In Yukio Mishima’s

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, the narrative is divided into “Summer” and “Winter,” charting the disillusionment of a romanticized merchant sailor, Ryuji. Ryuji begins an affair with a widow, Fusako, and is idolized by her young son Noboru as a symbol of heroic freedom. However, when Ryuji abandons the sea to settle down as a domestic father figure, Noboru’s radical peer group views this compromise as a fatal betrayal. The novel builds to a chilling conclusion as the cold, detached youths plot to eliminate the man who fell from his pedestal.