"Completing this great novel - `The Sea of Fertility` - makes me feel that the end of the world has come..." wrote Yukio Mishima in October 1970. In November, he was dead - after a ritual suicide.
Consisting of four parts, `The Sea of Fertility` represents the flourishing of Mishima's idiosyncratic genius. `Spring Snow` is a noble and moving love story. In `Runaway Horses`, its bloody sequel, a right-wing terrorist takes the leading role. In `The Temple of Dawn`, a Thai princess is mystically connected to the heroes of the previous works. `The Decadent` angel is a work equally exciting and passionate as the previous ones, but imbued with a farewell sadness.
On November 25, 1970, Yukio Mishima, at the peak of his brilliant literary career, shocked the world with his ritual suicide by disembowelment (hara-kiri, or more properly, seppuku). Mishima often referenced themes of suicide and premature death in his works and expressed many times the desire to die young. He completed this tetralogy, his last work, on the morning of the day of his death. Just before committing suicide, he wrote to his friends that he felt empty, having given all his beliefs and feelings about life to this gigantic endeavor, which was later praised as a masterpiece.
[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]
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