A ship's horn wails in the distance. The long kiss is interrupted. The sailor's palate is once again imbued with nostalgia for the infinite freedom of the sea. It is in this world, where layers of opposing meanings collide as waves do against rocks, that Mishima's The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea is set. This tragic story is that of a man caught in a storm of moral collision in the interstice that borders freedom and involvement. Inevitably, the desire for domesticity and bastardized, disempowered earthly life grows like a cancer in his once pure soul, and before the defect can be eliminated like a disease, he is ravaged by it. The once distant flaw grows and grows until death becomes his only salvation. To reinforce the danger of this chaotic web between two worlds of value, Mishima uses the impactful force of richly described contrasting settings, constantly conflicting perceptions of each character through the eyes of another, and the combative ideals of American and Japanese culture. opposites is reinforced by the physical environment in which the characters are placed. Yokohama, a Japanese seaside city, is in every way a representation of worlds in conflict. Situated at the crucial point between sea and land, the magnificent power of the ocean remains omnipresent. At the beginning of the novel, these two elements are in harmony, as represented by the delicately told consummation scene (12-13), in which man, woman, earth and water are united against the mysterious background of the horn moaning passionately about a ship. as the plot progresses, the simply wonderful act of sex without attachment remains mired in the dense darkness of human emotions. The once clean waters of Ryuji's soul are muddied by the incessant lure of the life of... middle of paper... stern import shop, it truly seems like a symbol of the West's omnipresence in Japan. Noboru, advocating rigidity of spirit, stoicism, and strength of manhood, seems to symbolize the power of patriarchal Japan. This metaphor transforms into a political statement when Ryuji (at first living by the morals cherished by Noboru, but then tragically falling under Fusako's lifestyle), succumbs to the violent judgment of the gang and is only returned to grace by death. In other words, Japan will become powerful again when Western values ​​are forcibly cut off from it. The novel culminates when all these motifs culminate in a single scene. Ryuji is killed by the gang on a deserted hill of an American military base overlooking the sea. In a flash of awareness, he understands his weakness and that the only way to be purged of his grandiose mistake is only death..