Review – Life for Sale by Yukio Mishima

I’m sure I’m biased due to my love of Japanese fiction, but I feel that Yukio Mishima is one of the all-time great novelists. In my personal author pantheon, he ranks up there with Raymond Carver and Kurt Vonnegut.

My first Mishima novel was Spring Snow, which is still one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking stories I’ve ever read. Oddly, I wanted to read more of his works, but I was so emotionally drained by the novel that it took me a while to get back to him. But I’m glad I did. I picked up Life for Sale at a local bookstore a few months ago and added it to my “to read” stack.

Life for Sale is a dark, absurdist comedy set in the 1960s and is an insightful reflection of post-war Japan. Hanio, the protagonist, is a young advertising copywriter who is tired of life. He feels out of place, that the typical life cycle of the young Japanese man – get a career, get married, have children, retire, die – doesn’t appeal to him. So, he decides to kill himself.

The thing to note here is that he isn’t suicidal in the general sense. He isn’t depressed or suffering from any diagnosed mental health issues. He simply doesn’t feel like society has anything to offer him. There’s nothing to look forward to when you know how it’s all going to play out.

When his suicide attempt fails and he wakes up in the hospital, he decides to take a different route. He posts an ad in the newspaper offering his life for sale. It doesn’t take long for potential buyers to begin knocking on his door.

First, there’s the old man whose much younger wife has left him for a mobster. The old man wants Hanio to seduce the woman and have the mobster catch them in the act so he’ll kill them both on sight. 

Then there’s the librarian who stole, and then sold, a rare book of insect-based poisons. The men she sold it to need someone to test the poison on and Hanio is the perfect subject.

There is also the young man who wants to hire Hanio to help his mother overcome her loneliness and her anemia. You see, she’s a vampire.

The requests are bizarre and absurd, but at the same time are metaphors for the state of things in Japan at that time. The culture is still struggling with its identity and there’s a soullessness to the younger generations.

Mishima captures all this while taking the reader on a wild ride. It was so completely different from Spring Snow and made me feel better about reading more of his works (knowing I won’t be emotionally drained each time). This is a fun read and definitely worth your time.

RB