten, ob sich die Anschaffung lohnt: Diese Neuausgabe ist zwar teuer, qualitativ aber auch wirklich gut (wobei ich mich auf die gebundene Ausgabe beziehe). Sie ist innen identisch mit der alten, nur noch für viel Geld antiquarisch zu findenden von 1970; das heißt, obwohl es sich um ein book on demand handelt, ist das Schriftbild nicht dilettantisch und billig, sondern eben professionell. Die Bindung und die gesamte Aufmachung sind ebenfalls von hoher Qualität. Wer also dieses Buch schon lange in einer ordentlichen analogen Ausgabe gesucht hat, kann hier ruhig zugreifen.

Mishima has a very interesting vocabulary.Even though this is a translation I found it very beautiful to read. I can’t even begin to imagine how nice it reads in his mother tongue.The hardcover copy seems a bit low quality which is why I give this review 4 stars.

This book is a literary type that was once common in Japan, the self-obsessive partial memoir. But Mishima's style, tone, and content are absolutely unique.He writes about the relation between world and word, body and mind or spirit. But to me, the most interesting aspect of this book, and Mishima's whole outlook is something that's often overlooked. It is this, he could not stand ugliness. He shrank from (his own perception of) ugliness as we would from a rabid rat. So then, how did he define beauty and ugliness? You may call it shallow but no matter, this book makes no apologies: beauty or ugliness lie in physical appearance, body and face.To most of us there are many kinds of beauty, and maybe that multi-perception keeps us going - we see or imagine the beauty of inner virtue, selfless giving, artistic projection, humility or humor and so on. A wide expansive definition.But there's room on your bookshelf for somebody who takes an uncompromising view: beauty is the beauty of your body and your appearance. While it can be crafted and guided by external method (who knows what Mishima would have thought of the cosmetic surgery craze now sweeping China), ultimately physical beauty to him is the only important projection of the soul.The insanely monomaniacal American football coach Vince Lombardi once said "Winning isn't everything - it's the only thing". This book, despite all its meandering and subtle threads, is really saying just that, about beauty - it's the only thing. And Mishima, at mid-life, was losing all illusions about attaining or retaining any personal beauty.Of course what sheds the interesting backlight on this book for most readers is Mishima's dramatic seppuku at Ichigaya Japan self-defense force headquarters. (Reminds me of the wit who stated, when informed of Sylvia Plath's suicide, "Good career move".) People read this book to try to unravel the mystery of it.But in light of what I've said above, about beauty and Mishima's uniquely narrow definition of it, this book leaves no mystery to his action. Just as Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray slashed the ugliness accumulated on his horribly aging portrait, Mishima, lacking a magic painting, did just the same to his own body - sentenced it to death for the crimes of aging and ugliness.It is entirely summed up by the following single line from 'Sun and Steel':"I had already lost the morning face that belongs to youth alone."