Runaway Horses — Yukio Mishima

The second novel in the masterful tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility -- and “a modern masterpiece” (The Baltimore Sun) -- narrated by a judge in Osaka who believes he has met  the successive reincarnation of his childhood friend Kiyoaki Matsugae.

In 1932, Shigeuki Honda has become a judge in Osaka.  Convinced that a young rightist revolutionary, Isao, is the reincarnation of his friend Kiyoaki, Honda commits himself to saving the youth from an untimely death. Isao, driven to patriotic fanaticism by a father who instilled in him the ethos of the ancient samurai, organizes a violent plot against the new industrialists who he believes are usurping the Emperor's rightful power and threatening the very integrity of the nation. Runaway Horses is the chronicle of a conspiracy -- a novel about the roots and nature of Japanese fanaticism in the years that led to war.