A soul desirous of the most authentic as it was Yukio Mishima it always ends up colliding with the farce of conventions, with the fleetingness of time, with the peremptory feeling of happiness.
In this novel A Life for Sale, the author presents an alter ego in its essentials. Hanio Yamada, the publicist and protagonist of the story may not apparently have much to do with the author. And yet his disoriented vitalism, his nihilism as existential drift in the face of frustration emanate from the same tormented soul of Yukio Mishima.
The point is that Hanio Yamada has a still young life, of wasted time that may perhaps be the subject of commercial exchange. In a fit of defeatist idea, Hanio decides to put his life up for sale. And nothing better than the classified section of a newspaper in which others sell their bodies, memories of their past or advertise an alienating job.
It is suggestive for me to think about what would happen in reality. The grotesque idea would generate a multitude of reactions that, in many cases, would go beyond fiction….
Different potential buyers contact Hanio to carry out the transaction. Of course, the offer of a life becomes for every wicked buyer a kind of slavery to please the most evil instincts or pretensions. From an infiltrated spy agent to a young man with whom to cover twisted sexual needs, going through a particular hit man with whom to face old family quarrels ...
Hanio Yamada tries to face the consequences of his decision, until he understands that living on the knife's edge of the most twisted wants or needs of others exhausts him. With the discovery that so many people in the world are equal to or worse than he is enough. The problem is, do you know if you will be able to back down from your first decision to sell your life? Contracts, no matter how leonine they may be, once signed must be fulfilled ...
The idea of this novel borders on absurd humor, with an acid point, from the lucidity of one who observes the void. And that observer is none other than Yukio Mishima, a guy capable as he was of leaving the scene with that oriental theatricality of seppuku, which has been a beheading.
The most curious thing about this novel is that it recovers after many years of ostracism. Published in installments in the 60s, it is now being recovered for the West thanks to the good reception of new Japanese readers.
You can now buy the novel A Life for Sale, a unique book by Yukio Mishima, here: