Ordeal by Roses

Ordeal by Roses, the first in a series of sumptuous book projects by Eikoh Hosoe, was a collaboration with the ardently nationalist novelist Yukio Mishima and featured the writer in a series of provocative poses. In the years after World War II Mishima embodied a scholarly aristocracy, with ties to classical Chinese and Japanese culture, as well as royalist militarism—an unusual position in Japan’s pacifist postwar society. Hosoe was a supporter of internationalist renewal and democracy, but his aesthetic sensibilities tended toward the aristocratic and classical as well. The symbolism of an egg, which could also represent the center of the Japanese flag, lovingly torn by the thorns of a rose, is direct and poignant as a line of poetry. This annotated print seems to have been made specially to produce the book.