Yukio Mishima's The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea: A Nietzchean Study

Abstract

Like Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Yukio Mishima's novel The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea seemed to test a new system of values. What are good and evil? Is a man judged by his pursuit of the former and his efforts to eliminate the latter? Or can a man be judged by the strength of his will; is it a superior man who strives for something beyond good and evil? The power of The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea lies in the "chill factor," in the actions and psyches of the characters who believe that a superior man must reach beyond the conventional morals of an "empty world," to strive for something beyond emotional sentimentality. Achieving detachment exhibits the strength of the will as an isolated factor; "absolute dispassion" is the goal. The ideas of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche on the will to power, the Superman (Ubermensch), the Master Morality versus the Slave Morality, and his reevaluation of morals beyond good and evil exist in Mishima's work to an extraordinary degree. The purpose of this paper is to provide a connection for the reader between Mishima's novel and Nietzsche's ideas.