Behold Yukio Mishima, strikingly au naturel, or as Stephen and I like to say in our in-house misuse, strikingly al dente.

I lifted this picture from a piece on ‘Yukio Mishima: The Death of a Man’ by Kishin Shinoyama.

We have a copy of the famous ’Ordeal by Roses’ by Eikoh Hosoe, but I confess that I am not very much fond of those photographs, which are not helped by the layout, which is a mess.

No complaint here, Mishima was atypically furry for a Japanese gentleman, according to those knowledgeable in these matters, including his biographer, Henry Scott-Stokes, whom we met in Toronto years ago.

I posted about that meeting — a victim (the post) of my great 2016 ‘blog purge’.  In that post, I also mentioned a Mishima short story recounting the suicide of two women in a greenhouse.

Writing then, that for whatever reason, the story ‘spoke to me’ (don’t be alarmed), I need to relocate it, or I’m going have to finally decide that I imagined the story myself (don’t be alarmed).

After this, I’m going to try very hard to stop posting photos of book covers…