The Sea of Fertility :: 1964 - 1970

From 1965 to 1970, Yukio Mishima worked on his four volume cycle of novels entitled "The Sea of Fertility". Together these four novels depict a portrait of Japanese life from 1912 to 1970. They are generally considered to be Mishima's masterwork and they are also the works that resurrected Mishima's reputation as Japan's premiere novelist.

The late 1950's and early 1960's had been a difficult time for Mishima. In 1958 he had suffered his first literary failure with the publication on Kyoko's House. a novel that he worked on for a year and a half that even though it sold fairly well, it was generally panned by the Japanese literary establishment. Later, Mishima went on to star in a gangster film entitled "Tough Guy", that was poorly received as well.

The spring and early autumn of 1960 were a period of political confrontation in Japan. The US-Japan Security Treaty of 192 otherwide known as ANPO was up for renewal and many Japanese activists on the left were strongly opposes to it being renewed.

The force that would characterize Yukio Mishima's life throughout the sixties would be politics. Prior to this period, Mishima had shown very little interest in political matters, even during the period following the Second World War.Throughout the 1960's, Mishima's political identity had been gradually moving to the right which was at odds with the rest of Japan's lierary establishment.