SOURCE: Smith, Andrew R. “Seeing through a Mask's Confession.” Text and Performance Quarterly 9, no. 2 (April 1989): 135-52.

In the following essay, Smith examines Mishima's revelation and concealment in Confessions of a Mask.

Confessions of a Mask (Kamen no Kokuhaku) was written in Japan just after World War II and is ostensibly an autobiographical account of Yukio Mishima's youth. The title already suggests an opposition between what one authentically expresses and what one surreptitiously constructs for public perception, and in reading we are confronted with questions concerning our own habitual notions of truth and deception. How is a mask capable of confession? Should we believe what we hear if what we perceive is not a human face? What are the criteria for understanding the difference (and/or similarity) between the assumptions of truth in confession and deception in the mask? An explication of the mobile, unfixed, process nature of this...