The Sea of Fertility

The first English translated editions by Alfred A. Knopf and the Charles E. Tuttle Company featured cover designs by the graphic artist Joseph del Gaudio.

The viewpoint of all four books is that of Shigekuni Honda, a law student in Spring Snow who eventually becomes a wealthy retired judge in The Decay of the Angel.

It expresses many of Mishima's deepest-held convictions about the nature and purposes of human life, and the last book is thought to encapsulate an (extremely negative) personal assessment of himself and his own legacy.

"[5] Although the first book, Spring Snow, is a loving recreation of Japan in the brief Taishō period, and is well-grounded in its time and place, references to current affairs are generally tangential to what is later to become Honda's obsessive quest to understand the workings of individual fate and to save his friend.

[citation needed] Richard T. Kelly wrote that the tetralogy reveals "all his gifts – an eye for detail and scene-making, a sensuous regard for the physical, and a cool detachment that could be terrifying in its terseness.