In this novel, Mishima takes the story of incarnation to its last step. Honda adopts the boy he believes to be the third re-incarnation of his old friend kiyoaki, toru, who is a dark character who gets pleasure out of the suffering of others. Toru is in many ways the non-emotional anti-kiyoaki... then Honda discovers that he was wrong, and that Toru is NOT the incarnation of Kiyoaki...
Fearing the collapse of his system of expectations, Honda goes to meet kiyoaki's love, Satoko who crushes his beliefs further by not remembering him or Kiyoaki... she even wonders if Kiyoaki ever existed ...
Mishima further explores the themes of incarnation, physical beauty, emotions and buddhist beliefs: thoughts about death's beauty and accepting it (?), emptiness, spirituality and materialism...
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