The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea Themes

In Yukio Mishima’s controversial novel The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, 13-year-old Noboru Kuroda watches a budding love affair between his widowed mother, Fusako, and the passionate, enigmatic sailor Ryuji Tsukazaki. At first, Noboru idolizes Ryuji, whom he sees as the perfect masculine hero: a strapping seafarer living a fabulous life of adventure. But Ryuji’s feelings about his own life are more complicated. While he dreams of achieving greatness…

Set in the Japanese port city of Yokohama in the early 1960s, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea is at heart a political allegory. After Japan lost World War II, the occupying Americans imposed a liberal democracy and capitalist economy that enabled the nation to grow and reconstruct, but—according to traditionalists like the novel’s author, Yukio Mishima—also crushed its people’s spirit and identity. Thus, by the 1960s, Japan faced a stark choice…

The central characters in The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea are preoccupied with identity: they worry about who they truly are and what kind of people they will become. For instance, Noboru wants to become an adventurous sailor like Ryuji, but also a cold-hearted nihilist like the chief, and doesn’t know if he can be both at the same time. Similarly, Ryuji wonders if he can remain a sailor at…