talyseon's Full Review: Yukio Mishima - Forbidden Colors
Forbidden Colors by Yukio Mishima (ISBN 9780375705168).
This is perhaps the most included foreign novel on every "10 Best Gay Books." Written in 1951 by Japan's most celebrated author, the book has become a classic, even surviving Mishima's bizarre seppuku or ritual suicide in 1970.
Forbidden Colors translates as Kinjiki. The first word kinji means 'forbidden.' Ki means desires, but can also means colours in Japanese.
The story centers around an odd trio; Shunsuke` Hinoki, a famous author in his sixties, disgusted by the decay of age, attracted to the beauty of youth, and somehow, bitter that he, the brilliant one, should not have been spared the indignities of aging. The object of his twisted obsession is Yasuko Segawa, a nineteen year old girl he met when she asked for his autograph. He wondered if he could at his advanced age, still hate women with the same intensity as he had in his youth, through his three marriages. The instrument of this experiment is Yuichi Minami, an incredibly beautiful young man desired by both men and women.
On some levels, Forbidden Colors is the all Transvestite review of Charles Dicken's Great Expectations. Hinoki is Miss Havisham, an embittered, socially powerful puppet master. Yasuko plays the part of Pip, the victim chosen for no better reason than they are desirable and remind the abuser of lost love and vitality. The part of Estella is played by Yuichi, but while Estella knew she was a monster, and chose to protect Pip by marrying a man who was as much a monster as herself, Yuichi does not even see his evil.
Hinoki manipulates things introducing Yuichi to the shallow but gratifying world of Japan's homosexual scene, desired and admired by so many, the basically empty Yuichi draws sustenance from the many men he uses and abuses.
At the same time, Hinoki arranges for Yuichi to marry the lovely Yasuko, transforming her life to a morass of bitterness, jealousy and humiliation.
If the trio can be compared to the protagonists of Great Expectations, the two men can be compared to another great work by a gay author, The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde. Yuichi Minami is much like Dorian Gray, always beautiful, desirable, the cruelty with in never marring the perfection of his face. Shunsuke` Hinoki is his picture, becoming older, uglier and more corrupt as he reveals in the swath of destruction and despair his protoge` creates.
Yukio Mishima saw himself as a modern day samurai, a warrior poet. With the classic Japanese melding of art and war he wields his brush like a katana, scribing word pictures of minimalist structure, haunting beauty, and disturbing impact. Forbidden Colors is not a happy book, it is depressing, angry, hostile, and starkly graceful. It lingers in the mind, a psychic aftertaste that is addictive. The characters are deeply flawed, but you come to care for them, even the hideous Hinoki.
Like his earlier Masterpiece, Confessions of a Mask, Forbidden Colors is assumed to be at least somewhat autobiographical. Considering the manner of Mishima's death, I have to wonder if it was instead prophetic, and that Mishima chose to avoid the fate of becoming one of his own characters.
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