About the work
The Decline and Fall of the Suzaku is a four-act drama by Yukio Mishima, published on 25 October 1967 by Kawade Shobō Shinsha and premiered ten days earlier, on 13 October 1967, at Kinokuniya Hall in Tokyo with Nobuo Nakamura in the lead. Mishima deliberately modelled the play's structure on Euripides' tragedy Heracles.
Plot
Set between spring 1944 and the end of the war, the play follows the decline of the emperor-loyal Suzaku family. Marquis Tsunetaka refuses to use his political connections to spare his son Tsunehiro a dangerous front posting; the son is killed, and after Japan's defeat Tsunetaka lives on in seclusion among the ruins of his house.
Cultural significance
Mishima mapped Euripides' Heracles — victory, the deaths of the sons, the death of the wife, acceptance of fate — onto postwar Japan, turning Heracles's madness into Tsunetaka's silent, emperor-loyal self-sacrifice. The play was well received, if not ranked as highly as Madame de Sade, and stands as one of Mishima's most tightly argued treatments of honour and downfall.