Title: Re-recognition of Mishima’s Literature: An Analysis of the Writing Characteristics of Yukio Mishima’s Popular Novels

Abstract: In the history of Japanese literature, Yukio Mishima has been positioned as a pure literary writer, but in fact, Mishima had also created a large number of popular novels. According to statistics, the popular novels of Mishima occupy almost half of the total number of his fictions. Mishima’s creation of popular novels was not only related to the decline of pure literature and the population of popular literature at that time, but also influenced by industry peers and the economic situation of Mishima himself. In the creation of popular literary novels, Mishima gave up his unique and weird aesthetic thoughts and free writing styles. He turned instead to take real society as the background for his fiction by combining current situation and hot topics. He adjusted his writing style to fall in with the requirements of the magazine for publication. Yet, Mishima still insisted on the independence of creation, and tried to express his own standpoints and opinions at the same time. Mishima’s mainstream fiction has gained a lot of popularity for him and expanded his social influence. Together with his pure literary novels, Mishima’s popular literary novels have further consolidated his important position in the history of Japanese literature.

Keywords: Yukio Mishima, popular novel, writing characteristics

Author: Siyu Tao, Ph.D candidate, School of Humanities, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.