The Decay of the Angel
First edition (Japanese)
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| Author | Yukio Mishima |
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| Original title |
Tennin Gosui (Five Death Omens of an Angel) 天人五衰 |
| Translator | Edward Seidensticker |
| Country | Japan |
| Language | Japanese |
| Series | The Sea of Fertility |
| Publisher | Shinchosha (orig.) & Alfred A. Knopf (Eng. trans.) |
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Publication date
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25 February 1971 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover, Paperback) |
| Pages | ? pp |
| ISBN | (Eng. trans. first edition, hardback) |
| Preceded by | The Temple of Dawn |
The Decay of the Angel (天人五衰 Tennin Gosui?) is a novel by Yukio Mishima and is the fourth and last in his Sea of Fertility tetralogy.
In Buddhist scriptures, Devas (天部 tenbu) are mortal angels. The five signs of the decay of an angel are:
Tōru, whose purity lies only in his malicious self-satisfaction, is a degenerate parody of the idealised Kiyoaki.
A retired judge, Shigekuni Honda, adopts a teenage orphan, Tōru Yasunaga, whom he believes to be a dead schoolfriend's third successive reincarnation.
The novel opens on Saturday, 2 May 1970, with a seascape off the coast of the Izu Peninsula. Tōru Yasunaga is an orphaned 16-year-old boy working in Shimizu as a signalman, identifying ships by telescope and notifying the offices at Shimizu harbour. He works a 24-hour shift every third day, from a high platform on the Komagoe shore, built on top of a strawberry farmer's water tank. Honda, walking along the shoreline, notices it in passing.
Later, that night, Tōru is visited at his post by his friend Kinue, a mad girl who believes that she is incredibly beautiful and that all men are after her. Kinue tells him a long story about how a boy molested her on the bus. After midnight, at his house in Hongō, Honda dreams about angels flying over the Miho Pine Grove, which he had visited that day.
At 9am, Tōru's shift ends and he takes the bus home to his apartment. He has a bath, and we see that he has the same three moles as Kiyoaki. In Chapter 7, it is explained that Honda's wife Rie has died and that Keiko, a happily single lesbian, has become a platonic companion for him. They have gone travelling together to Europe, and hold canasta parties. Honda is preoccupied with his dream life and with the past, and has trouble with his housekeeper and maids. In her old age, Keiko is devoted to the study of Japanese culture, but her knowledge is second-hand and superficial, and Honda calls it a "freezer full of vegetables".
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