Yukio Mishima Foil

Many great authors, from Shakespeare to J.K. Rowling, have used ‘foil’ characters, or characters who have a great contrast and opposition, in order to get their points across. Some authors may want to show that dogs are better than cats, while other may want to show that simplicity is key, in addition to a countless amount of other thought and ideas, but none the less these contrasting characters give great emphasis to their argument. In Yukio Mishima’s The Sound of Waves, the foil characters, Shinji and Yasuo, exemplify contrasting traditional Japanese and Western cultures and values in their economic background, treatment of women, and their connection to the island they lived on, in order to show that traditional Japanese values are superior to Western values. The first way Mishima showed the superiority of Japanese values over Western values was in Shinji and Yasuo’s contrasting economic background. Shinji comes from a much more humble background. His family doesn’t have a lot of nice stuff, or even much stuff at all, which is shown as Shinji wears “the same clothes …show more content…
While the traditional Japanese valued humbleness, respect, and kindness toward the community, as showcased by Shinji, the Western values seemed to contradict them in every way, as Shinji exemplified through his arrogance, disrespectfulness, and the acts he took to separate himself from the island. Was this superiority of the traditional Japanese values completely fabricated by Mishima? Or is there a reality behind it? Different people will believe differently, so it is hard to say anything for sure. There will always be an opposition to any belief, so each individual must decide that