topics: |  fiction | japan | homosexual

[The protagonist, Kochan, is a thinly veiled reference to the youthful Kimitake Hiraoka (Yukio Mishima was his pen-name)]

For many years, I claimed I could remember things seen at the time of my own birth. ... [Adults would disparage him, saying that a baby's eyes are not yet open at birth etc. .. ] But just then, they would seem to be struck by the idea that they were on the point of being taken in by the child's tricks: Even if we think he's a child, we mustn't let our guard down. The little rascal is surely trying to trick us into telling him about "that," and then what is to keep him from asking, with still more childlike innocence: "Where did I come from? How was I born?" And in the end they would look me over again, silently, with a thin smile froze on their lips, showing that for some reason which I could never understand, their feelings had been deeply hurt. 1-2

[Remembers a glint of sunlight on the brim of the basin of his first bath. But this is unlikely to be true, since he was born at night. ]

I was born two years after the Great Earthquake.  Ten years earlier, as a
result of a scandal that occurred while he was serving as a colonial
governor, my grandfather had taken the blame for a subordinate's misdeeds and
resigned his post.  Thereafter my family began sliding down an incline
... huge debts, foreclosure, sale of the family estate, and then, as
financial difficulties multiplied, a morbid vanity blazing higher and higher
like some evil impulse. 4

On the morning of January 4, 1925, my mother was attacked by labor pains.  At
nine that evening she gave birth to a small baby weighing five pounds and six
ounces. 5

My parents lived on the second floor of the house.  On the pretext that it
was hazardous to raise a child on an upper floor, my grandmother snatched me
from my mother's arms on my forty-ninth day.  My bed was placed in my
grandmother's sickroom, perpetually closed and stifling with odors of
sickness and old age, and I was raised there beside her sickbed. 5-6

On NY morning just prior to my fourth birthday, I vomited something the color
of coffee.  THe family doctor was called.  After examining me, he said he was
not sure I would recover.  I was given injections of camphor and glucose
until I was like a pincushion.  The pulses of both my wrist and upper arm
became imperceptible.
   Two hours lapsed.  They stood looking down at my corpse.

   A shroud was made ready, my favorite toys collected, and all the relatives
gathered. Almost another hour passed, and then suddenly urine appeared.  My
mother's brother, who was a doctor, said, "He's alive!"  He said it showed
the heart had resumed beating.
   A little later urine appeared again.  Gradually the vague light of life
revived in my cheeks.
   That illness, autointoxication - became chronic with me.  It stuck about
once a month, now lightly, now seriously, I encountered many crises.  By the
sound of the disease's footsteps as it drew near I came to be able to sense
whether an attack was likely to approach death or not. 7

[sees a man coming down the slope] a night-soil man, a ladler of excrement.
Wearing dark-blue cotton trousers {Jeans?) of the close-fitting kind called
"thigh-pullers". ... The scrutiny I gave this youth was unusually close for a
child of four.  Although I did not clearly perceive it at that time, for me
he represented my first revelation of a certain power, my forst summons by a
strange and secret voice.  It is significant that this was first manifested
to me in the form of a night-soil man: excrement is a symbol for the earth,
and it was doubtlessly the malevolent love of the Earth Mother that was
calling to me. 8

[Just as] other children [want to be generals], I became possessed with the
ambition to become a night-soil man. 9

[Is enamoured to see a picture of a] knight mounted on a white horse, holding
a sword aloft.  [Later, his sicknurse tells him that the picture is that of
Joan of Arc:]
  "A woman...?"
  I felt as though I had been knocked flat.  The person I thought a _he was a
_she.  If this beautiful knight was a woman and not a man, what was there
left? 12

[soldiers returning from drill are passing by their house]
The soldier's odor of sweat- that odor like a sea breeze, like the air,
burned to gold, above the seashore - struck my nostrils and intoxicated me.
This was probably my earliest memory of odors.  Needless to say, the odor
could not, at that time, have had any direct relationship with sexual
sensations, but it did gradually and tenaciously arouse within me a sensuous
craving for such things as the destiny of soldiers, the tragic nature of
their calling, the distant countries they would see, the ways they would
die. 14

[To a child,] time and space become entangled.  For example, there was the
news I heard from adults concerning faraway events - the eruption of a
volcano, say, or the insurrection of an army -- and the things that were
happening before my eyes - my grandmother's speels or the petty family
quarrels - and the fanciful events of the fairy-tale world in which I had
just then become immersed: these three things always appeared to me to be of
equal value and like kind.

[Involved by the magician lady Shokyokusai Tenkatsu.  Goes to mother's
dressers.] From among my mother's kimono's I dragged out the most gorgeous
one, the one with the strongest colors.  [covers forehead with crepe de
Chine.]  I stood before the mirror and saw that this improvised headcloth
resembled those of the pirates in Treasure Island.  [Donald Keene in video:
perhaps more children read Treasure Island in Japan than in the West.]

... dressed like this, [I] rushed into my grandmother's sitting room.  I ran
about the room crying:
  "I'm Tenkatsu! I'm Tenkatsu!"
[Is disrobed by a maid]. 17-19

[incapacity] for accepting love. 19 [bookchaps/lit/mishima07Wattpost-war-in-mishimas-fictionconfessions-thirst-forbidden]

It was not until much later that I discovered hopes the same as mine in
Heliogabalus, emperor of Rome in its period of decay.  (see H below) 20

I did not yet understand why from among Andersen's many fairy tales, only his
'Rose-Elf' threw deep
shadows over my heart, only that beautiful youth who, while kissing the rose
given him as a token by his sweetheart, was stabbed to death and decapitated
by a villain with a big knife. 21

Visions of "princes slain" pursued me tenaciously.  21

[Hungarian fairy tale
realistic illustration of prince in black tights and rose tunic; cape w
scarlet lining, green+gold belt, white leather glove.]
On his face, was the resolve of death.
[scene just prior to being devoured by a dragon. [But it was not
satisfying, for he would die seven times, and recover as well.] 22

"Without a moment's delay, the dragon chewed the prince greedily into bits.
It was almost more than he could stand, but the prince summoned all his
courage and bore the torture steadfastly until he was finally chewed
completely into shreds.  Then, in a flash, he
[_suddenly was put back gogether
again and came springing nimbly right out of the dragon's mouth.  There was
not a single scratch anywhere on his body.  The dragon_ ]
sank to the ground and died on the spot."  23
[He would hide the part in italics [ ] - which seemed "defective" - and
read the rest which became "ideal".]

I delighted in imagining situations in which I myself was dying in battle or
being murdered.  [Would forever be imagining that some maid he bullied had
added poison to his broth the next day; would get up without eating.] 24

When my sister and brother were born, they were not given over into my
grandmother's hands as I had been. 25

[A parade w priest in fox-mask, followed by energetically shouting young men
carrying a shrine: possibly some of the material for the temple dance scene
in TfL] 27-29

[A CURIOUS TOY].
For over a year now I have been suffering the anguish of a child provided
with a curious toy.  I was twelve years old.
   This toy increased in volume at every opp and hinted that, rightly used,
it would be quite a delightful thing.  But directions for its use were
nowhere written, and so, when the toy took the initiative in wanting to play
with me, my bewilderment was inevitable.  Occasionally my humiliation and
impatience became so aggravated that I even thought I wanted to destroy the
toy.  34

The toy raised its head towards death and pools of blood and muscular flesh.
Gory dueling scenes on the fortispieces of adventure-story magazines, which I
borrowed in secret from the student houseboy; pictures of young samurai
cutting open their bellies, or of soldiers struck by bullets, clenching their
teeth and dripping blood from between hands that clutched at khaki-clad
breasts; photographs of hard-muscled sumo werestlers, of the third rank and
not yet grown too fat -- at the sight of such things the toy would promptly
lift its inquisitive head. 35

Coming to understand these matters, I began to seek physical pleasure
continuously, intentionally. ... When [I found a picture defective] I would
first copy it with crayons and then correct it to my satisfaction.  Then it
would become the pic of a young circus performer dropping to his knees
clutching a bullet wound in his breast; or a tight-rope walker who had fallen
and split his skull open and now lay dying, face half covered in blood. 36
[but he knew this was illegal; sometimes he could not concentrate in school,
worried that these pics had been discovered from their hiding drawer. ]

[On seeing] a reproduction of Guido Reni's "St.Sebastian" which hangs in the
collection of the Palazzo Rosso at Genova.

   [The way in which Guido confronts the theme of the martyrdom shows clearly
    his intent to 'bring out' the moral content of a holy event, the
    significance of which is seen in the example of the scene, rather than
    make the event seem probable or real.  To this end, the characteristic
    style employed by Guido, of the eyes of the saint cast upwards in
    ecstatic contemplation of that which mere mortals cannot see, is
    important.
    http://kidslink.bo.cnr.it/ic16-bo/reni/archivio/webreni/saintseb.html

It is not pain that hovers about his straining chest, his tense abdomen, his
slightly contorted hips, but some flicker of melancholy pleasure like
music...


guido's st. sebastian

That day, the instant I looked upon the picture, my entire being trembled
with some pagan joy. My blood soared up; my loins swelled as though in
wrath. The monstrous part of me that was on the point of bursting awaited my
use of it with unprecedented ardor, upbraiding me for my ignorance, panting
indignantly. My hands, completely unconsciously, began a motion they had
never been taught. I felt a secret, radiant something rise swift-footed to
the attack from inside me. Suddenly it burst forth, bringing with it a
blinding intoxication. 40 [48]

[A school friend tells him, of Omi, an older boy, has failed 2-3 years]
They say that his you-know-what is awful big. 50
[The game of "dirty" - in full daylight, you try to grab at an un-observant
boy - and then move away and shout "Oh, it's big! Oh what a big one A has!"]

[The freshly fallen snow, before it catches] the rays of the rising sun,
looked more gloomy than beautiful.
The snow seemed like a dirty bandage hiding the open wounds of the city,
hiding those irregular gashes of haphazard streets and tortuous alleys...
54

Omi touches his cheeks with his white leather gloves.

A raw carnal feeling blazed up within me.  From that time on I was in love
with Omi. 61

Because of [Omi] I began to love strength, an impression of overflowing
blood, ignorance, rough gestures, careless speech, and the savage melancholy
inherent in flesh not tainted in any way by intellect... 64

[During a game of push-the-other-one-off-the-snowy-log, He feels Omi is
friendlier to him than the others. ] 69

[Omi's naked torso at gymnastics class]
The thickets of his armpits were folded into dark shadows, gradually becoming
invisible.  [He gets a hard-on and has to be careful others don't see it] 77

[He masturbates on a rock in the beach, thinking of Omi] 89

Fantasy of banquet at which a boy is strangled by a cook, and served.  He is
the first to cut into him with a knife.  94-97:

[He passes a msg to a friend:]
"Katakura's mother told me over and over again to be sure and give you her
regards" [and the friend is embarrassed and gives him a friendly blow on the
chest.  He can't comprehend for a while - the mother is a widow, still
young.]
I felt miserable.  ... because the incident had revealsed such an obv diff
between his focus of interest and my own. 99
[Why does he feel miserable?  because he is not included in this large,
group.  Not because he is diff per se, but because being diff means being
left out. ]

Everyone says that life is a stage.  But most people do not seem to be
obsessed with the idea - at any rate not as early as I.
By the end of childhood I was already firmly convinced that it was so and
that I was to play my part on the stage without once revealing my true
self. 101

Stephan Zweig: "what we call evil is the instability inherent in all mankind
which drives man outside and beyond himself toward and unfathomable
something, exactly as though Nature had bequeathed to our souls an
ineradicable portion of instability from her store of ancient chaos." 104-5

[From piece he wrote at age fifteen: ]
Ryotaro lost no time in making himself a part of this new circle of friends.
He believed confidently that he could conquer his reasonless melancholy and
ennui by being - or pretending to be - even a little cheerful.  Credulity,
the acme of belief, had left him in a state of incandescent repose.  Whenever
he joined in some mean jest or prank he always told himself: "Now I'm not
blue, now I'm not bored."  He styled this "forgetting troubles."
   Most people are always doubtful as to whether they are happy or not,
cheerful or not.  This is the normal state of happiness, as doubt is the most
natural thing.
   Ryotaro declares "I am happy," and convinces himself it is true.  ... A
faint but real thing is confined in a powerful machine of falsehood.  The
machine sets to work mightily, and people don't even notice that he is a mass
of "self-deceit". (He started publishing at 16) 107

[His ignorance of other boys / kissing:]
Even the sex encyclopedia said nothing concerning erection as a physiological
accompaniment of the kiss [neither novels]. 110

In short, I knew absolutely nothing about other boys.  I did not know that
each night all boys but me had dreams in which women - women barely glimpsed
yesterday on a street corner - were stripped of their clothing and set one by
one to parading before the dreamers' eyes.  I did not know that in the boys'
dreams the breasts of a woman would often float up like beautiful jellyfish
rising from the sea of night.  I did not know that in those dreams the
precious parts of a woman would open its moist lips and keep singing a
siren's melody, tens of times, hundres of times, thousands of times,
eternally ... 111

[when he's 13-14, cousin Sumiko (abt 20), lay down with her head on his
thighs, with a yawn].  "Aren't you tired too, Kochan?"
The trousers of my uniform trembled at the honor of serving as her pillow.
The fragrance of her perfume and powder confused me.  I looked upon her
unmoving profile as she lay there with her tired, clear eyes wide open...
113 [WOMAN]

The war had produced a strangely sentimental maturity in us.  It arose from
our thinking of life as something that would end abruptly in our twenties; we
never even considered the possibility of there being anything beyond those
few remaining years.  117

The lips that became my obsession were those of Nukada's eldest sister, whom
I saw when I went to visit at his house. ... I hung around the neighbourhood
of her house, patiently passing long hours at a nearby bookshop, hoping for a
chance of stopping her if she should pass; I hugged a cushion and imagined
the feeling of embracing her. 120-1 [WOMAN]

[Listening to the piano of friend Kusano's sister Sonoko, he starts to think
of her] 120

I had decided I could love a girl without feeling any desire whatsoever.
This was probably the most foolhardy undertaking since the beginning of human
history. 131

[He is assigned to a factory making kamikaze planes] No wonder each morning
the workers had to recite a mystic oath.
[The factory operated thunderously - play with the Japanese word kami kaze?
"Thunder gods"? ] 133

The stripling of an army doctor who examined me mistook the wheezing of my
bronchial tubes for a chest rattle. [In reality, he had shammed the symptoms
of tuberculosis to escape the draft. ] 136

[While visiting Kusano who has joined the army, he accompanies Sonoko's
family]
She came running towards me like the trembling of light. 143 [METAPHOR]
[Seeing her, He feels a profound sense of grief; see also p. 167 ]

[He and Sonoko become close, sitting opposite each other on the train, a bit
apart from the rest of the group.  At one point her mother sends the two
other sisters to sit with them.  He passes her a note.]
   "Your mother is being careful."
   "What's this?" said Sonoko, cocking her head coyly as I handed her the
note.  When she had finished reading, she blushed to the nape of her neck and
cast her eyes down.
   "Isn't that right?" I said.  I could feel that my cheeks were also
bursting into flame.  150 [WOMAN]

[But he thinks he does not love her.] Right or wrong, by fair means or foul,
I told myself, you simply _must love her. 157

[On the way back
they encounter dead bodies at the station from the air raid the night
before.  They are walking alkong the bodies of the victims.]

  As we went along the passageway we did not receive even so much as a
reproachful glance.  We were ignored.  Our very existence was obiliterated by
the fact that we had not shared their misery; for them, we were nothing more
than shadows.  160 [STRANGE thinking]

  In spite of this scene... I was experiencing the same revolution that a
revolution causes. ... At the time it had not been flames against which they
fought, but against human relationships, against loves and hatreds, against
reason, against property. ... it was none other than the child who murdered
its own mother when she was trying to save it. 160-1

The warmth of a kind of fantasy made me put my arm around Sonoko's waist for
the first time.  Perhaps this action and the brotherly, protective spirit
that prompted it had already shown me that what was called love had no
meaning for me. 161

[Visiting Sonoko a few days later]  She was wearing a crimson jacket, from
which the roundness of her breasts seemed to loom up in the thin
darkness. 163


  "Who knows how long we'll live?  Suppose there were an air raid at this
minute.  Probably one of the bombs would fall directly on us."
  "Wouldn't that be wonderful!" She was serious.  She had been toying witht
he pleats of her Scotch-plaid skirt, folding them back and forth, but as she
said this she lifted her face and the light caught a sparkle of faint down on
her cheeks.  ...  [DETAIL; POETIC]
   She did not realize she was making a confession of love. 161

[They will be moving away, she tells him.]
The pain I felt in my heart was so piercing that it surprised even me.  ...
The ease with which she passed the sentence of separation upon us proclaimed
the meaninglessness of our present meeting and revealed that my present
feeling was only a passing happiness.  165 [WOMAN]

The winter of 1945 had been a persistent one.  Although spring had already
arrived, coming with the stealthy footsteps of the leopard, winter still
stood like a cage about it, blocking its way with gray stubbornness.  Ice
still glittered under the starlight.  167 [EXTENDED METAPHOR]

   Suddenly I was overwhelmed by the idea that I was in love with Sonoko and
that in a world in which S and I both did not live was not worth a penny to
me.  [Grief is compared to p.143]
   The grief was unendurable.  I stomped the ground. 167-8

It was pleasant to hear the grandmother's precise and sociable way of
speaking.  But, just lik her too-well-shaped false teeth, her words were
nothing but a perfect alignment of some sort of inorganic matter.  169
[METAPHOR]

[She gives him  a love note.]
"Not now - read it after you're home," she whispered in a voice that was
small and choking, as though she had been tickled.  170

Have you ever once imagined Sonoko naked?

You with your special knack at drawing analogies - surely you must have
guessed a thing as obvious as the fact that a boy your age is never able to
look at a young girl without imagining how she'd look naked. ... remember it
wasn't a picture of Sonoko that arose in your mind last night.  Whatever it
was, your fantasy was strange and unnatural enough to amaze even me who have
become so accustomed to watching by your side. 174

[Fantasy: leads an ephebe to a pillar and drives knife into the side of his
chest. 175-6]

Meanwhile the cherry trees had blossomed.  But no one seemed to have time for
flower-viewing ...
The blossoms seemed unusually lovely this year. [No commercial screens /
stalls]  Nature's free bounty and useless extravagance had never appeared so
fantastically beautiful as it did this spring.  I had an uncomfortable
suspicion that Nature had come to reconquer the earth for herself. 178
[Is this a hint at the deaths going on all around?]

[At his factory, some Formosa boys steal some rice and make] it into fried
rice by cooking it in a copious amount of machine oil.  I declined this
feast, which seemed to have the flavour of gears. 182

[He has fever and is visited by a daughter of a distant relative.  While she
is kissing his forehead, he sighs, and then it becomes a kiss.  They kiss
again and again].  I did not know whether or not I had experienced any sexual
desire during these kisses. ... I had become a "man who knows kisses." 186-7
[WOMAN]

From then on all my daydreams were focused on the idea of kissing Sonoko. 187

[They go to a grove]
Sonoko was actually in my arms.  Breathing quickly, she blushed and closed
her eyes.  Her lips were childishly beautiful.  But they aroused no desire in
me... 196
I covered her lips with mine.  A second passed.  There is not the slightest
sensation of pleasure.  Two seconds.  It is just the same.  Three seconds.  I
understand everything. 197

Two days after my return I received an impassioned letter from Sonoko.  There
was no doubt that she was truly in love.  I felt jealous. Mine was the
unbearable jealousy a cultured pearl must feel toward a genuine one. 208

My sister died. I derived a superficial peace-of-mind from the discovery that
even I could shed tears.  219

I had long insisted upon interpreting the things Fate forced me to do as
victories of my own will and intelligence, and now this bad habit had grown
into a sort of frenzied arrogance.  In the nature of what I was calling my
intetelligence there was a touch of something illegitimate, a touch of the
sham pretender... 220

The measure of a woman's power is the degree of suffering with which she can
punish her lover...  221
(A woman possesses power only according to the magnitude of
 misery she can inflict on her lover [183])

[He goes to a prostitute.  ]
A sense of duty made me embrace her.  Ten minutes later there was no doubt
of my incapacity.  My knees were shaking with shame.  226

[He reads European theories of inversion related to ephebes] It is said that
the same impulse I was feeling is not uncommon among Germans.  The diary of
Count von Platen provides a mopst representative example. 240

--
[Sonoko and he keep meeting up even after she marries another man.  In the
climactic scene of the book he takes her into a somewhat sleazy dance hall
and there he notices two women sitting with two hoodlum type men.  One of
them grabs his attention.]

He was a youth of twenty-one or -two, with coarse but regular and swarthy
features. He had taken off his shirt and stood there half naked, rewinding a
belly-band about his middle. The coarse cotton material was soaked with sweat
and had become a light-gray color. He seemed to be intentionally dawdling
over his task of winding and was constantly joining in the talk and laughter
of his companions. His naked chest showed bulging muscles, fully developed
and tensely knit; a deep cleft ran down between the solid muscles of his
chest toward his abdomen. The thick, fetter-like sinews of his flesh narrowed
down from different directions to the sides of his chest, where they
interlocked in tight coils. The hot mass of his smooth torso was being
severely and tightly imprisoned by each succeeding turn of the soiled cotton
bellyband.  His bare, sun-tanned shoulders gleamed as though covered with
oil.  And black tufts stuck out from the cracks of his armpits, catching the
sunlight, curling and glittering with glints of gold.

At this sight, above all at the sight of the peony tattoood on his hard
chest, I was beset by sexual desire. My fervent gaze was fixed upon that
rough and savage, but incomparably beautiful body. Its owner was laughing
there under the sun. When he threw back his head I could see his thick,
muscular neck. A strange shudder ran through my innermost heart. I could no
longer take my eyes off him.

I had forgotten Sonoko's existence. I was thinking of but one thing: Of his
going out into the streets of high summer just as he was, half-naked, and
getting into a fight with a rival gang. Of a sharp dagger cutting through
that belly-band, piercing that torso. Of that soiled belly-band beautifully
dyed with blood. Of his gory corpse being put on an improvised stretcher,
made of a window shutter, and brought back here. 251-252

--
Save for the shameful portion of my mind, I was exactly like any other
boy. The reader need only picture to himself a fairly good student with
average curiosity and appetites, of a retiring disposition, quick to
blush--and, lacking the confidence that comes from being handsome enough to
appeal to girls, clinging perforce only to his books. At that time * * * I
had sworn unconditional loyalty to the stage manager of the play called
adolescence.

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