Star

Rikio is a young man who becomes a film star — not because he wanted to, but because his face happened to be exactly what the cameras wanted. Now he is one of the most famous people in Japan, and the most empty. His celebrity has made him a surface, a screen onto which audiences project whatever they need. Behind that screen, there is less and less of him.

Mishima’s Star is a novella — barely a hundred pages — that dissects the machinery of celebrity with a surgical precision that feels completely contemporary. Written in 1961, when Japanese cinema was at its height, it is simultaneously a portrait of a specific cultural moment and a timeless meditation on the relationship between performance and selfhood, between the image that the world receives and the person it never sees.

A neglected gem from one of the twentieth century’s great writers, now available in a beautiful Penguin edition. At its compact length, it is the ideal starting point for readers new to Mishima — and a revelation for those who know only his larger works. Published by Penguin.