{"id":8149,"date":"2025-11-18T22:13:38","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T22:13:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kevinmaschke.com\/?p=8149"},"modified":"2025-12-07T01:06:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T01:06:11","slug":"beautiful-star-yukio-mishima","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kevinmaschke.com\/en\/beautiful-star-yukio-mishima\/","title":{"rendered":"Beautiful Star, by Yukio Mishima"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cTo Alien, or not to Alien\u201d<\/strong>. That is the question you keep asking yourself while reading Beautiful Star, by Yukio Mishima<\/a>. And, if you\u2019re anything like me, you\u2019ll also be asking yourself where the dark humour it is supposed to be awash with<\/em> is to be found. I\u2019m still searching for it, to be honest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the Alien premise (extraterrestrials and flying saucers) is at the center of the story, and very close to the author, since he actually joined the “Japan Flying Saucer Research Association”<\/strong> in 1956, Mishima manages to dive into many philosophical subjects such as identity, moral responsibility, collective survival, hope or the deep human longing to belong to something larger than ourselves. And it\u2019s all tangled up with his own obsessions and the anxieties of postwar Japan, delivered through the peculiar missions of the \u014csugi family and the eerie Cygnus group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About the Author \u2013 Yukio Mishima<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Yukio Mishima<\/strong> (\u4e09\u5cf6 \u7531\u7d00\u592b) was one of Japan\u2019s most dazzling and controversial literary figures<\/strong>. Born in Tokyo in 1925. He wrote with the precision of a philosopher and the intensity of a dramatist. Rising to prominence in the postwar era with Confessions of a Mask<\/em>, launching a career defined by an extraordinary output of novels, short stories, and plays. His crowning achievement, the Sea of Fertility tetralogy\u2014which contains the novels Spring Snow<\/em> (1969), Runaway Horses<\/em> (1969), The Temple of Dawn<\/em> (1970), and The Decay of the Angel<\/em> (1971) and was completed the day before his death\u2014is considered one of the definitive works of twentieth-century Japanese fiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond his writing, Mishima lived with a kind of theatrical fervor that made him feel larger than life. He founded his own private militia, embraced extreme physical discipline, and cultivated a public persona that blurred art and reality. His dramatic death<\/strong>\u2014an act of political protest carried out with ritualistic precision (seppuku)\u2014cemented his legend<\/strong> and left a shadow that still stirs debate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is it about? \u2013 Synopsis<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The \u014csugi family<\/strong> have come to a realisation. Each of them hails from a different planet<\/strong>. Father from Mars, mother from Jupiter, son from Mercury and daughter from Venus. Already seen as oddballs in their small Japanese town in the 1960s, this extra-terrestrial knowledge brings them closer together; they climb mountains to wait for UFOs, study at home together, and regard their human neighbours with a kindly benevolence. But Father, J\u016bichir\u014d, is worried about the bomb. He writes letters to Krushev, trying to warn everyone he can of the terrible threat. After all, humans may be terribly flawed, but aren’t they worth saving?<\/strong> He sends out a coded message in the newspaper to find other aliens. But there are other extra-terrestrials out there, ones who do not look so kindly on the flaws and foibles of humans. And a charming young man, who claims to be from Venus too, tempts the daughter Akiko away from the family…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What did I think? \u2013 Opinion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Beautiful Star<\/strong> is the first book I read by Yukio Mishima, and it wasn\u2019t at all what I expected. I\u2019d seen it described as a dark comedy from one of Japan\u2019s most celebrated and intense authors, and the premise was irresistible: a seemingly normal Japanese family becomes convinced they are aliens from different planets, tasked with a mission to save humanity from itself.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While I thought I was starting a lean, darkly funny sci-fi satire about a family convinced they\u2019re aliens. What I found was something else entirely. The reading experience was surprisingly challenging<\/strong>. The novel is slow, sometimes tedious and Mishima\u2019s writing style doesn\u2019t really help. It is precise, tense, like every word is carefully carved with a razor. You find yourself reading simple sentences that feel so much more intense than they should.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On occasions it feels more like reading philosophical passages<\/strong>, wrapped into a science fiction novel, and I, personally, found some parts later in the novel to be borderline boring. Especially one moment where the \u014csugi family is visited by three members of the \u201cCygnus Groups\u201d and J\u016bichir\u014d has a marathon debate about humanity\u2019s future that nearly bested my patience<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, I have to admit, that at the end, I was surprised. The ending was not what I expected it to be<\/strong>, strange, ambiguous and very much open to interpretation, if you want it to be. As some time has passed since I read Beautiful Star, I find myself liking the book more. It\u2019s not the best book in my opinion, but, I think that I would have liked it more had I started it with a different mindset. After all, Mishima himself claimed it was \u201cthe best work of his career\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s enough in Beautiful Star<\/em> to fill an entire essay about the different ideas and critiques it represents\u2014the nuclear anxiety after the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the political uncertainty or about how the alien identities and their missions function as Mishima’s mechanism to confront a post-war Japan that he felt had severed itself from its roots, offering polarized, absolute cosmic solutions (total peace or total destruction) to remedy the perceived moral failings of human society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The final question remains: Are the \u014csugis delusional, or are they the only ones paying attention?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rating<\/h2>\n\n\n\t\n\t