Confessions of a Mask
By Yukio Mishima
 
First UK edition, first impression: London: Peter Owen Ltd., 1960.
 
Octavo. Original pale grey cloth, titles to spine in bronze. With the original pictorial dust jacket designed by Keith Rader, priced 18s. Translated from the Japanese by Meredith Weatherby.
 
A very good copy. The binding firm and square, the cloth clean and fresh, with only light toning at the spine ends. The text block evenly toned with some spotting to edges, otherwise sound internally and free from ownership inscriptions or stamps.
 
The dust jacket very good, unclipped, with a short closed tear to the top edge of upper panel and a longer one to the top of the lower panel spine hinge; tiny chip to spine foot; small nick to top edge of lower flap, but overall an attractive example, the bold, expressionistic design remaining strong and visually striking.
 
A very good copy of an uncommon book.
 
Yukio Mishima (1925–1970) remains one of the most important and controversial figures in twentieth-century Japanese literature. A novelist, playwright, essayist, and nationalist polemicist, he achieved international renown while still in his twenties. Confessions of a Mask, first published in Japan in 1949, is his breakthrough work: a daring, semi-autobiographical exploration of sexuality, repression, and identity in post-war Japan. Its psychological candour and stylistic intensity secured Mishima’s reputation in the West and marked the emergence of a distinctively modern Japanese voice in translation. His later career—culminating in the monumental Sea of Fertility tetralogy and his dramatic death in 1970—cemented his status as a writer of singular ambition and enduring global influence.