Famous Japanese writer Yukio Mishima was beheaded with his own old sword in 1970 after stabbing himself in the stomach. Many have questioned a great deal about this remarkable suicide in the decades that have passed. Christopher Ross wondered, What on earth happened to Mishima’s sword? And so Ross sets off for Tokyo on a journey into the heart of the Mishima legend — the very heart of Japan. It was a country Ross knew well after nearly five years of living there, but nothing could have prepared him for this. While searching for the fabled sword, Ross encounters the rather startling range of those who knew Mishima—a world, or perhaps more accurately, a demimonde, of craftsmen and critics, soldiers and swordsmen, boyfriends and biographers (even the man who taught Mishima hara-kiri). The trail Ross follows inspires a travelogue of the most eye-opening—and occasionally bizarre — sort, a window into the real Japan that is never seen by tourists and the occasion for digressions on, among other things, socks and the code of the samurai, nosebleeds and metallurgy, and even how to dress for suicide. A captivating read, Mishima's Sword is ideal for anyone with an interest in anything Japanese, including gangsters, Genji, manga, and Mishima. ( )

I enjoyed this - it's very much the kind of book that tickles my fancy. Not quite a memoir, nor a travel book, nor a biography - it's a kind of mixture of the lot. The author's search for the sword with which Mishima Yukio famously committed sappuku after a failed coup in 1970 leads him (literally) down alleyways and into cafes, encountering terribly polite yakuza gangsters, and ultimately realising that his quest was for something more than just a physical object.

What didn't quite hold up for me, unfortunately, were the points where it did sort of break into a memoir. I have no interest in the author's interest in martial arts. Nor do I really need pages of explanation as to how a sword is made. Maybe that's my bad, but I was drawn to the book because it was 'about' Mishima, and those were the parts which interested me more.

Nonetheless, it turns into an interesting and well-written meditation on his search, becoming more a philosophical musing as it meanders along. Having recently read Anna Sherman's 'The Bells of Old Tokyo: Meditations on Time and a City' I could not but compare the two, similar in approach as they are. This was published earlier, but I much preferred the Sherman book, so if this book on Mishima appeals to you I wholeheartedly recommend the other.

3.5 stars for an overall engaging read. ( )

The search for the sword used by an underling to behead the Japanese writer Yukio Mishima in a grandiose gesture of homoerotic nationalism becomes an exploration of some of the fascinating bits of Japanese culture.

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Surpassingly rich and delicate. Rather than a book about a person or his writing, this is a book about Japanese character and it's expression in life and in death. An essential adjunct to any biography of Mishima, but it is also one of a handful of books that gives some real insight into Japanese culture and history. Like Tal Streeter's 'The Art of the Japanese Kite', or Sherrill's 'Dog Man' this book focuses on one very small aspect of Japan, but in doing so illuminates a whole culture. Highly recommended. ( )

This book recounts in part the author's search for the sword that the Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima used to commit seppuku in 1970. However, the book is also an account of the authors' own interest in Japanese martial culture, an investigation of violence in the collective Japanese psyche, and a biography of Mishima himself. The main problem of the work is that it doesn't explore any one topic enough to be cohesive. What it does retain is an eerie sense of the unknowable, a quality that most all writing about Mishima, his death in particular, seems to possess. The multitude of topics explored, while perhaps being the main drawback of the book, is an effective enough garnish on the near mystical subjects of Mishima's death and the author's search for the sword. A similar but far shorter work on the subject of Mishima's seppuku is the paper "I Cut Off the Head of Yukio Mishima" by John-Ivan Palmer, which would be of interest to readers of this work and those with an interest Mishima and his grandiose death. ( )