This is a groundbreaking, scholarly and original study of the ethics of modern Japanese aesthetics from the 1930s through the Second World War and into the post-war period.

Nina Cornyetz is Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at New York University, USA.

Introduction Part 1: Woman as Second Nature and Other Fascist Proclivities 1. Myth-Making 2. Fascist Aesthetics 3. Kawabata and Fascist Aesthetics 4. Virgins and Other Little Objects Part 2: The Politics of Climate and Community in Woman in the Dunes and "The Idea of the Desert" 5. A Preface to Woman in the Dunes: Space, Geopolitics, and The Idea of the Desert 6. Social Networks and the Subject 7. Technologies of Grazing Part 3: Naming Desire: Mishima Yukio and the Politics of "Sexuation" 8. Textualizing Flesh, or, (In)articular Desire 9. Narcissism and Sadism: Mishima as Homofascist 10. The Homosocial Fixing of Desire Part 4: Scripting the Scopic: Disinterest in Double Suicide