CHAPTER EIGHT Mishima Yukio & ISHIMA YUKIO M eee (2925-70) was less a novelist than thinker ‘pressed himself not only thr is writi through his entire way of life. Vi See ul ne Ses a ee Virtually everything he said, wrote, proper place in his personal cosm i Ba ne ye s ology, which he had Be Ti years and which eventually induced him to take =e . Literature occupied a prominent position in that ‘ os, and. he found, it difficult to speak of the one without the ou er. Thus his ideas on literature appeat everywhere in his writ- ings, pomenncs expounded with compelling logic in essay form, sometimes suggested by means of highly individual metaphors. One cannot understand Mishima’s philosophy of life apart from his who study his attitude toward literature and the arts. Those g evidence thoughts on literature suffer not from lack of supportin: but from overabundance of it. They also suffer from its clarity, prilliance, and comprehensiveness. ‘The initial impact is over whelming: it is hard not to feel that Mishima has said everything about literature be said—and that ne has said it well. Critics of @ Mishima novel are often in the same position: the novelist seems to have anticipated everything 2 critic could pos sibly say about the novel. quer the World one of the cene in which ina bowl. He is jntellect; he also How to Con' The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, ima’ philosophical novels, has 4 § udent name i sual youns man, with great powers of most successful a uni- versity S| a very unu!Mishima Yukio 230 havea cubfoot. He has come to excel in the traditional tere ast of owes TANESE under his masterful hands, Jerre plans, which have hitherto existed as they ae, are aon nat anc plans as they ought to be By cutting the plants to fer eet by ping the eaves at adequate ner by bend pref stems forcibly, and by placing the flowers in certsin pi ink eeived locations in the bowl, Kashiwagi creates a small ie universe. ‘Obviously, the episode is designed to illustrate Kashiwagi’s rol in the novel, which is that of an existentialist philosopher on i : puilt a formidable intellectual universe on the foundation if if physical handicap. Yet it also shows Mishima’s ideas on the rel: tionship between nature and art at the most basic level. In ea shima’s view, the artist works on raw nature and creates an sala ‘order out of disorder. With a pair of clippers in his hand, he bring wild nature under human control, reshaping it meme a premeditated design. Nature as it is is made into nature as he thinks it ought to be. ‘While a floral artist has clippers for his tool, a literary artist has language. “In all ages;” Mishima wrote in an essay “iterature aims at an interpretation of the universe and a deep perception of humanity by means of language.” Language, he felt, was a human invention with which people brought form and order to wild nature. The well-ruled kingdom that resulted was human vilization. Mishima saw the ancient epic poets as having func: tioned in this capacity. He compared them to an architect who has built a majestic palace towering over primitive surroundings to show the monarch’s supreme authority over all men, animals, and plants. A monarch conquered the world with his sword 2 poet did so with his words. ‘Yourig Mishima set out to conquer the world with words Asa middleschool student he wrote poetry and took delight in re- Shaping the external world through his verbal art He was in- terested more in the results of poetic transformation than in poetry per se. In an autobiographical story called “A Youth ‘Who Writes Poetry,” Mishima admitted as much: “The youth did not like to happens Mishima Yukio 221 keep his gaze fixed for any length of time, either on the outer world ron himself. He soon tired and dropped his gaze unless its object changed on the spot into something else—for instane®, unless the silvery gleam of young foliage in the sun of 2 May afternoon was transformed into full-blossoming cherry flowers seen $% night.” Young Mishima, an admirer of Novalis and Yea's lived in and for ths imaginary nocturnal world; to it he would bring objects from the outer world and thereby make them his. He was ® Kashiwagi in the making. ‘Why Mishima was concerned with ordering the world with such tenor isa question dificult to answer in speci 0 though it obviously bore some relationship to his extraordinary gift of in- fellect and self-awareness. The celebrated beginning of his auto- biographical novel, Confessions of @ ‘Mask, has it that he could cic remember how he was born; his selk-awarces began at birtht Cre scems to have felt an unusual amount Of fear at anything his wuld not penetrate. ‘each or his intellect co then his mind perceived something but consciousness could not r He was seldom at ease wi could not grasp it firmly, and he foul convince himself that he hhad a firm grasp only when he was ble to express it verbally. His Hiclong fear of music stemmed from the fact that its message lay beyond words. He once compared music to a ravening beast fore: ibly confined in a cage, an ‘undependable cage that might break down at any minute. “] have an unusual fear,” he confessed, “of this formless thing called sound.” Langua8™ ‘on the other hand, had form and order. Literature, with language 35 its medium, was @ strong cage for the beast known as life. Life in contemporary Japan seemed like a ravening beast to Mishima because he found it both violent and irrational. He par- irrational, mysterious quality. “OF late, the ticularly feared it wr agnosticism,” he wrote, “and factual world has been: buried unde its mystery has deepened as human society has FH to cover a ie a eerritory. Usually, the statements of people whe have wit vvcssed the same incident contradict one another. An. extraordinary fncident that shocks the whole society always contains 2m eternal mystery.” Mishima could not leave mystery as mysth)- In some ofMishima Yukio he attempted to unravel the mystery surrounding var- jous shocking incidents that actually took place. Three notable examples are THE Blue Period, which traces the career of a scandal- ousstudent entrepreneur in Japan's postwar years, The Temple of the Golden Pavt lion, which probes the mind of a Zen acolyte who Ut ge to the famous pavilion in Kyoto, and After the Banquet, “ch draws on the Tokyo gubernatorial election of 1959. : probing. such mysteries to the core, Mishima eventually came upon the psychological clement, “At the heart of an incident, as tong as it takes place in the world of men, there always Ties the human mind,” he said. In particular, there was the darkness of he subconscious mind. Thus Mishima, in his attempt to geta firm grip on the outer world, was forced to look inward, The artist in Tanguage had to be a psychologist, too. Indeed, The Blue Period, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, and After the Banquet can be called psychological novels in the sense that in each work the author vigorously pursues the internal, psychic events in the pro- tagonist' life that culminate in the catastrophic external event. Closest to the novelist in this regard is the psychiatrist. The par- allel is drawn with clarity and forcefulness in Mishima’s novel ‘The Music. The title of the book is a euphemism for orgasm, which the young heroine is unable to reach. The novel consists entirely of a psychiatrist's clinical reports on her condition. He traces the cause of her frigidity to the innermost reaches of her mind and finally succeeds in curing her. In Mishima’s view, a novelist functioned in the same way, defying the dark, weird sector of human life, and trying to pierce it with the searchlight rays of intellect. With his help, a person who has been afraid of “the music” and has refused to listen to it comes to shed these fears. Mishima’s viewpoint here is not unlike that of Soseki, who, as we have seen, recognized the chief function of literature as its ability to disperse fear of the chaotic and unknown. There was, however, a significant difference between the two writers. sseki was more concerned with the conscious mind and had more confidence in its capabilities. He believed that the conscious mind, when it was ethically disciplined, would finally impose its will on the chaos of pis novels Mishima Yukio 228 life, Sdseki’s concept of literary form was primarily moral: a novel had a moral message to convey through its form. Mishima, on the other hand, was acutely aware of the subconscious mind and its devastating power. Well read in Tanizaki’s novels, he was at home in the post-Freudian world and thoroughly acquainted with the murky area beyond the borders of consciousness where moral sense cannot reach. Compared with Séseki, he had less confidence in the power of intellect and language. He wanted to believe, and did believe when young, that literature was a life-molder and con- queror of chaos, Yet that was not enough to put him at eas; in fact, he soon came to realize the limitations of literature and was very much disturbed by the realization. This is clearly seen for example, in the ending of “A Youth Who Writes Poetry.” The young hero, hitherto fully content with his ability to internalize The external, has a rude awakening one day when he learns that an bolder friend of his, another “youth who writes poetry,” is extremely distressed over a futile love affair. The hero believes that a poet Should be capable of mastering anything in this world, love in- ‘luded. Yet here is a young poet, whom he highly admires, failing to.win a gitl’s heart. Similar instances, in which a man of the inner world fails to cope with the outer world despite his confidence to do $0, are numerous in Mishima’s novels. Even Kashiwagi, one of the most formidable masters of the inner world, finds himself powerless before the hero of The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, {who turns into a man of the external world toward the end of the novel. In fact, the novel could be analyzed in terms of a confronta- tion between people of the inner world (the Superior, Kashiwagi, ‘most of the other acolytes) and people of the outer world (the Naval Engineering School student, Uiko, Tsurukawa, the Amer- ican soldier), with the latter group eventually winning Mizoguchi, the novel's hero, to their side. Mishima came to believe that a large part of the reason why poets and other spiritually inclined people failed in their attempt to master life lay in the ineffectiveness of their weapon, language. In ancient times words were powerful because they were used de- notatively, expressing thoughts and feelings shared by the entire aiMishima Yukio say, Epic poets sang of communal emotions of heroes and pu tn lead been given their proper place ina society sey were truly part. Modern poets abused Tanguage or wuld take pride in using words in a private, personal way, hey mone else in the community had thought of. In many 2 n) eories of poetry, the more individual the ws of language, ace poetry twas considered tobe, The result was thatthe pits power to inspire ordinary people, Literature in the rear age might conquer the private world ofan individual, but rors powerless when faced with the society, because its medium, vey language, Was personal and alienated. In Sun and Steel, wexima compared the function of poetic language to that of fone juices, the prime function of which isto digest food, but which sometimes eat the walls of the stomach itself. Language, cording to Mishima, was intended to digest raw life and make cpa of man’s system, but in modern times t had turned inward nd begun eroding his inner world. ‘Behind this corruption of language there lay, Mishima thought, a widening dichotomy between mind and body. In ancient Greece, for instance, mind and body existed in close organic correspon- dence. The sound mind was considered to lodge in, and be repre- sented by, the sound body. But since the flesh decayed and the spirit was immortal, the Greeks tried to unite the two in visual art, Mishima explained: ao comin With the arrival of Hebraicinfluences, however, the classical corre: lation between spirit and flesh began to break down, “Men had been living a proud life, having felt no need for the spirit—unti Mishima Yukio 225 Christianity invented it,” Mishima observed. In its eagerness to overcome the fear of death, Christian culture placed the mind, “a substitute for life,” over and above the body. The spiritual was to be valued more highly than the corporal because it lasted longer. People began to scorn the body as ephemeral and insignificant. ‘Modern science, which seemed to oppose the spiritualism of reli- gion, did not help to turn the tide since it was merely another kind of spiritualism—or rationalism, or utilitarianism, or whatever. In place of muscles and fists it used guns, tanks, planes, and nuclear weapons—all products of the human spirit. It is no accident that Mishima’s ideal revolutionaries, described in Runaway Horses, refuse to use guns. Mishima’s aim in pointing all this out was not to attack Judeo- Christian culture or modern science as such. He was merely stating the natural course of human history as he saw it. He considered it a natural course because he thought he had discovered, beneath religion and science, man’s basic psychic force going its own irresist: ible way. The force existed as a potential before the arrival of Hebraism or modern science. Mishima explained: “Animals do not have the spirit. Only the human species has it, because it jane has succeeded in conquering nature. The human race, its males in particular, invented the spirit when they found they had no role Left 19 Fray after they finished performing their part in procreation (females had ey ar children and hence had a role to play); in one way or another men {Rat fil the hollow period of time between procreation and death. Probably the spirit, in its origin, was an exclusive possession of males dnd served as their weapon, but the weapon turned against its owners nd came to hurt them, The spirit became isolated; sadly, it came to be disowned even by Mother Earth, that female territory. Here Mishima was using the word “spirit” almost as an equivalent of “intellect.” In his way of thinking, a woman could never be a completely intellectual being because of her physiological makeup. Elsewhere Mishima observed: “A woman's mind, since it is tied down by her womb, cannot leave the body as a man’s mind can. ‘Awoman has two nerve centers controlling her mind, the brain and the womb. The two always function so close together that her mind, caught between them, cannot depart from the body.”Mishima Yukio sqefore did not suffer as much as men from the modern sneeween mind and body, and neither Christan oto) pad them in thrall. yes jern science had x ai young Mishima’s fear of raw life and its formlessness, there. re, also meant fear of woman, a strange creature in whom mind snseparably coexisted. The hero of Confessions of a Mash, aman of the sprit irresistibly attracted to his opposite, the 2 represented by an athletic elasmate named Oni. In con trast, he feels 20 deep-rooted attraction to the lovely Sonoko, who sea woman and therefore is a mixture of body and mind. Physio- Jogically, 2 woman contains a dark, disorderly world within her ieee cannot be penetrated by intellect, and that frightens him. If jntellect cannot control woman, who represents the chaos of the external world, is there anything that can? The answer found by Mishima was that woman. and the external world can be eer by the opposite of intellect, namely, the body. ‘What Mishima had to do, then, was to bring “the body” to a prominent place in his scheme of things. In order to do so he first, needed to build up his own body, for he had by now realized that the prime reason he wanted to be a poet in his youth lay in his strong (but subconscious) inferiority complex over his delicate constitution. He had instinctively turned to the internal world of literature when, as a child, he sensed the inadequacy of his phy- sique to face and explore the outside world. His inner urge to start body-building was intensified during his tour of Greece in 1952. ‘After his return to Japan, he began a new life. He took up weight lifting, gymnastics, boxing, track and field, running, horse riding, and kendo (Japanese fencing). In due course he became “a man with the chest measurement of one meter,” muscular athlete like Omi, who he had set out to become. In 1963 he was confident enough to publish a book of photographs proudly displaying himself in the nude. ‘This new posture of ‘Mishima’s considerably modified his cos- mology, tipping the balance between literature and external nature jn favor of the latter, Finding that literature was powerless in the womens U fe and bod} Mishima Yukio ep outer world, he came to trust his muscles more than his words. He was so absorbed in his attempt to match body to mind that he saw the two as irreconcilable enemies. Literature and external nature were wide apart, the former being unable to relate itself meaning- fully to the latter. In Thirst for Love, Etsuko, the woman of the inner world, cannot relate herself to Saburo, a muscular man of the outer world, In The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, Rydji, a romanticist, is about to marry Fusako, a woman of the fesh, when he is murdered by her son and his gang, a grou of young romanticists who feel he has betrayed them. In After the Banquet, the union of male and female principles is attained when the hero Noguchi and the heroine Kazu are united in wedlock, put the marriage breaks up in no time as their incompatibility be- comes apparent. All those novels have a tragic—oF. 3 Teast un- happyending, because they deal with two conflicting philo- sophical systems, one built around the flesh (che external world) wie the other around the spirit (the internal world), neither of which is powerful enough to subjugate the other. Each novel's vituement is brought about, not by resolution of the di- hotomy, but by violence or separation. In short, literature and ‘external nature are incompatible. If this concept of literature seems cations about its nature and function, Having held extravagant expectations for literature in his boy- hood, he was all the more disappointed when he discovered its ‘tations, His reference to the nature of literature in his mai’ years inevitably assumed a negative tone. In Sun and Steel, he Jompared literary art to white ants eating a wooden pillar, to nitric end corroding a copper plate, and, as we have already seem» 1 ae eee tomach fluids digesting the lining of the stomach. In another toay we sce him comparing the artist to a radiologist who sees through other men but is himself contaminated by the radiation. ie wore characteristic metaphor, art is also seen as a charming tee anfaithful woman who through her femininity castrates her husband, The metaphor appears in Forbidden Colors, in an inter- to have unfavorable impli- it was so in Mishima’s mind. limiB Mishima Yukio sage discussing the rel; i cing passage the relationship bet sage gardening. In another later easy, ie ured lang. that “there is cowardice hidden in all Hiteraty cnet OPED stated Teamy sem strange that Mishima, hoigine literature that he did, continued to produge ¢ ete View of works Realizing this he tried to justify jg MDE of literary ‘To seck a model life within the ming Gort to cripple his life, to cut off na ft rn out of such Bowes fom the sphere of daly if annoy energy at aad ising mel re etka mode Tife yon? MY litera Posible mimetic part that all works oft a “life without a theme” and, as daily activni at 822 52, t0 conformity. 35 Yeats went by, eloped ad At the most basic level, then, literature conti him exactly as it had in his boyhood, tri 0d, chaotic, uncanny patt of his inner world roe © oF Ot the inging it at his wi of ae sua His skin beautifully suntanned, Ae highly developed by dumbbells, he no longer had an inferiority complex over his physique. He felt no need to be a dreamer whe because of his delicate constitution, has to conjure up a romantic theme for his life. Mishima was now more interested in the physical world, a world where he coexisted with all kinds of people. He did not want to be an alienated poet; he wanted to be part of a community, part of life's daily ebb and flow. It was thus that he came to develop a “passion for conformity.” This changing attitude of Mishima’s toward literature can be seen as a logical development of his initial concept of art. Asa boy he wanted to structure chaos by means of literature, but soon discovered that literature depended on language, which was itself should vigorously discipline himself in both the mili and the literary arts; a perfect samurai had to be an expert poet se well as an expert swordsman. Mishima studied the origins ofthis idea and discovered death at the root of both arts, An ideal warrior ‘tained his body, built up his muscles, and polished his swordsman- ship, allin preparation for the ultimate combat, when death would await him. A perfect soldier was a man perfectly prepared for death. On the other hand, a poet trained his imaginative faculty, built up an intellectual universe, and polished his art of expression, also in preparation for death. He endeavored to overcome death by believing in the immortality of his mind, which would live on in his poetry after his physical death. A perfect poet, too, was a ‘man perfectly prepared for death Such being the case, Mishima speculated that if he puriued death at once as a soldier and as literary artist, he would be able to see the point of contact between the body and the mind. As described in the epilogue of Sun and Steel, he carried out the ‘experiment by exploring outer space in a jet plane. The planet Earth was enveloped with death, and in order to go out there one hnad to be a scientist, a man of the mind who could operate the spacecraft, as well asa soldier, a man of the body who was physically able to withstand high altitudes, One winter day in 1967 Mishima flew to a height of 43,000 feet in an F-1og supersonic fighter. In moment of almost sexual eeasy he saw a huge white make sncircling the globe and “biting its own tal.” High up in the sky, Suerounde by death, he had glimped a union of mind and body {As Mishima well knew, however, this resolution of the dichotomy concealed an element of tragedy at its root. An ideal warrior whoyy 230 2. seroic deat in combat moves from the world of action to ies ineratre, becoming the hero of an epic poem, But as a at of Hier" who refuses to dream, he has to die with i i jout grandiose it he had any, he would no longer be a man of action. ie other band, 2 poet can never be the hero he eulogizes in the Oot he has to live on in order to eulogiz his poo™ 5 logize. And when he his Pi death would not be heroics he has never been a hero. In diy words, an ideal man who has solved the dichotomy by way onfaabu ry@d0 can expect a dreadful death, with no solace from ot per the military oF the literary art. A soldier who has never read cimepic, oF 2 poet who has never seen a real hero, can die more happily. Fortunately, men who attain bunbu ryBd0 are rare, and yey they are often betrayed by one or the other of their arts at the last minute. ‘What about Mishima’s own death? One i : is tempted t tore died as goes ee OE cor a warrior in his last years, especially since he founded the Shield Society, a small private army committed to defending the emperor at any sacrifice. It was as the leader of that “soldier” grouy stat iskima, together Witt Estate ReaimemMMMST SE estar, headquarters of Japan’s SelfDefense Force and, when the at- tempted coup failed, killed himself, Indeed, he performed a ritual suicide in the traditional samurai manner. On the surface, then, it was a happy death of a heroic soldier who di ae be ied believed in. oC ‘There was another aspect to that, howev z co at, er. On the mornin; of the day of his suicide, Mishima delivered the last faciieee ot his last novel, The Decay of the Angel, which describes anything but heroic death. The novel has two principal characters: Honda, an aged lawyer who has seen three people of action heroically following their destiny (described in the three books that preceded the novel in the tetralogy), and Toru (a name literally meaning perception”), a young signalstation attendant whose duty it is to watch the horizon for the first sign of an incoming boat. The novel traces Honda’s attempt to convert Toru from a seer to “a man to be seen! "from a man of inaction to a man of action— since Honda is convinced that Toru was born to be the latter. The Mishima Yukio man of 2 jilusions: Mishima Yukio 231 attempted conversion fails disastrously. Toru tries to Kill himself, hut he turns out to be woefully lacking in the qualifications of a tragichero. He ends up blind. The born seer, in failing to become «man to be seen, now loses even his natural gift of seeing. The evel closes with Honda, already a sickly old man of eighty-one, casting grave doubt on people's capacity (0 sec. ‘Throughout the tetralogy, he has functioned as an epic poet. His death is now imminent. Mishima’s death, therefore, was a poet's as well as a soldier's. Justas Honda died after the completion of The Decay of the Angel, so did Mishima the novelist. Mishima the soldier's death was sen ‘ationally reported in the newspapers, while Mishima the novelist’s death was not even mentioned in his last novel. But this was 2s it Should be. Mishima's death was happy as a soldier's, but meaning- Tess as a novelist’s, A novelist’s happiness lies in living a long enough life to see his novels gain immortality. But old age would nean deterioration of the body, the decay of a soldier. Mishima Wanted to live both as aman of the mind and as a man of the bodys he could continue to do so only while his body kept its youthful vitality. When he knew he could no longer be both, he chose to die, fully aware that his choice was doubly tragic: In summing up, then, we must say that Mishima’s concept of the relationship between literature and external reality changed drastically with time. As years went by, he felt more and more strongly that literature was powerless to reshape life, since literary Janguage had become too personal. He therefore brought in action, or physical strength, to perform that function; it was the body, not the mind, that had the potential to reshape nature into an ideal order. The role of literature changed from a life-shaper’s to a lifexecorder’s. A literary artist was to observe and describe the external world, the world not as it was but as it changed into an ideal order through the efforts of a man of action. Literature, which had lost its power to reshape nature, regained it when supple- mented by action, which had that power. We conclude this part of the discussion by going back to the scene in The Temple of the Golden Pavilion with which we started. Kashiwagi, with just a pair of hand clippers, created anMishima Yukio sje universe in a flower bowl. As an artist and creatr, ons He preme over that cosmos. Yet in the scene immediate bereittige we see nis itl friend ina fit of temper upturn the ies 4 ae mar tne lowers co shreds: ‘The artist's universe is fragile ind sh an (ae of pie] wiolenee, ‘To overcome that violence, Kath gis to transform himself from an artist to a soldier: he pan wag Dt jovoman’s hair and slaps her across the cheek. Mishima’ tm eo ce eal arts is epresented, not by Keshinag ae ‘st, but by the omniscient narrator, who Satchel a zi ni he transformation of Kashiwagi from an artist int Oa floral art records soldier.” Traveler with a Timetable What is he like, then, this omniscient of the Golden Pavilion? OF all the cae . a ats brief appearance, near the end. He is Father Zenkai, th eee a Zen temple in a northern prefecture, who by a iidens ae ing a visit to the Temple of the Golden Pavilion on the etl icsset afre. A Buddhist priest he belongs to the ral Pie spirit. Yet he has an outstandingly masculine physique: Ties almost six feet tall, has dark skin and bushy ae vd tke in a thunderous voice. Mizoguchi, the novel's hero, es and ea te has the eyes to see through everything and eri. incluc y i is iscic i incining izoguchi himself, He is omniscient, like the novel's : can be surmised, then, that the ideal novelist, as conceived yy Mishima in his mature years, has to enjoy a happy combinatio of both spiritual and physical power. The writer needs access 5 the worlds of both the mind and the body; he must therefore h: the qualifications of both a poet and a soldier. Mishima imy at this when he wrote in an essay: “In the ideal world where T wish to live, Boxing and Art would shake hands without being forced, * Kashiwagi approaches the image ofthe id 1 image ofthe idea artist here, bt ony tempo- sarily. Clubfooted, he can never be a ful Re epic et eee Mishima Yukio 233 physical Strength and Intellectual Vigor would run hand in hand, and Life and Art would smile at each other.” This combination of avn athlete's qualifications with a poet’s is a distinguishing feature ot Mishima’s thought; no other major novelist of modern Japi™ held such a view, though Shiga was moving in that direction. The typical modern Japanese novelist, Mishima thought, wis “an ugly cripple whose exterior has been deformed by the mind’s poison. Ugliest of all was Dazai, an ailing man who never wanted his ail ment to be cured. Akutagawa was a weak-willed invalid who dilowed his fragile physique to affect his mind. TTanizaki was @ vlever writer who surrendered to defeatism (Tanizaki would call ‘ anasochism) without fighting, and then enjoyed plenty of good food and lived a long life. Kawabata was a calculatingly lazy man ‘who made little or no effort to structure the chaos of life. Shiga ‘alone was awakened to the importance ‘of the body, but he was es complacent athlete who, once he had established a new athletic record, abandoned all effort to break it-* sts i suggested by this last instance, Mishim: chotomy of mind and body not only as the lead: novelist’s character but as the source from which pulse sprang: Shiga stopped writing ‘when he became too much of vy athlete, Mishima’s utopia, in which the boxer and the artist would shake hands, had better remain a utopia forever, Iiglarsit crested al work of art out Of his frustration |Ac = a regarded the di- ing feature of the his creative im- because ot being a boxer. For an artist to do creative work, he needs at once physical health and Some physiomental ill health. He needs both sett ‘and gloom, both some phiysiowengss and addiction to melancholy, both quiet happiness ve emoldesing anger, both joy on one level and gricf on ‘another level. 2 er falicgte concoction humanly possible? Possible oF impossible, 1s sac ed dace toying at it, and the effort would be valuable in itself. ‘Tone completely abandons that effort, one would turn int) & sloth, that sone Connick, hanging upside down from a tree, forever Keeps sleeping ‘while waiting for an inspiration. se writers. This brief summary of his Wi, Despite these differences between fo their virtues and expressed high s to have been Dazai, whom he + Mishima wrote extensively on. thes remarks on them is inevitably oversimplifie hhim and other writers, he was seldom blind respect for their works. The only exception seem: wwas never able to like.Mishima Yukio zone has perfect physical health and thereby secures case, and happiness (as Shiga did), one feels no need for = on ko ction. On the other hand, if one’s mental heat see one feels nothing but gloom, melancholy, males likely to be complete withdravral from, red escape into a private world of fantasy. Tn th fest no need for others and therefore no ny feelings for others to understand. For fj within himself two mutually incompatible nd a dreamer, each striving to become the for all that. Out of this strife comes ene; create a work of fiction. It is not easy to imagine exactly what sort of ji : would live in contemporary ps ee ae upa model lifestyle for himself and then carried it out toa deme “My ultimate aim is to stop associating fwith writers and ba nalists] altogether,” he said. “From now on I am goin iS nae 4 cach day neatly into three separate periods time for deer, uae for work, and time for exercise.” By “work” he meant ceativa writing, his work as a man of the mind. By “exercise” he meant boxing, gymnastics, horse riding, and kend®, his work as a man of the body. The main obstacle that hindered him from leadin this ideal life came from journalists, who kept disturbing him for most of each day. Somewhat in jest (but only somewhat), he once suggested that the best way to escape from all this would be to go and live abroad. In this connection itis interesting to takea glance at the “writers’ paradise” that Mishima dreamed of in a lighthearted mood. In an essay called “Gymnasium for Individuality,” he pictures a writers’ colony in a wooded area some distance from Tokyo. It is a kind of abbey, where each writer lives and works in a soundproofed cell. The switchboard operator at the abbey refuses to take any call for any writer at work. Yet if a writer longs for a red-light district in the evening, Tokyo is within commuting distance and he is free to go there. As might be expected, the colony is well equipped for physical training: there are vaulting horses, Swedish bars, skipping 234 renity, creating h is such and anger, the the physical world is state, one would feed to express one’s shima a novelist has elements, an athlete other, but in conflict "By for the novelist to whe Mishima Yukio 235 Topes, mats, sandbags, etc. As for food, beefsteaks and tomato juice are plentifully supplied, while such delicacies as sea slugs and trepangs are severely rationed because of their low nutritive value. For mental exercise, there is an agora where writers gather for lit- erary debates; there are also weekly lectures on ancient languages by professors of classics. The most distinctive feature of the writers’ colony is a Japanese Reality Room, where each resident writer is required to spend at least five hours a week. The room has facilities to project films on the screen, reproduce sounds, emit smells, change the temperature and humidity, and so on—all at a push of the proper button. For example, when a writer pushes a button labeled “Precipitation over Japan,” the air-tight room at once grows hot and humid, and the disgustingly sentimental melody of a popular song begins to be heard, followed by prolonged sobbing ina feeble voice, which gradually becomes louder and is joined by other sobbing voices. Each tearful voice is then translated into a visual scene projected on the screen; sorrowful partings between mother and child, between man and wife, between sweethearts, be- tween blood brothers, and so forth are shown in an increasingly heart-rending sequence of scenes, finally reaching a climax in which all members of the family commit suicide. The spectator must sit through all this no matter how unbearable he may find it. There are many other similar buttons, labeled “Asian Stagnation,” “Japa- nese Poverty,” “Victims of Atomic Bombs,” “The Demimonde,” “An Introduction to Vaudeville,” and so on. Although much of this is caricature, Mishima’s underlying theme is a serious one: the novelist should stay in training, both physically and mentally. A Dazai or an Akutagawa would not kill himself after going through a training program like the one described. For a novelist who has trained himself in this way, the creative process becomes a much more predictable affair. In an essay called. “My Art of Writing,” Mishima analyzed and explained his meth- ods of composition to a degree few Japanese writers had cared to do, The outstanding feature of his approach to writing a novel was, as might have been expected, its deliberate, conscious orderli- ness. He compared it to his Mexican tour of 1957, a tour for which —Mishima Yukio ured a detailed timetable in advance and followed j ‘repte a friend's warning that the real Mexico a a hese only t0 3 casual wanderer. Mishima called his wa sing 2 casi’ mode of traveling—that is, he preferred to ofa predetermined form on his creative imagination, Tn ge po process By which he wrote a novel went through He ores: earch for a theme, survey of the milieu, construction em pot, and actual writing. Mishima explained each stage in soy - Ht 1m so doing, heevealed much else about his working m a ie rac seems entirely characteristic of him. Sai \ishima’s fist stage was itself practically unique among Ja see writers who were his contemporaries. Many of them aii fegin a novel without any clear identification or analysis oti Theme; like Tanizaki, they would rather let the creative u aa possesion of them, themselves becoming passive, Mishima did no tleny the presence of the creative urge; indeed, he admitted ie he himself could feel it in the presence of certain objects or in- dents. Yet he would not be passive; he went out of his own free sill to search for such objects or incidents. He compared himself toa man walking along a dark road with a flashlight in his hand. suddenly, the light caught something that glittered with eae prilliance. On closer inspection, it turned out to be a splinter from abcer bottle. He had found both theme and material for his novel! He came back to his laboratory and examined the bottle fragment under a bright lamp: eral I seldom begin writing a novel while leaving my newly discovered theme in che same state in which I found it I examine the material, filter it, and try to extract its essence. I give it a complete analysis to find out why T jas subconsciously attracted to it; I bring everything out into the light Of the conscious mind. I rid the material of its specifics and reduce it to abstraction Mishima estimated that it took him from half a year to several years to complete the first stage. When it was done there followed the second stage, in which he studied the milieu. The abstract theme deduced at the conclusion of the first stage had to be given specific details to grow into a novel, and the milieu was what pro vided the details. In the second stage, then, he followed a pro- Mishima Yukio 237 cedure that was the reverse of the first. He now concentrated on studying all the material, such as police records, trial transcripts, newspaper reports, technical terms, dialects, and slang, that might tye nceded to give the story a sense of reality. What Mishima studied snost intensively was the locale that was to provide the novel's setting. Asa rule he traveled to the place in question and strolled ground it in a leisurely fashion, paying attention to the smallest viticulars. He tried to find out how a stranger would feel on visiting the place, for he wanted to create that impression when he eame to describe it in the novel. In his opinion, nature de- picted in a novel had always to be “fictional” jn the sense that the real inhabitants never saw it in that way, because they were 0 accustomed to the place. The more fictional the description of na- ture, the more readily the novel’s reader would feel as if he Wet there. Once again, Mishima was untypical; most Japanese novelists depicted (or thought they depicted) a locale through the eyes of their characters. Tin passing we might also note Mishima’s confession that on such afield trip he was always moved more by external nature than DY the people he saw. He attributed this to the fact that objects in hnatuge were merely physical, while people consisted of both mind nd body. Nature could not be reduced to abstractions, Mishima ‘did not offer further explanations, but it is obvious that he was more at ease with external nature because it was all visible. A per- son brought to his notice had to be analyzed at both the conscious and the subconscious levels before he could relax. At all events, his observation that descriptions of nature always occupy an important part in his novels should be taken as good advice for anyone who reads them. ‘The third stage in Mishima’s art of writing is plot construction, a topic we shall reserve for a later section. It would suffice here to note that he did more advance planning on his plots than most of his contemporaries; he was a classical plot maker just as he was a classical tourist in Mexico. He was especially careful in setting up the novel's climax; he might modify some particulars of the plot while he wrote, but he would never change the climax that he hadMishima Yukio 38 #5" sed for at the beginning, It has been reported tha ee ding scene of The Decay of the Angel before the atgsections. While such a practic is inconceivable ai cawabata, itis quite characteristic of Mishima, ee fourth and final stage in the creation of a Mishi asthe actual writing. At this stage, he temporarily we he preparations he had made in the previ 2 a r a in the previous 1 sages He would let his theme, which he had grasped so a i shes stage, slip out of his mind and wander whe tik P z ere it would, li rinvater, und ie was lost in the ground. He would forget aa methodology and the creative process; all that’ would occupy hi mind would be the part of the novel he was working on aches noment. He was, however, always aware of his hidden theme xeeping a watchful eye on him from under the ground where ie had sunk, When he fele that is writing passed inspection by this vatchman, all would go smoothly. But if he felt that a particular detail did not match the theme, his pen stopped right there and would not budge. When this happened, he went back to the notes he had made during his visit to the locale and tried to relive the experiences he had had there. When he succeeded in “eel” of his initial experience, t he wrote writing the fora writer ima novel cleared his regaining the his pen came back to life and started moving again. The act of writing a novel consisted in a long se- quence of such stops and starts, which would continue until the novel came to its proper conclusion. ‘The creative process, as described by Mishima, thus resembles a philosopher and a reporter teamed up together, trying to co- ordinate their different, and at times conflicting, propensities of mind. At the first stage it is the philosopher who is in charge. He ‘meets with an actual happening that interests him; he tries to ob- serve it, analyze it, and eventually reduce it to its abstract essence which is the theme. At the second stage the journalist takes over: he travels to the place of the happening, conducts interviews, reads necessary reports and documents, and otherwise takes note of the circumstantial details. The reporter remains in the forefront dur- ing the third stage, too, as he works out the most effective way of presenting the material that has been gathered. At the fourth stage | Mishima Yukio 239 he actually takes up his pen and starts writing the novel. But the philosopher is always looking over his shoulder. If the journalist swerves from the main theme, the philosopher taps him on the back, scolds him, and orders him to redo the work. This goes on until the novel reaches a successful conclusion. Let Them Feel Strength Within ‘The effect of art on the spectator is explored at length by Mi- shima in The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. The Golden Pa- vilion is itself a celebrated work of art with a powerful appeal to everyone who sees it, especially the novel's hero, the young student Mizoguchi. The nature of its appeal is described in detail near the end of the novel, when Mizoguchi takes a last, lingering look at the pavilion before setting it afire. As before, the beauty of the tower- ing structure almost overwhelms him, yet this time he begins to understand why. The essence of the Golden Pavilion’s beauty, as he now perceives, lies in nothingness. The pavilion was built in the Dark Ages by people desperately trying to overcome nihilism, and it still retains traces of that effort. There are signs of uneasi ness in the decoration: no detail is complete in itself, one detail seeking another to complete its beauty, in an endless and vain effort toward perfection. The whole structure, dreaming of a per- fection that is never to be attained, trembles in anticipation of nothingness like a jeweled necklace trembling in the wind. A beautiful work of art gives the spectator a feeling of nothing- ness. That is what Mishima seems to imply in The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. Indeed, the novel’s narrator observes elsewhere: “Men inadvertently arrive at the darkest thoughts in the world when they pursue beauty, and beauty alone. Human beings seem to be made that way.” Mishima might have added that beauty seems to be made that way, too. Underlying the observation is his idea that the artist creates a work of art in a desperate effort to diminish the chaos of the external and the internal worlds, chaos that fills him with unease, anxiety, and nihilism, In olden times, a work of art was a palace towering over the wilderness as a trium- phant monument to the conqueror. In modern times, however, illMishima Yukio 24° pappencd, because men became individualists and lan, iso PPE rise media Tox thee communal, unifying oe a ‘A work of arts created to overcome uneasiness, was wy json. oped fr ital proto that stood a in ine respread uneasines to its onlookers, as the Golden «gid to Mizoguchi. visa made esentily the same point by quoting several Mite The New Collection of Ancient and Modern Poems pom nloBy Of poetry completed two centuries before the build. ingot the ‘Golden Pavilion. One was a celebrated poem by Fujiwara ‘peika (1362-2240): However far I gaze ‘Neither cherry blossoms nor ‘Crimson leaves are in sight. ‘Onlya fisherman's huton the shore In the autumnal evening. amet SF pavilion Mishima could not accept the usuall interpretation of the poem, ainich centers on the contrast between two types of beauty, the votorfal and the austere, with the poet expressing a preference for the latter. According to Mishima, however, the poem is structured ‘round the beauty of cherry blossoms and crimson leaves that are vor there, The poet, standing on a desolate seashore as the autumn night (ell, desperately longed for the colorful sight of cherry blos- wean or bright leaves. When he realized the fuility ofthat longing, he made it into a beautiful work of art, the poem. The poem's beauty, born of the poet's despait, conveys that despair to the reader_—or at least to a reader Tike it Mishima had an ambivalent feeling toward The New Collection of Ancient and Modern Poems, 25 Mizoguchi did toward the Golden Pavilion. While he was-attracted 10 {ts colorful and del- icate beauty, he did not like tts implicit malaise, which he thought should be overcome. He sa the my as ee oa ee ofa trend that was to dominate the poetry ie Bice Bein Mia the same Kd ed Gauci Lore for is works of literature - Sp aiscure lilled presentanom elena Bette bat wa diseurbod Mishima Yukio 241 by the “uneasiness” that his work often created in the reader or spectator. Mishima observed: guch uneasiness is not unique to Lorea; we are familiar with it through the symbolist plays of Maeterlinck and some Irish plays ‘The only dif- fence is that Lorca’s plays make us feel 2s though guitar music Woe xerrelessly coming from behind the stage, its melody being that peculiarly Spanish one—uneasy, nervous, like thin clouds shading the moon as they we its surface one after another in rapid succession. «In my opinion, pr produce such uncasiness in the spectators mind is not a laudable the- weal technique. For this “unanalyzable uneasiness,’ conveyed through Simple characters in the drama, finds a ready audience in modern city siuilers and in so doing expands itself within their minds in accordance aeinyeir education and inner lives. Ie can balloon like bread with too uch yeast in it; it can be analogized, deduced, replaced, or used as a metaphor for a higher type of anxiety. ‘The linking of uneasiness to music is characteristic of Mishima: snusic, as we have seen, made him uneasy because it was invisible. ‘The plays he mentions were indeed very musical, not only in their tanguage but in their construction; powerful in mood but lacking clearly expressible themes, they created the same kind of uneasiness camusic, an uneasiness that, since it was without shape, could ex- pand forever in each reader's mind. As Teika's reader was free to realize any beautiful scene of cherry blostoms he might like, ‘he audience of a Lorca play was free to interpret it in a variety of ways. Mishima did not like such freedom. Hee concluded that Lorca, although undoubtedly a first-rate poet and playwright, was ako the “owner of an emaciated modern mentality.” Mishima felt the same way about the modern novel and its readers, At the outset of What Is a Novelt, he observed that the tnajority of people who seriously listened to the radio in today’s Japan were invalids who either did not have a television set or were not allowed to see TV because of the nature of their illness. He went on to assert that the modern novel was doomed to become like the radio, In his opinion, the modern novel's readers were sick men and women terrified of their own inner darkness, which never- theless fascinated them. “Thanks to the fact that they have read a novel,” he said, “these people become awakened to the mystery of human life, something of which they may never have become aware