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CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY
A. Object of the Study
Forbidden Colors is first published in Japanese language with its original
title Kinjiki in 1954 and in 1969. It is translated into English by Alfred H. Mark and has been printed several times by Turtle and Penguin Publishing House. The
book used in this thesis is the reprint edition in 1972 which belongs to Penguin books. The novel consists of 429 pages which are divided into 32 chapters.
Forbidden Colors is not Mishima’s first novel that have a theme of Homosexual.
His previous novel that has similar theme with Forbidden Colors is Confession of a Mask
1948. Forbidden Colors explores the issue of sexual hedonism in post- war Japan.
Yukio Mishima is one of Japans most-revered writers of the 20
th
century and he is nominated three times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He is a
Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor and film director. He committed suicide in 1970 in a tragic and noble ritualistic way they have in Japan, and he is rumored
to be gay, though he was definitely married to a woman. The novel is about a man named Yuichi Minami who experiences
conflicts with his sexual disorder. Yuichi Minami is the main character in this novel, but Mishima also creates another character that has inf
luence in Yuichi’s life. An old author named Shunsuke Hinoki has big influence
in Yuichi’s marriage life. He uses Yuichi to get revenge to woman because he is a misogynist.
Yuichi trapped within a loveless marriage because of his plan. He pretty much hates women, is repulsed by the thought of his wife bearing his child, and so he
frequents goes to gay bars and meets many men while engaging in sex with them. He is a young husband with a pregnant wife, an ailing mother and a promising
future who is in the other hand, he is known as ‘Yuchan’ who is a homosexual.
Yuichi struggles to maintain his dual worlds as he wants to be a good husband for his wife and good son for his mother. But he also can not abandon his homosexual
life as he seeks for physical and emotional consolation in Japan’s vast homosexual
underworld.
B. Approach of the Study