Two years after the original 1968 publication in Japan of Life for Sale, which opens immediately with a young man's failed attempt to die, Yukio Mishima (Star) led an unsuccessful military coup d'etat that ended with his highly publicized, gruesomely violent ritual suicide. Just 45 at the time of his death, Mishima was a prolific, prodigious author, playwright, poet, actor, film director and model, often rumored to be repeatedly considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Life for Sale is a black-comedy-of-errors available for the first time in English translation by University of London professor Stephen Dodd.
Hanio Yamada is a 27-year-old copywriter with a "sudden urge to die." He quits his advertising job and takes out a tabloid ad: "Life for sale. Use me as you wish." In case he might encounter walk-bys, he posts his door with a similar sign: "Hanio Yamada--Life for Sale." He has no lack of clients--plural, yes, because he can't seem to die, although the body count grows around him, not to mention his lucrative earnings. An old man hires him to die with his much younger wife; a woman sacrifices him to test a new drug; a son needs a body for his vampire mother; two rival embassies need him to eat carrots.
Ludicrous situations, farcical exchanges and nonsensical plot twists might easily derail a less accomplished author's narrative, but Mishima embraces the outlandish and bizarre with affecting results. Life for Sale proves to be an almost-morality tale about the immeasurable value of life--and, of course--the elusive unknowability (despite its unavoidability) of death. --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon