"Swaddling Clothes" first appeared in English in 1966 in Death in Midsummer and Other Stories, translated by American scholars of Japanese literature Edward Seidensticker, Donald Keene, Ivan Morris and Geoffrey Sargent. The collection includes nine short stories and one modern Noh play. Already internationally renowned, Mishima received much praise in the United States for the collection, particularly for its honest, however unsettling, depictions of modern Japanese life. Robert Trumbull in the May 1, 1966 New York Times Book Review praised the stories for their sharp "sociological study" and John Wain comments in the May 30, 1966 Newsweek : "His new collection . . . is Mishima at his very best—cool and urbane, mixing East and West, impassively shuffling and relating the feudal past to the consumer present." "Swaddling Clothes" did not receive as much attention as some of the other stories and was often bypassed for discussions of "Three Million Yen," "Patriotism," and...