["Forbidden Colors"] insists upon comparison with an even earlier Mishima novel, "Confessions of a Mask" ["Kamen no Kokuhaku"] …, and it is inferior to the earlier novel in most respects save price and bulk. Both works have as their heroes handsome young homosexuals. Both contain a strong element of narcissistic subjectivity, not to say self-gratification; in both there is a great deal of sadism and masochism, quite at home in a flamboyantly amoral world; and in both a denial of intellect and glorification of the senses, fundamental to all of Mishima's writing, is incongruously combined with rather a lot of quite strained intellectualizing.

One would expect the more subjective and autobiographical of the two, "Confessions of a Mask," to make one more uncomfortable; but such is not the case. It is not easy to say why, unless perhaps the point is that the hero of "Confessions of a Mask...