The Decay of the Angel

The Decay of the Angel is a novel by Yukio Mishima and is the fourth and last in his Sea of Fertility tetralogy. In Buddhist scriptures, Devas are mortal angels. The five signs of the decay of an angel are: Tōru, whose purity lies only in his malicious self-satisfaction, is a degenerate parody of the idealised Kiyoaki. A retired judge, Shigekuni Honda, adopts a teenage orphan, Tōru Yasunaga, whom he believes to be a dead schoolfriend's third successive reincarnation. The novel opens on Saturday, 2 May 1970, with a seascape off the coast of the Izu Peninsula. Tōru Yasunaga is... an orphaned 16-year-old boy working in Shimizu as a signalman, identifying ships by telescope and notifying the offices at Shimizu harbour. He works a 24-hour shift every third day, from a high platform on the Komagoe shore, built on top of a strawberry farmer's water tank. Honda, walking along the shoreline, notices it in passing. Later, that night, Tōru is visited at his post by his friend Kinue, a mad girl who believes that she is incredibly beautiful and that all men are after her. Kinue tells him a long story about how a boy molested her on the bus.
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