Review of Life for Sale by Yukio Mishima

​Life for Sale by Yukio Mishima is a novel about a copywriter, Hanio, who tries to kill himself, but fails. He then decides to put his life up for sale in the newspaper, which kickstarts a collection of desperate people who want to use him. The first man wants him to sleep with his young wife, get caught, and killed. Another woman wants him to test a poison concocted from beetles for a Western buyer. A boy wants him to sleep with his mother, who turns out to be a vampire, while the mother intends to kill both her and Hanio in a fire. Two spies enlist his help in testing out poisonous carrots and deciphering letters. And finally, a woman asks for him to live with her and pay his rent, while she intends to kill him with her. Many of these instances are connected through the Asia Confidential Service (ACS), who believes him to be an undercover cop trying to unravel their international murders. In the end, the ACS captures him, but he outwits them with a stopwatch in a box which he says is a bomb. However, when Hanio goes to the police to report the ACS, he is brushed off as he is seen as crazy and homeless.
 
The novel shows Hanio wanting to die, but through the course of its narration, he seems to stumble out of harms way. He cannot kill himself, the women that ask for his services intend to commit suicide with him, but he always inexplicably slips away from danger. This is what drives the story forward: Hanio’s desire for death and Mishima denying his death. The novel, however, depicts women in an oddly misogynistic light with its descriptions of their bodies, their singular desires to have sex with Hanio, and their melodramatic suicides either in the face of a gun, a fire, or poison. All that being said, it’s a fast-paced and tense novel throughout, and I found Hanio’s situation to be both surreal and ironic.
 
Final Rating: 4.5/5