Silk and Insight

An important contribution to Japan's postwar literature and politics, this early work by Yukio Mishima, one of twentieth-century Japan's greatest novelists, is based on the strike which took place in the mid-1950s at Omi Kenshi, a silk manufacturer not far from Kyoto. Mishima's characters are fascinating and thoroughly believable, and the events described faithfully reflect the management/labor tensions of that period.Superbly translated by Hiro Sato, this is one of the last works of Mishima to be translated into English. It remains a fascinating work of literature and an excellent piece of social commentary on the transformation of Japanese business from the old paternalism -- which was by no means all that benevolent -- to a new world where labor unions were as active as any social institution in enhancing their image