Kaburagi (who falls for Yuichi only to find that her husband has gone slightly further with him than she has) also struggle to find a purpose in life. The three main female characters, Yasuko (Yuichi’s wife), Kyoko (a young society wife) and Mrs. However, it is not only the men who feel excluded from society. The sense of desperation at being forced underground and having to hide their true feelings from the ‘normal’ society feeds into the hedonistic behaviour seen at the cafes and parties the men frequent. Mishima depicts the life of gay society in the Tokyo of the time, with young men waiting in coffee shops to be picked up by captains of industry or one of the many rich foreigners occupying Japan.
In all the affairs and deception, the reader is made to observe the life of the outsider. Eventually, Shunsuke begins to feel that he is falling for Yuichi’s beauty himself… Although Shunsuke is initially in control of the naive young man, Yuichi soon becomes emboldened by his success with both men and women and starts to play his own games. The author is using Yuichi to get back at someone who has hurt him in love he also manages to get the young man to start affairs with two married women where he is to drive them to distraction and then hurt them (one by sleeping with her husband…). Shunsuke, after giving Yuichi 500,000 yen, persuades the young man to marry Yasuko, the woman arranged for him by both sets of parents. A chance encounter with a famous novelist and poet, Shunsuke Hinoki, who discovers the secret of Yuichis’s homosexuality, is the catalyst for a series of gay flings and longer love affairs, both sexual and merely teasing. ‘Forbidden Colours’, set in post-war Japan, centres on the life of Yuichi Minami, an attractive young man who sets pulses racing (of both genders) wherever he goes.
So now, ever true to my word, here’s the second of my chance purchases. Back in February (book 12a – yes, 12a…), I related a tale of getting lost in the city and the purchases that resulted but only reviewed one of the two books I picked up.
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