Tokyo, 1912. The closed world of the ancient aristocracy is being breached for the first time by outsiders - rich provincial families, a new and powerful political and social elite. Kiyoaki has been raised among the elegant Ayakura family - members of the waning aristocracy - but he is not one of them. Coming of age, he is caught up in the tensions between the old and the new, and his feelings for the exquisite, spirited Satoko, observed from the sidelines by his devoted friend Honda. When Satoko is engaged to a royal prince, Kiyoaki realises the magnitude of his passion.

Isao is a young, engaging patriot, and a fanatical believer in the ancient samurai ethos. He turns terrorist, organising a violent plot against the new industrialists, who he believes are threatening the integrity of Japan and usurping the Emperor’s rightful power. As the conspiracy unfolds and unravels, Mishima brilliantly chronicles the conflicts of a decade that saw the fabric of Japanese life torn apart.

Yukio Mishima’s The Temple of Dawn is the third novel in his masterful tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility. Here, Shigekuni Honda continues his pursuit of the successive reincarnations of Kiyoaki Matsugae, his childhood friend. Travelling in Thailand in the early 1940s, Shigekuni Honda, now a brilliant lawyer, is granted an audience with a young Thai princess—an encounter that radically alters the course of his life. In spite of all reason, he is convinced she is the reincarnated spirit of his friend Kiyoaki. As Honda goes to great lengths to discover for certain if his theory is correct, The Temple of Dawn becomes the story of one man’s obsessive pursuit of a beautiful woman and his equally passionate search for enlightenment.

The dramatic climax of "The Sea of Fertility" tetraology takes place in the late 1960s. Honda, now an aged and wealthy man, discovers and adopts a sixteen-year-old orphan, Toru, as his heir, identifying him with the tragic protagonists of the three previous novels, each of whom died at the age of twenty. Honda raises and educates the boy, yet watches him, waiting.

Jukio Misima — samyj znamenityj i chitaemyj v mire japonskij pisatel. Proslavilsja on v ravnoj stepeni kak svoimi proizvedenijami vo vsekh myslimykh zhanrakh (romany, pesy, rasskazy, esse), tak i ekstravagantnym stilem zhizni i smerti (kharakiri posle neudachnoj popytki monarkhicheskogo perevorota). Tetralogija "More izobilija" — eto vershina sochinitelstva Misimy i svoego roda tvorcheskoe zaveschanie; eto proizvedenie, v kotorom Misima, po ego slovam, "vyrazil vse svoi idei" i posle kotorogo emu uzhe "ne o chem bylo pisat". Zavershiv poslednij roman tetralogii, on postavil tochku i v svoej zhizni. "More izobilija" soderzhit kvintessentsiju sobstvennoj esteticheskoj sistemy Misimy, sochetajuschej samurajsko-sintoistskie elementy s obrazami evropejskoj antichnosti, vlijaniem ezotericheskogo buddizma i dazhe induizma. Kraeugolnym kamnem etoj estetiki vsegda ostavalas tema smerti i krasoty; geroi Misimy starajutsja postich strashnuju i neopredelimuju zagadku krasoty, kotoraja suschestvuet vne morali i etiki...