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The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
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Yokohama, early 1960s. Thirteen-year-old Noboru Kuroda secretly observes his widowed mother Fusako begin a relationship with merchant sailor Ryūji Tsukazaki. Noboru initially sees Ryūji as a figure of heroic distance, danger and maritime destiny. When the sailor abandons the sea and plans a domestic future with Fusako, the boy interprets the decision as an unforgivable surrender.
Noboru and his gang, led by the coldly intellectual Chief, reject adult sentiment and rehearse cruelty as proof of their superiority. Their response to Ryūji’s ordinary hopes turns adolescent abstraction into planned violence. Mishima sets family intimacy against the port and open sea to examine masculinity, disillusionment and the destructive appeal of purity.
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