My Friend Hitler

While the title is obviously off-putting, this volume (published in 2002) includes 5 new translations of Mishima's plays ("The Rokumeikan," "The Decline and Fall of the Suzaku," "My Friend Hitler," The Terrace of the Leper King," and "A wonder Tale: The Moonbow" as well as several of his critical essays on theatre. The plays range from abstract exploratory character studies to modern re-imaginings of No and Kabuki theatre traditions. Read together in this beautifully translated edition (by Hiroaki Sato), the plays give us even more reason to marvel at Yukio Mishima's descriptive dexterity and versatile command of plot, character, and nuance. Very happy to have access to these plays (which are difficult to find in English translation anywhere else).

Important works of Mishima, along with much needed translations of his kabuki plays. A bit of a niche market but still great to own to see the different sides of Mishima.

in pretty much each preface to each play and essay, translator sato openly comments on some linguistic flourish in the original he doubts can be reproduced in english. his attitude is mainly one of, "well, here goes nothing." you are forced to take this book as a purely academic venture, an historical document, as opposed to any kind of endeavour worthy of the originals. this is bearable until the last two pieces, where the gist that still comes through is so powerful, so sublime, that the limitations of the translation become all the more irritating. they're literal translations, so the aesthetic flavour is diluted, sentances run on forever and sound jilted when spoken aloud. these are not performable plays, however compelling their subjects are. at least theres some vestige of mishima's 60-odd plays in english, and i appreciate that. they are however mostly from the last 3 years of his life. sato also translated the book silk and insight, which i am afraid i have now lost interest in reading. donald keene's trans of five modern noh plays, that's a quality piece. now ive got to head down to robarts library at university of toronto to look at his trans of madame de sade, which is regretably far harder to find, and far more expensive, than this book, having been published once in the late 60s.

This is NOT an evaluation, as I have not seen the book but found the list of plays included elsewhere. Since Amazon in its wisdom declines to provide one, here it is: Rokumeikan Decline & Fall of the Suzaku Family My Friend Hitler Terrace of the Leper King A Wonder Tale: the Moonbow