Forbidden Colors

About

An aging, embittered novelist discovers Yuichi — young, breathtakingly beautiful, and indifferent to the women who desire him. The novelist strikes a deal: he will direct Yuichi to seduce and destroy the women who once rejected him, using the young man's beauty as a weapon. Yuichi agrees, but his private life — the gay underworld of postwar Tokyo — remains his own, and the novelist's control is never as complete as he believes. Yukio Mishima's novel is a study in manipulation, beauty, and the cruelty that comes from treating other people as instruments. The relationship between the two men is the real centre — a contest of wills disguised as a collaboration. A dark, unsettling novel about who gets to use whom, and the price of being someone else's masterpiece.