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Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
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553 global ratings
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The Sound of Waves (Vintage International)

The Sound of Waves (Vintage International)

byYukio Mishima
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Pete
4.0 out of 5 starsFour Stars
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on March 15, 2015
Four stars
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steph
3.0 out of 5 starsObstacle love
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on November 13, 2002
If you want to read a romantic and straight forward book, Then The Sound of Waves, by Yukio Mishima, is right for you. This book have very easy ideas and easy to understand. It is like many other romantic stories and you can pretty much predict. For me I didn't really like the book because it is too concrete. I like to solve problem and figure out what is going to come next, but this book did not give me the chance to do so. However, the cover and introduction of the book really caught my attention and basically that is why I chose the book.
The book is about two teenagers fell in love the first time they met. Unfortunately, both of them had an arrangement of marriage with someone else, so the two lovers need to go through some obstacle to get together. Both of them need to find ways to deal with their parent and people in the village.
So if you want to read a book that is simple and easy to understand, then I recommend you to read this book. Because it is so easy to understand, it does increase your reading rate and build up your vocabulary. Overall, this book is not too bad, and not the best.
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From Canada

Pete
4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on March 15, 2015
Four stars
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E. A. Solinas
5.0 out of 5 stars Swept away by the "Sound of Waves"
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on January 4, 2004
Few books accurately capture the feeling of first love the way Yukio Mishima's "The Sound of Waves" does. Set in a small Japanese fishing village in the mid-20th century, this is a beautiful story that will charm the romantic at heart with its simplicity and intensity.
Shinji is a poor young fisherman, living with his widowed mother and relatively carefree. That changes when he sees a lovely young pearl-diver named Hatsue looking out to sea. Shinji soon finds that he can't get Hatsue out of his mind; he's fallen in love, for the very first time. She soon falls in love with him as well -- it's first love for them both, and for a few days everything seems fine.
But things start to go wrong when an unhappy young girl sees the two of them leaving a secluded spot. Soon rumors are spread about Hatsue and Shinji's relationship, and the arrogant Yasuo even physically chases Hatsue when she is getting water. When Hatsue's overprotective father forbids her to see Shinji again, and seems about to betroth her to Yasuo, Shinji has only one chance to be reunited with his love.
Generally the word "romance" conjures images of busty half-naked women being held in impossible positions by chiseled he-men with torn shirts. But "Sound of Waves" is genuine romance, about the sort of love that any person could experience if they are open to it, in any part of the world. He is also one of the few authors who can convey the joy and pain of being in love. Not to mention the exalted way one can feel, without losing sight of their humanity: Shinji and Hatsue definitely have hormones, but keep them in check. There's a kind of mature innocence to how these two interact.
Yukio Mishima's writing is both brief and detailed. Simple and descriptive, evoking the wind, sea, trees, and shorelines. The story is a simple one (boy meets girl, girl and boy fall in love, boy and girl are separated, etc), but its simplicity is part of its appeal. There are even some things about pearl-diving and fishing included, to give a glimpse of the lives that Hatsue, Shinji and their families live.
The best thing abou this brief novel is the lead characters. Shinji is a shy, inexperienced, capable teenage boy, not a confident stud. Hatsue captures his attention not through mere physical beauty (though she sounds quite pretty), but through her sweetness. The wannabe-playboy, and the "ugly" girl who wistfully falls for Shinji, are like real people.
This is romance as it should be written, beautiful and tender with lovable characters and haunting prose. What it lacks in complexity it makes up for in sweetness. A memorable and beautiful story.
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T. Boggs
5.0 out of 5 stars The Perfect Book for Summertime Reading
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on August 1, 2003
I first read this book as a teenager and, over the years, have read it several times since then, once in the original Japanese. With each re-reading, I discovered that the book has remained as fresh and exciting as the first time. This is something which can be said of very few books, and I wondered at what makes The Sound of Waves so special. First, I think it is the limpidity of Mishima's prose here, so different from the dense, baroque poetry of many of his other works. The descriptions of life on Utajima island are so vivid and memorable because Mishima actually visited the island on which the book was based and took detailed notes on the island's geography, history, and society. (In reality, the island's name is Kamijima, significantly meaning "island of the gods"; its fictional name Utajima means "island of song/poetry." As good as Meredith Weatherby's translation is, it's unfortunate that no English version of the book could possibly convey the charming dialect of the islanders' speech which Mishima so faithfully captured.) Another reason for the book's perennial appeal is the simplicity and beauty of its story. It is a tale of innocent first love, based upon Longus's classical Greek romance "Daphnis and Chloe," though the parallels between the two works need not be belabored. A young boy and a young girl fall in love with each other and overcome various obstacles to achieve their goal of being united. Some critics have complained that the characters of Shinji and Hatsue are a little too simple, that they are idealized stereotypes of "pastoral youth" as imagined by a city-born, city-bred intellectual. To a certain extent this is true. But we must remember that Mishima intended this simple tale to resonate with mythic dimensions, and it was not written as a novel in the realistic tradition. Coming after his earlier, much darker works such as Confessions of a Mask, Thirst for Love, and Forbidden Colors, which all deal with tortured self-analyses or twisted human relationships, The Sound of Waves was Mishima's first attempt at a more affirmative, "classical" world-view, and it remains a ray of sunshine in this troubled genius's oeuvre.
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Mariya
5.0 out of 5 stars Romantic and charming story.
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on September 11, 2002
The book The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima first caught my attention when I read one of its short reviews saying that it is the story of first love set on a small Japanese island. I decided to read it and was not disappointed.
The book starts when a young and poor fisherman, Shinji, coming back from his work catches a sight of a beautiful girl, Hatsue, a daughter of the wealthiest man in the village. The two young people meet and fall in love with each other - for the first time in their lives. As they set out on adventure of experiencing all joys of their feelings they also have to overcome all the difficulties their life presents them with such as gossips and ill-natured stories aroused by the villagers.
Although this book's major theme is first love it is not the only one that compels the reader to take this book and to keep reading until the end. Yes, The Sound of Waves shows all the beauty of being in love for the first time, it describes all the feelings of wonder, joy and uneasiness that love brings. Also this book captures the beauty of nature of a small island, untouched by civilization. Between describing the adventures of the characters, Yukio Mishima takes time to describe the scenery around them - graceful pine-trees, powerful ocean and rocks on the beach. All of these have their own beauty and wisdom in them that teaches and helps any person from the island that needs it. People and nature in this book are intermingled with each other in some natural and powerful way.
The island is very remote and has its distinct traditions and ways of living and thinking; and the book is excellent in portraying all of these. It describes the ways of fishermen and divers. The book shows the souls of its characters, their hopes and dreams, their reaching out into unknown and growing as a person while still being closely connected with nature and being devoted to each other and their island.
The Sound of Waves is a fairly simple book, yet this fact does not make it less forceful. It does not complicate things but rather shows everything in naive and simple perspective full of events and feelings. If you are looking for some romantic and charming story, The Sound of Waves is your pick.
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Angry Mofo
5.0 out of 5 stars One of my favorite books.
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on October 25, 2001
When I picked up this book, the book jacket said something like "And so, Mr. Mishima uses a simple setting of a fishing village to create an unforgettable love scene of amazing tenderness and purity." I remember being skeptical about this, thinking "Tenderness? In this century? Pshaw! This Mr. Mishima must be full of it." And I've never been happier to be wrong.
The Sound of Waves is not a multi-faceted epochal genre-shattering masterpiece. And it's all the better for it. It's an extremely simple love story set in a remote Japanese island where the people work all their lives fishing and/or diving for pearls. And it's beautiful. The book jacket was right on. Hatsue is portrayed with such amazing tenderness and sympathy on the author's part that she becomes a human being, but she's not the only one. The "ugly girl" who falls in love with Shinji is also an amazingly real person. As is Shinji's mother, as is almost everybody else. It's incredibly refreshing to finally read an author who eschews all that arty "deep complex psyche" crud for the sake of such simple, yet unmistakably _human_ characterization.
Sometimes the language seems a little clunky - this is entirely the fault of the translation. I imagine it must sound even more beautiful in the original Japanese. (And the translation is no great impediment - come on, this book _is_ extremely short.) In short, this is why humanity invented writing - so authors like Mishima could write books like The Sound of Waves. Now, I've only read three of his works, so it's theoretically possible that he has surpassed The Sound of Waves somewhere else, but I doubt it. Remarkable.
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Henry Platte
4.0 out of 5 stars "That great joke on the public"
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on April 12, 2004
...is how, according to Nathan's biography, Mishima referred to this book on several occasions. It does seem very uncharacteristic, being a straightforward love story, showing great interest in its humble setting and without Mishima's trademark disdain for 'ordinary people,' but I think it may have been as true to his aesthetic inclinations as his darker works. It highlights the other side of the tradition which fascinated him - the life-affirming courage and old-fashioned masculine code of the samurai, as opposed to the more morbid dictate that the samurai 'must die each day in his mind.' Near the end, a character makes a remark along the lines of: 'Shinji's got guts. That's really all that matters,' and that seems to sum this book up pretty well. I think this book may have meant more to Mishima than he admitted. It's certainly accesible to those who wouldn't like his more intense stuff, and provides a spot of definite interest for fans.
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars The first "romance" book I've read that wasn't horrible
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on March 8, 2003
As the title of the review says. The book doesn't innovate in the genre, is a tad cliche, etc... yet somehow still manages to be captivating and interesting.
Character development is part of it. I mean, the protagonist (Shinji) isn't some sort of uber-stud perfect guy (for once), Hatsue isn't very cliche either, though I can't pin down any reasons why. The main thing that I liked about it was that the characters seemed like _real_ people, not a cheesy-pickup-line-spouting product of a bad imagination.
The story was a tad cliche, but was nonetheless very good. My main reason for liking the story is that it wasn't a few paragraphs of romance thrown into another story here and there just for kicks, the purpose of the book was to be a romance novel and nothing else. I say this in comparison to other stories, like the LotR movies, which threw in 5-10 minutes of Aragorn and Arwen being mushy (which wasnt even in the book) just to attract a wider audience and make more money...
But anyway, I'm rambling... the point is that this book is GOOD. And that's coming from person who HATES romance novels, so that's gotta be some indicator as to the quality of the work.
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Jay Gee
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazed that Mishima wrote this book
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on February 19, 2004
A subtle and masterfully told tale about two youths discovering love on a rural Japanese island. This book is very different from the other 5 or 6 Mishima novels I've read, but it is still beautifully constructed and skillfully rendered.
The book explores themes of innocence, loyalty, fidelity to tradition and the transition from adolescence to adulthood. Despite the lack of "action" in the book, the story is still riveting because of the chasm between rumor and truth that the protagonists must cross.
Mishima definately adds a unique twist at the end that is sure to irritate some and I was a bit perplexed about it myself for a while. Then I remembered this is a Mishima novel and we certainly wouldn't expect anything less from a man capable of such grave seriousness, outlandish specatcles and biting humor.
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Oblique Thoughts
4.0 out of 5 stars Great, uplifting story of romantic love
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on July 17, 2002
The Sound of Waves is, simply put, a story of romantic love woven from the simple life of a fishing village in post-war Japan. Mishima's book doesn't include vast social criticism, but rather hearkens back to a world where common people have simple dreams, and where right wins out in the end.
The highlight of the book is perhaps the descriptions of people and nature, and especially the way nature affects people. Butterflies are signs, but Mishima makes clear that it is people who make them such, and not the gods. The sea and village are both backdrops to Shinji's and Hatsue's romantic coming of age, and their romance is on their own shoulders with only the feelings and ambitions of their rejected alternatives to stand in their way.
A good read for any time when you're in the right amorous mood.
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Donald Ford (dford@midrivers.com)
4.0 out of 5 stars A Beautifully Simplistic Romance
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on September 19, 2001
The Sound Of Waves is one of the best "little books" I've ever read. While there isn't much deep philosophical introspection, it is a brilliant story, crystal-clear, with no wasted words. It tells the tale of Shinji, a young man just becoming aware of his sexuality, and his love for a pearl diver named Hatsue. While the love story is very traditional and familiar, Mishima uses subtle and strikingly vivid imagry to make the book fully come to life in the reader's mind. Mishima was a body-worshiping homosexual, and like the romantic works of Pierre Loti, the boy-girl story is probably a cover-up for a boy-boy relationship. Mishima's lust for the male body comes out in this book during his descriptions of the young men at their club meating. The book's ending, a nice twist, also brings into focus that aspect of Mishima's philosophy and lifestyle. I enjoyed the book very much; it was good company during a sleepless night.
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