Books like The Decay of the Angel

This is the fourth and final volume in Mishima’s tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility. Class divisions and changing values in Japan due to western influence are major themes. Another theme all the way through the series is reincarnation. In Decay of the Angel, the reincarnated spirit is an orphan. He has a job helping ships in port navigate to their docks. Obviously it was pre-ordained that Honda finds him since he encounters him by simply wandering around the port. Honda, the lawyer, who is another main character through the four volumes. He is now 76 years old but he adopts the young boy. He does this even though, if the pattern holds, he knows the boy will die at age 20. A sub-theme tied in with the reincarnation is how Honda, originally an associate justice in the national courts, is initially all into rationalism and logic. But when he meets the young boy gang leader in volume two, Runaway Horses, he notices three moles on his body identical to his deceased friend from years ago. Despite his rationality, he comes to believe the young boy is his old friend reincarnated.But unlike in the other volumes, the boy in The Decay of the Angel sets out to do evil – thus the ‘decay’ in the title. “I vow it: that when I am twenty I will cast Father into hell. I must start making plans.” The boy is attached to an ugly, obese, mentally ill young woman whom he eventually marries. His evil starts out small, getting his tutor dismissed, but graduates to where he terrorizes his adoptive father by striking him with a poker. He makes his four maids his mistresses.Although you can pick up most of the back story in context, it really helps to have to have read the whole series in sequence. For those who want to read this book but have not read the preceding volumes, here are brief summaries for each book:Spoiler for the first volume, Spring Snow: (view spoiler)[The plot revolves around a love story between a boy and the daughter of the neighboring household. They have known each other all their lives and she has loved him since they were children. But his feelings toward her are on-again, off-again; he mistreats her and pretends he doesn’t care for her. Finally she gives up on him and becomes engaged to a son of a noble family, actually a member of the Emperor’s household. At this point (she’s 21; he’s 19), and after the engagement has been approved by the Emperor himself, finally he decides he loves her and begins to pursue her. They begin a sexual relationship and she becomes pregnant. If word of any of this gets out, it would be the equivalent of a national scandal! When the boy’s father learns what is going on, after spending his whole life ass-kissing the emperor and the nobles, to say he is apoplectic is putting it mildly. Never having lifted a hand to his son before, he beats him with a pool cue. She enters a convent and the son later dies of a disease. (hide spoiler)]