Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima to the dark silences of

to the dark silences of their father and the fretful capability of their mother

sacred sanctuaries that reveal themselves to devout pilgrims and in times of crisis

Their accounts of the struggles and hardships which they have at times overcome

its philosophy

Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima to the dark silences of'There is in this world a kind of desire like stinging pain'A Japanese teenager is overcome with longing for his male classmate. He imagines his body punctured with arrows, like the body of St Sebastian in the painting that obsesses him. Over and over again, each night in his private fantasies, the objects of his lust are tortured, killed and maimed. But, in the rigid world of imperial wartime Japan there is no place for such transgressive desires. He