Superficially The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea … is a horror story of juvenile delinquency. (pp. 171-72)

We are reminded, to begin with, of the children in Dostoevsky and Gide whose crimes express the innate evil of mankind, gratuitous and mindless. But in Mishima's novel the children are nihilists because they are absolute idealists…. Sex itself for them is not only an unworthy but an insignificant activity. The sailor of the story—he is an officer on a merchant ship—is a hero to them so long as he remains one, free from the taint of mundane commerce. When he consents to join the commonplace citizenry, he must be done away with as a traitor.

Curiously, the sailor himself shares his assailants' sentiments. He too feels that his marriage entails a corruption, a descent into the sloth which his killers call "impermissible things," the ordinary traffic...