Confessions of a Mask
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Confessions of a Mask (仮面の告白 Kamen no kokuhaku) is Japanese author Yukio Mishima's first novel. Published in 1948, it launched him to national fame though he was only in his early twenties.
Confessions of a Mask is an account, usually considered at least semi-autobiographical, of a boy growing up in a Japan that is war-torn and militaristic. Entirely unsuited by nature to this environment, the narrator must weave an intricate and profoundly self-defeating facade around himself as he discovers his sexuality. This mask leads him into a pitiful affair with a young woman which only redoubles his fear of his peculiarity, into deceiving his parents, and into effectively becoming further estranged from himself the older he becomes. It also becomes fixated upon the link between sexuality and violence, and the narrator's tendency to dream in this vein is recounted with mixed feelings of horror and fascination.
