The Decay of the Angel (天人五衰, Tennin Gosui) was published posthumously by Shinchosha in 1971. Mishima completed the manuscript on the morning of November 25, 1970, sealed it in an envelope, and drove to the Ichigaya military headquarters where he attempted a coup d’état, gave a speech from a balcony to unresponsive soldiers, and committed seppuku.
Honda, now eighty years old, adopts Toru — a sixteen-year-old orphan working as a signal operator at a shipping port who bears the three moles. But this final incarnation is different: Toru is intelligent, beautiful, and apparently evil — a calculating sociopath who manipulates Honda, attempts to destroy those around him, and when Honda reveals the prophecy (that each incarnation dies at twenty), attempts suicide rather than fulfill it. He survives — but is blinded and disfigured, his beauty destroyed.
The novel’s devastating final chapter: Honda visits the aged Satoko (now the Abbess of her convent, from Spring Snow) and asks her about Kiyoaki. She replies that she has never known anyone by that name. Honda protests — he was Kiyoaki’s best friend, he was there — but Satoko’s serene denial stands: “If Kiyoaki never existed, then perhaps you never existed either.” The tetralogy ends with Honda alone in a garden: “The noontide sun of summer flowed in… This was a place that had no memories, nothing.”
Collecting The Decay of the Angel
First edition (Shinchosha, Tokyo, 1971): Japanese text, posthumous.
First English edition (Knopf, New York, 1974): Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker.
Market values:
- Knopf first English edition, fine in jacket: $50–$120
- Japanese first edition: $100–$300
- Complete Sea of Fertility tetralogy, English firsts: $300–$800
Projected values (2026–2036): Strong appreciation, especially complete sets.
The Final Statement
The Decay of the Angel (天人五衰, 1971) is the final volume of The Sea of Fertility and Mishima’s last novel — he mailed the final manuscript to his publisher on November 25, 1970, the morning of his suicide. Honda, now an elderly man, adopts a teenager he believes is the final reincarnation. But this time something is wrong: the youth is nihilistic, manipulative, and possibly evil. The devastating final scene — Honda’s visit to a Buddhist convent — calls into question whether any of the reincarnations were real, undermining the entire edifice of the preceding three novels. It is one of the most shocking endings in modern literature.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this Mishima’s suicide note? Not literally, but the novel’s themes of dissolution, emptiness, and the void behind appearances clearly reflect Mishima’s state of mind in his final months. The relationship between the ending and his death the same morning is one of the most discussed questions in modern Japanese literature.