Mishima, Yukio; Alfred H. Marks (tr.); Donald Keene (intro);
Thirst for Love
Berkley Publishing Corp 1971; Knopf c1969 175 pages
ISBN 039950494X, 9780399504945
topics: | fiction | japan
Yukio Mishima's Thirst for Love (Ai no Kawaki, 1950) is an ambitious novel about a woman who falls in love with a man from a weaker class. In both its ambition and this theme, it is related to Arundhati Roy's God of Small Things, and also Lawrences's Lady Chatterley's Lover. Like GOST, the novel is full of unexpected juxtapositions, though the very language does not appear to be as inventive (at least in translation), and the storytelling is complex in chronology, but not as much as GOST. Unlike LCL, there don't appear to be any (obvious) class overtones. It is hard to ignore spectacular trajectory of Mishima's life when you read any of his work, and I think that is actually a hindrance. If we take a postmodernist the author-is-dead view of this novel, we are perhaps more likely to appreciate its stunning workmanship. "Written by the suicidal homosexual Yuko Mishima" gives us pause - is it too melodramatic? Written in a spare stream of consciousness style, the novel weaves a complicated trajectory in time, backwards and forwards as the story moves towards a climactic finale. The main third person narrative is interspersed with Etsuko's thought stream, in the first person (given in italics in the English version), and that of some others (Saburo on whether he loves Miyo, p.122-3). Mishima continually surprises, assaulting our expectations by juxtapositions that must be true, for otherwise no one could have the ability to imagine them. Consider the moment when Etsuko, the middle aged female protagonist, is searching the room of her lover, the servant Saburo, to find signs of his love for the maid Miyo. She finds nothing. Their love is then seen as completely adequate in its simplicity; there is no need for the ornamentation of words: Words unneeded, meaning unnecessary; an attitude like an athlete throwing a javelin; a stance necessary and adequate to the simple tasks for which it was assumed. p.90 One follows Etsuko's thoughts as she goes through the death of her unfaithful husband Ryosuke. She is aware of his involvement with another woman, and he spends many nights away from home until he falls sick of typhoid. Here she is watching her husband's dying body: So I saw my husband at last come around to me, come around before my eyes. It was like watching a piece of flotsam wash up before me. I bent over and carefully, minutely, inspected this strange suffering body on the surface of the water. Like a fisherman's wife, I had gone every day to the water's edge.... I finally found this washed up corpse. It was still breathing. Did I pull it out of the water right away? No, I did not. All I did was, fervently, with passion and effort, without sleep, without rest, bend over the water and stare. p. 42 The entire story is overshadowed with death, there is a morbid fascination about dying: If I pulled away the inhalator now, no one would know. There was nobody to see it. I didn't believe in any witnessing agency other than men's eyes. Yet I couldn't do it. I went on till dawn holding the inhalator alternately in each hand. What were the powers that made me hold back? Love? No, never. My love would have wanted him dead. Reason? No, not that either. Reason would have needed only the certainty that no one was watching. Cowardice? Not at all. After all I wasn't even afraid of catching [his] typhoid! I still don't know what the powers were. p. 53 Daybreak... the sky was turning white. Great sections of cloud waiting to collect the glow of morning's coming stood in the heavens, but all they could do at this early hour was lend the sky a cast of severity. Suddenly Ryosuke's breathing became extremely irregular. As a child who has had enough turns his face suddenly from the breast, so he turned his face from the inhalator -- as if the cord that held him had broken. I was not surprised. I placed the inhalator beside him on the pillow and took my hand mirror from my sash. It was a keepsake from my mother -- who died when I was young. I brought it close to my husband's mouth; the glass did not cloud. His lips, fringed with whiskers and pouting, appeared in the mirror bright and clear. 54 Certainly, no other writer I can think of could have thought this way. After Ryosuke's death, she is invited by her father-in-law, Yakichi, to come and live at their home in rural Osaka. Here she yields listlessly to advances by the aged Yakichi, who gradually becomes more and more enamoured of her. Meanwhile, she finds herself developing an obsessive attraction to the young gardener-servant, Saburo, whom she encounters several times while walking around the property, and whose simplicity she finds appealing. However, he is completely oblivious of her interest. As in Lady Chatterley's lover, this love is doomed by his ignorance of her impossible infatuation, and also by the dark, taut, coiled machinations of her own fevered mind. In an interview Mishima once said: MISHIMA: Two contradicting characteristics of Japanese - one is elegance and one is brutality. These two characteristics are very tightly combined sometimes. Our brutality comes from emotions - nevery mechanized or systematized like Nazi's brutality i think our brutality might come from our feminine side - elegance comes from our nervous side - sometimes we are too sensitive. sometimes we are tired of elegance and beauty and sometimes we need sudden explosion to make us free from it. Perhaps it is Etsuko, more than any of his other feminine characters who personalizes this explosive duality. In his story (and film) "Patriotism", (Yukoku) Reiko Takeyama, the wife following her husband in harakiri, also demonstrates some of this, but I think Etsuko's compulsiveness is portrayed with a mastery that is hard to surpass. The plot is reminiscent of Camus. Without the surrealism of Kafka, the story mounts inexorably to the fantastic yet completely believable finale, which is the hallmark of Mishima's genius. On the other hand, Lady Chatterley's Lover (I read it again after TfL) appears pale in comparison (by today's canons) - I wish Lawrence hadn't tried to patch up the lovers in the end. They also clash in their politics - contrast for instance Lawrence's sympathy for the lower classes, as in Connie's comment about Clifford: She saw in him the peculiar tight rebuff against anyone of the lower classes who might be really climbing up, which she knew was characteristic of his breed. Contrast this with Mishima's sympathy for the landlord when, after land reforms, the peasants get land for cheap. Arundhati Roy in fact, is closer to Mishima. She brings in a completely unexpected tragedy, and the brilliantly inventive language of God of Small Things sets it in a completely different class (but then I can't read Mishima's original!). Surprisingly, the politics is not that different either. Except for Mishima's male-superiority view, Velutha doesn't come across with any more sympathy than does Saburo. Both are sketched with the relative superficiality of the lower class lover (though not as shallow as Gyan in Kiran Desai's Inheritance of Loss). Both are good at their work, both have good muscled bodies. Despite her sympathies in real life, within the pages of the book, at points such as the union protest, or in Velutha's life, Roy appears as distant from the lower classes as is Mishima. The language is certainly far more impressive than much more widely read Confessions of a Mask. While that book (which I read after TfL) is also completely original and stunning, I would say that contrary to popular opinion, it is Thirst for Love leaves a more lasting impression. Enough comparing apples and oranges! Thirst for Love is simply one of the best psychological novels I have read in quite some time. Go read it!
[After the Confessions, it might have been expected that Mishima would in his second novel carry the story forward, perhaps describing a bittersweet affair with an older woman] "Thirst for Love was published the year after _Confessions of a Mask. Perhaps it was in order to emphasize the break with his 'Confessions' that Mishima made the central figure a woman, set the work near Osaka (although he had lived all his life in Tokyo), and took great care in the creation of the secondary characters, who exist quite independently of their being observed by the central figure. The story is economically structured, almost like a play, and the movement toward final tragedy is relentless. [Play? well- maybe most of it can be a soliloquy] Perhaps it is not unfair to say that the work germinated in the final scene of _Confessions, where the narrator becomes aware of his fascination with the coarse vitality of a young tough dancing in a cafe. His unaccountable desire to see the man's torso stained with blood evokes the superb scene in TfL in which Etsuko gashes Saburo's back with her nails as he cavorts at a festival, or even the scene in the Temple of the Golden Pavilion when the young narrator deliberately defaces the beautiful scabbard of a soldier's sword. Etsuko's compulsion in love, her need to inflict pain in love, and her revulstion when suddenly she feels she is loved, suggest figures set in entirely different contexts in other works by Mishima. Etsuko is given peculiar vividness by the banality, meanness, or inadequacy of the people around her, and in the end it must seem preferable that she love so intensely, if so unsuccessfully, rather than accept a situation that countless other women have accepted. ... Thirst for Love is a youthful work, but one of Mishima's best. It is the work in which he proved he was a true novelist, capable of describing any subject, character, or time, while remaining in every paragraph and sentence completely himself. Yasunari Kawabata said of him: an extraordinary talent, the kind of genius that comes along perhaps once in three centuries.
That day Etsuko went to the Hankyu department store and bought two pairs of
wool socks. One pair was blue, and the other brown.
The story opens with Etsuko buying a pair of socks as gifts for Saburo,
who is completely unaware of even the possibility of such affection
arising in this elderly "madam".
The process is described in great detail - how she hated crowds, and
Osaka held "inexplicable terrors" for her Tokyo persona.
The timescales go back and forth, over a period of a little more than
two months. The opening date is Sept 22, 1949. It will close on
October 28.
Shoeshine boys lined up, calling "Shine! Shine!" 11
City of merchant princes, hoboes, industrialists, stockbrokers, whores, opium
pushers, white-collar workers, punks, bankers, provincial officials,
aldermen, Gidayu reciters, kept women, penny-pinching wives, newspaper
reporters, music-hall entertainers, bar girls, shoeshine boys -- it was not
really this that Etsuko feared. Might it have been nothing but life itself?
Life -- this limitless, complex sea, filled w assorted flotsam, brimming with
capricious, violent, and yet eternally transparent blues and greens. 2
[As she is putting the socks into her cloth shopping bag, a flash of
lightning brightens the windows. ... The curving bamboo scraped down across
her forearm... 12]
She suddenly felt she could do anything. She could cross that intersection,
as if walking out on a springboard, and plunge into the middle of those
streets.
From some preposterously high place, the rain fell full tilt toward toward
these faces. It seemed to be under tight control. The thunder was receding
in the distance, but the sound of the rain numbed the ears, numbed the
heart. 13
Etsuko walked as if she were pregnant. It was an ostentatiously indolent
walk. 14
_The children are always laughing. What in the world do they find to laugh
at? If there's anything I can't stand it's arrogant laughter like that!
Etsuko's thoughts had no particular purpose. She placed her shopping bag on
the doorstep. 15
[Entering her 6-mat room in the Sugimoto house, she finds Yakichi reading her
diary.]
Etsuko sank to her knees on the tatami and slipped her hand inside her sash.
She felt the warmth of her abodomen after the walk; her sash caged the heat
like a hothouse. She sensed the perspiration running on her breast. It was
a dark, cold sweat, heavy as sweat shed in sleep. It swirled around her,
cold though it was, seeming to scent the air. 21
[The diary is actually a false diary. S. is referred to as a female friend:]
S is a widow... she is a widow of truly beautiful, clean, simple soul... 23
[Writing in the diary about Saburo (the true version of the diary) ... and
then, amazingly
turns to suicide! One of many sudden, inexplicable, dark turns that occur
frequently.]
I love that simple soul. I even go so far as to think that there is nothing
so beautiful in this world in the simple spirit in the simple body. When,
however, I stand before the deep chasm that lies between my soul and that
soul, I do not know what to do. Is it possible to transfer the obverse of a
coin to the reverse? Simply take a coin with an unbroken surface and make a
hole in it. That is suicide. 24
[Post-war land reform in Japan: absentee landowners were divested of land and
it was redistributed. Yakichi is unhappy that the yokel Okura, a tenant
farmer, had suddenly become a landowner at a ridic low price.]
Govt housing units strewn like sand ... In that town, it seemed, a majestic
activity went on endlessly. In that town, one might imagine, a
quiet religious conclave was going on, in which motionless men sat immersed
in ecstasy and awe. In that rapt silence, one might dream, a calm, endlessly
slow murder was being perpetrated in the lamplight... 28
At times the whistle of the Hankyu train sent its note reverberating over the
dark ricefields, like a flock of scrawny nightbirds flying swiftly with
raucous cries. The beating wings of the train whistle set the night air
trembling. 28
Etsuko's entire body was swathed in the groping of Yakichi's dry gnarled
fingers. Even an hour or two of sleep had not wiped it off. The woman who
has been caressed by a skeleton can never forget that caress. It was a new
skin added to her skin - transparent, damp, thinner than the chrysalis a
butterfly is about to shed. 31
His cotton shirt, which was full of patches, was open, and his sleeves was
rolled up. Perhaps he was hiding his badly frayed cuffs. His arms were
splendid, arms that city men don't acquire until much later. They were
tanned, those well-formed arms; all the golden fuzz on them made them look as
if their maturity embarrassed them. 33
Earlier she had wished to die with her husband, the death of an Indian
widow. It was an occult thing, that sacrificial death she dreamed of, a
suicide proffered not so much in mourning for her husband's death, as in envy
of that death. 34
Etsuko had never known a sunburst of such profusion, of such emotion, as that
which she met in that moment. That flooding sunshine of early November, that
transparent geyser filling and overflowing all. 35
Etsuko had never known a sunburst of such profusion, of such emotion, as that
which she met in that moment. That flooding sunshine of early November, that
transparent geyser filling and overflowing all. 35
[I wonder if YM used the word "geyser"... this Nordic placename has travelled
a long way to come to this text.]
[She is finding out about Ryosuke's affairs]
... had jealousy become the only emotion she could maintain for a length of
time?
A feeling of liberation should contain a bracing feeling of negation, in which
liberation itself is not negated. In the moment a captive lion steps out of
his cage, he possesses a wider world than the lion who has known only the
wilds. While he was in captivity, there were only two worlds to him -- the
world of the cage, and the world outside the cage. Now he is free. He
roars. He attacks people. He eats them. ... Etsuko, however, had in her
heart not the slightest interest in these matters. 36
["eats them" comment is gratuitously dark. The whole analysis is unclear,
how it belongs to the narrative, except to add this dark colour]
When her husband's remains were burned, would her jealousy be consumed too?
Her jealousy was in a sense a contagion caught from her husband. It had
attacked her body, her nerves, her bones. If she wished to burn her
jealousy, she must walk with her husband's coffin into the innermost depths
of that blast furnace of a building. There was no other way. 37
[After spending many nights away, Ryosuke returns to her, ill with typhoid.
She then spends many days looking after him, eventually taking him to
hospital.]
So I saw my husband at last come around to me, come around before my eyes.
It was like watching a piece of flotsam wash up before me. I bent over and
carefully, minutely, inspected this strange suffering body on the surface of
the water. Like a fisherman's wife, I had gone every day to the water's
edge.... I finally found this washed up corpse. It was still breathing. Did
I pull it out of the water right away? No, I did not. All I did was,
fervently, with passion and effort, without sleep, without rest, bend over
the water and stare._ 42
[The other woman, whose photograph was there in R's pocket, turns up. She is
the wife of his boss.]46
[At one point, she has to hold an oxygen inhalator over his unconscious
mouth.]
In the end my hands cramped; my shoulders went numb 52
If I pulled away the inhalator now, no one would know. There was nobody to
see it. I didn't believe in any witnessing agency other than men's eyes.
Yet I couldn't do it. I went on till dawn holding the inhalator alternately
in each hand. What were the powers that made me hold back? Love? No,
never. My love would have wanted him dead. Reason? No, not that either.
Reason would have needed only the certainty that no one was watching.
Cowardice? Not at all. After all I wasn't even afraid of catching [his]
typhoid! I still don't know what the powers were. 53
Daybreak... the sky was turning white. Great sections of cloud waiting to
collect the glow of morning's coming stood in the heavens, but all they could
do at this early hour was lend the sky a cast of severity. Suddenly
Ryosuke's breathing became extremely irregular. As a child who has had
enough turns his face suddenly from the breast, so he turned his face from
the inhalator -- as if the cord that held him had broken. I was not
surprised. I placed the inhalator beside him on the pillow and took my hand
mirror from my sash. It was a keepsake from my mother -- who died when I was
young. I brought it close to my husband's mouth; the glass did not cloud.
His lips, fringed with whiskers and pouting, appeared in the mirror bright
and clear. 54
[The very next line, after a " * * * " break is]
Was Etsuko's acceptance of Yakichi's invitation to come to Maidemmura perhaps
based on the same resolve as that which had brought her to the Hospital for
Infectious Diseases? Was coming her like returning there?
[Yakichi is standing behind Etsuko, tearing old pages from her calendar.]
Then all sound stopped. She suddenly felt her shoulder being grasped while a
cold hand, dry as bamboo slipped behind her bodice. Her body recalled
slightly, but she said nothing. It was not because she could not cry out.
She simply didn't. 58
What was she doing, this squatting girl of eight, eyes fixed on the ground?
There on the flagstones was an iron teakettle, stream rising from it. Nobuko
was staring intently at something moving between the edge of the stone floor
and the dirt in which it was laid.
It was a swarm of ants, floating about in the hot water that had been poured
into their nest. Countless ants writhing in the boiling water that welled
from the aperture of the nest. And that eight-year old child, her bobbed
head thrust deep between her knees, was watching them silently and intently.
As she watched this, E felt refreshed. Until her mother noticed that the
kettle was gone and called from the kitchen door... 60
[Saburo is away at the Tenri festival, and she realizes how she has come to
regard him.]
In those days three short days of Saburo's absence the feeling that developed
was his absence - whatever the feeling - was to me entirely new. As a
gardener, who after long care and toil holds in his hands a marvelous peach,
hefts the weight of it and feels the joy of it, so I felt the weight of his
absence in my hand and revelled in it. It would not be true to say that
those three days were lonely. To me his absence was a plump, fresh weight.
That was joy! Everywhere in the house I perceived his absence - in the yard,
in the workroom, in the kitchen, and in his bedroom. 64
in summer, swallows nest under the eaves of the first-floor entranceway. 66
Kensuke and his wife had, like all bored people, a sense of kindness that was
close to disease. 68
[All impulses traditionally considered positive are a disease, arising from
the negative, and treated pejoratively. ]
[Throughout the book, Etsuko is thinking about the socks. After buying them
on the opening pages, it is not until p.72, that she gives them
to Saburo on the following day, when she runs into Saburo while taking the dog for a walk.]
If the people who say awful things about me knew how long I've hesitated
about giving him socks, I wonder what they'd think. 71
She slowly and dramatically took from her sleeve the two pairs of socks.
"Look, a present! I bought them for you yesterday in the Hankyu."
[Saburo thanks her. She asks him not to tell anyone about the socks. Then
he leaves. ]
The two sofas and eleven chairs in the drawing room, long untouched by human
hand, were very much like girls worn out with waiting. 73
Mrs. Okura was called to strangle the chicken. Asako's children, Nobuko and
little Natsuo, ran along...
"Now, don't be naughty! Haven't I always told you that you shouldn't watch
the chicken being strangled?"...
The children squawked; the chicken in the henhouse heard and squawked too.
Nobuko and little Natsuo, holding his sister's hand, with only their eyes
gleaming in the shadow thrown by the light at their backs, stood and watched
barely breathing as Mrs. Okura bent over the struggling chicken, writhing its
whole body in the effort to free its wings. She perfunctorily reached forth
both her hands toward the neck . . .
After a time Etsuko heard the chicken's screech - tentative, yet committed;
full of frustration, bewilderment, and terror. 78-9
[some parents ask her for directions: LANGUAGE / class ]
As Etsuko told them about the shortcut through the ricefields and the
government housing, the parents gaped in amazement at her precise Tokyo
Yamate speech. ... All nodded respectfully to Etsuko... 81
It is easy enough for people to see life as valueless. In fact, people with
any degree of sensitivity have difficulty forgetting it. Etsuko's instinct
in these matters was strikingly like that of the hunter. If in the distant
wood she should chance to see the white tail of a hare, her cunning would
come into play, all the blood of her body would grow turbulent, her sinews
would surge, her nervous system would grow taut and concentrate itself like
an arrow in flight. ...
[
After giving him the socks, Etsuko wonders when Saburo will wear the socks.
Later she finds the socks in the dustbin. When confronted, Saburo admits to
throwing them. But Miyo appears, sobbing, mumbling that it is she who had
thrown them away. Thus it becomes known that Miyo loves him. She consoles
Miyo.]
A woman like this! Of all things! A woman like this! 87
shrikes in voice for the first time that year [around autumnal equinox]
[Miyo steps on a puddle, splattering some mud on Etsuko's dress. ]
Miyo suddenly dropped to the ground like a dog and carefully wiped Etsuko's
skirt, using the same serge apron with which she had just dried her tears.
The wordless display of devotion was, in the eyes of Etsuko, standing their
wordlessly permitting it, not so much a touching country-girl wile, as
something charged with courteous, sullen hostility. 87-8
One day after that Saburo, wearing the socks, bowed to Etsuko as if nothing
had happened and innocently smiled. 88
[Next sentence, after ****:]
Etsuko now had a reason for living. ... 88
To some people living is extremely difficult.
Against this unjust imbalance, more striking than the injustice of racial
discrimination, Etsuko felt not the slightest rancor. 88
It's best to take life lightly, she thought. After all, people to whom
living is easy don't have to give any excuse for living beyond that. Those
who find it hard, though, very quickly use something more than just living as
an excuse. Saying life is hard is nothing to brag about. The power we have
to find all the difficulties in life helps to make life easy for the majority
of men. If we didn't have that power, life would be something without
simplicity or difficulty -- a slippery, empty sphere without a foothold. 89
The problems of life are to me nothing but the suit of armor that protects
me.
Her reason for living made tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, and whatever the
future might bring seem not at all heavy. They were still heavy, to be sure,
but some subtle shift in her center of gravity sent Etsuko blithely and
buoyantly into the future. Was it hope? Never.
All day she monitored what Saburo and Miyo were doing. 89
Etsuko inspected the rooms of Miyo and Saburo while they were out, much as
Yakichi had once done with her room. No evidence, however, came to
light... they were not even aware of that gentle conspiracy of love in which
the present moment seems to stand forth already endowed with the beauty of
reminiscence.... When they met, a mingling of glances... of hands... of
lips... of breasts. And after that, perhaps this here and that there... Ah!
How easy! How simple, beautiful, abstract an action! 90
Words unneeded, meaning unnecessary; an attitude like an athlete throwing a
javelin; a stance necessary and adequate to the simple tasks for which it was
assumed. 90 [The love of Saburo and Miyo needed no words]
[While returning from her inspection of their rooms, meets Yakichi.]
As they went back to Yakichi's room, the old man's body bumped clumsily
against her. Not at all because the hallway was too narrow. His body struck
hers for no reason, as would the body of a sulky child pulled along by his
mother. 91
Chieko: "Father may be helping her [E] tie her sash. I know it's hard to
believe, but he even ties the string of her petticoat for her.
Whenever she dresses, they close the door of her room tight and talk
in lower tones...
Kensuke: "Father's really living it up in his last years, isn't he?" 93
[As they are going in procession for the Autumn festival (10 october), E
watches Kensuke take over from Miyo in leading the group]
In the lantern light Miyo's skin seemed rather green. There was no light in
her eyes. In fact, she even seemed to be having trouble breathing.
This was the way E's eyes had now learned to observe things -- in that
instant when the paper lantern was passed from hand to hand and lighted the
upper half of Miyo's body -- in appraisals that brief. 94
[our vision is like a series of flash photographic saccades]
Geese that swam in the creek cried out from their coops 95
Just the surmise - surmise, nothing more - that Miyo, this dull-witted
country maiden, so much as suspected her jealousy, would be more than E's
self-respect could stand. Whether it was Miyo's complexion or her kimono, E
could not tell, but somehow this evening the girl was more than a little
beautiful. 95
CEREBRAL INCONTINENCE:
Kensuke [the learned man's incontinent rambling]: When people are naked you
can really understand why human individuality is such a fragile
thing. And when it comes to thinking, there are just four kinds;
that's all: the thinking of a fat man, the thinking of a skinny man,
the thinking of a tall, gangly man, and the thinking of a little man.
When it comes to faces, now -- whatever ones you look at -- they
never have more than two eyes, one nose, and one mouth apiece.
... [and goes on] What's love? Nothing more than symbol falling for
symbol. And when it comes to sex -- that's anonymity falling for
anonymity. 101
Even Chieko [who is enamoured of K's learning] looked bored. 102
E couldn't help laughing. This man's thinking -- constantly, almost
incontinently, mumbling in the ear. That's it! It's "cerebral incontinence!"
What pitiful pants-wetting! This man's thoughts are as ridiculous as his
backside. 102
[Etsuko is caught up in the frenzy, right behind Saburo, who is dancing
fanatically in a line of young men holding up a lion.]
Saburo was not conscious of her proximity. His marvelously fleshed, lightly
tanned back was turned to the pushing spectators. His face was turned toward
the lion in the center, shouting at it, challenging it. ... his barely
moving back was given over to a mad kaleidoscope of flame and shadow. The
movements of flesh around his shoving shoulder bones seemed like the
exertions of the wings of a powerful bird in flight.
Etsuko longed to touch him with her fingers. Her desire was close to
that of the person who drowns himself; he does not necessarily covet death as
much as what comes after the drowning. [The youths back up to her] She
reached out her hands and and held if off. It was Saburo's back. She
savoured the touch of his flesh. She savored the majestic warmth of him.
The mob behind her pushed again, causing her fingernails to gouge into
Saburo's back. He did not even feel it. ... Etsuko felt his blood dripping
between her fingers. 103-4
[Miyo has fainted; they've taken her to hospital.]
The doctor came into the room and closed the door. Then he pulled up his
trouser legs by the crease and sat down clumsily beside them. He smirked
unprofessionally as he said: "She's pregnant." 107
K and Chieko found this affair fascinating. They had no moral bias -- that
was their strong point, in which they took pride. Thanks to this self-styled
strong point, however, they fell into the position of bystanders, devoid of
all sense of justice. Everyone likes to watch a fire; but those who watch it
from the terrace are no better than those who watch it from the street. 109
[AM: ... But the one's on the street get to feel the sparks on their face]
Is there such a thing as morality without bias? 109
In Chieko's breast rang a boundless respect for the learning of her husband
carried so gracefully. After all, he didn't talk about it, but he could read
Greek! ... He could recite the long names ofall the characters in a great
number of Russian novels. Not only that, but he could talk for hours on
things such as how the Japanese nobh play is one of the world's greatet
"culture legacies" (he loved that phrase) and how its "refined elegance is
truly comparable with the great traditions of the West." 110
Like an author who thinks himself a genius because his books don't sell... 110
As they saw it, nothing in this world was of real importance. 110
It must be hard on E. Why is it that she always has such bad luck?"
"Sometimes jiltings run in series -- like miscarriages. Her nervous system
has gotten in the habit of it, I suppose, and when she falls in love it has
to end in miscarriage." 111
[Nature reflecting her mood at finding Miyo pregn with S's child; one wonders
if these passages are deliberately constructed...]
The rain encompassed everything in a tight dense wall. The wind had abated
somewhat, but the sound of the downpour was still overpowering. Etsuko
turned to watch the rain water coursing like India ink down the jet-black
trunk of a persimmon tree. She felt as if she were shut up in the sound of
merciless, monotonous, oppressive music. 112
The sound of the rain is like the voices of tens of thousands of monks
reading sutras. Y is chattering, K is chattering. C is chattering -- how
useless words are! What petty craft, what futility! What diddling,
bustling, everlasting-stretching-with-all-one's-might-for-something,
meaningless activity! 113
No words can compete with this mercilessly powerful rain.
The noise of the rain somehow justified her silence. 113
chirping of a chickadee by the window frame. 116
Some roses were floating face-down in the muddy grass-strewn rainwater.
Mutilated petals drifted beside them. 117 [Dark]
[E questions S about whether he "loves" M. Saburo's relationship with Miyo
is revealed in flashbacks through his thoughts; in answer to the q.:]
He desired her -- even that notion seemed less tenable the more he thought
about it. It was like a yearning for food. Any internal struggle to
vanquish his desires was of no concern to this healthy young man.
Saburo reflected for a moment on this incomprehensible q and then shook his
head as if puzzled: "No."
E could not believe her ears. 123
"You don't love Miyo, do you?"
"'Love her... don't love her' -- what a meaningless waste of time,"
[Saburo] thought. She's mouthing over this stupid matter as if it were enough
to turn the world upside down." He thrust his fingers deep in his pockets
and came upon some pieces of dried cuttlefish he had eaten with sake at the
festival the night before. 123
"What if I start munching on a piece of this cuttlefish?" I wonder what kind
of face she'll make," he said to himself.
Etsuko's seriousness made him wish to tease her. He took a piece of the
cuttlefish out of
his pocket, gleefully flipped it with his fingers, and caught it in his mouth
as would a frolicking dog. Then he said, unabashed: "That's right. I don't
love her." 124
[Y watching as E sits in front of a fire]
The fire seemed to leap toward her hand as if enticing them.
[Suddenly,] she held her hand up to a particularly high burst of flame.
... She had burned the palm of her hand [a serious injury]
Y recalled with terror how she had looked at that instant. Where did she get
the composure with shich she looked so fearlessly into the fire, with which
she extended her hands to the flames -- that firm, plastic composure? 132 ***
[A woman's accidents: Y is thinking.] My friend Karajima was a great friend
of the ladies. When he started to run around, his wife started accidentally
breaking plates -- one a day. It was pure accident; for his wife, it seemed,
wasn't really conscious that he was unfaithful. She was innocently amazed by
the blunders of her fingertips. 133
[Y can't do without E]
She had become something he could not do without -- a necessity, like a sin
or a bad habit.
Etsuko was a beautiful eczema. At Yakichi's age, he couldn't itch without eczema. 134
[C relieves E of washing dishes, because of her burnt hand].
In reality E did not wish to be relieved of the mechanical chore of washing
cups and dishes. Lately she longed w an almost sensual desire to turn
herself into a machine. She looked forward to the time when her hand healed
and with great speed she would sew fall kimonos ... 135
[Y, partially to tease E, orders S and M to have a bath together, to save
logs. As servants, they will be the last. ]
S and M won't bathe together if I have anything to do with it. For this
insignificant reason, E had decided to take a bath in spite of her cold.
[She pulls the plug]
The hot water rushed [down] with a sound like the inward rushing of small
shells. 136
What in the world am I doing? What's so exciting about this mischief? Even
children have a serious reason for their mischief: to call attention of the
inattentive adult world to themselves. Mischief is the only recourse of the
world of children. Yet rejected women feel the same rejection children do.
They occupy the same rejected world, in which they grow cruel despite
themselves. 137
On the surface of the water tiny hairs, oily micalike residue, and wood chips
spun in slow circles. [she presses her cheeks] within the curve of her bare
shoulder. Her skin shown with a subdued gloss under the dim bulb.
E's cheeks suddenly sensed the futility of the two shining, elastic arms
pressed against them... It's no use! No use! No use! she said to
herself... The youth, the redundancy of this warm flesh -- this blind stupid
animal - irritated her.
[cold water is dripping on her from the ceiling condensation]
The water slowly flowed down the drain. The line of hot water and the air
above it licked lazily down from her shoulder to her breast, from her breast
to her stomach - delicate caresses that were soon gone, leaving her skin
taut... The water spun with a more rapid sound as it retreated from the hips
and swirled down.
This is what death is. This is death.
E was about to scream when she came to herself. She was kneeling naked in
the empty tub. Frightened, she rose. 137-8
[She refuses Y's advances until he agrees to let M go.]
Until this illness, she had been accustomed to greet the approach of Y's
clumsy, worn-out machine by simply closing her eyes. Everything took place
in the periphery of her body. Even what took place upon her body was to her
one of the events of the outside world. Where did her outer world begin?
The inner world of this woman, capable of such delicate activity, was
developing the captured, compressed, potential energy of an explosive. 141
[E gets Y to agree to fire Miyo.]
Y: Yet if I sent Miyo away when she hasn't done anything, what will people
say?
E: All right; then I'll leave. I don't want to stay here anyway. 140
...
E: Letting M go seems to me the only way to get rid of Saburo without firing
him. It would be best for me if S goes, but I don't want to be the one to
tell him.
Y: At least we agree on something. 141
Saburo: Util then he had considered that outer world not as a mirror but as
just so much space through which he moved with perfect freedom. 142
[E goes with Y to the station - to drop him as he leaves for Osaka to buy
tickets to Tokyo on the "Peace Express" of Oct 29- (the stationmaster is a
friend)]
E tied Maggie's chain to the fence and looked down the tracks. The rails
gleamed in the cloud-wrapped day. Their dazzling steel surfaces, faceted
with countless abrasions, seemed linked to Etsuko in undemonstrative, yet
tender companionship. From the blackened pebbles between the tracks traces
of fine steel filings glinted. Soon the rails began to ring faintly,
transmitting a distant vibration. 154
[on an impulse they leave Maggie at the bookstore and journey together to O,
despite E's casual dress.]
_A telephone -- it seems a long time since I saw one. It's a strange device,
constantly entangling the emotions of human beings within itself, yet capable
of uttering nothing more than a simple bell tone. Doesn't it feel any pain
from all the loves, the hatreds, and the desires that pass through it? Or
is the sound of that bell really a scream of the pain, convulsive and
unendurable, that the telephone continually inflicts? 155
[E gets S to agree to meet her at 1 AM. She talks to him about Miyo. He
can't marry her - his mother did not agree. When he told her of his baby
with Miyo, she got even more against it. "I don't want to take a stupid girl
like that for a daughter-in-law."]
In dreams, seedlings mature instantly into fruit-bearing trees, and small
birds become winged horses. So in Etsuko's trance, outlandish hopes waxed
into the shape of hopes capable of immediate realization.
_What if I am the one Saburo has loved? I must not even think that what I
anticipate will not come true. If my hopes come true, I shall be happy! It's
that simple. 167
"All right then, but who in the world do you love?" Etsuko asked.
Surely this sagacious woman was making a mistake here, for in these circs it
was not words that would bring her and Saburo together. If she but reached
out her hand and gently touched Saburo's shoulder, perhaps everything might
have begun. Just the intermingling of hands, perhaps, would have served to
fuse these two disparate spirits together.
But words stood between them like an intransigent ghost. 168
[Saburo] was like a child face to face with an intransigent problem in
algebra. "Love... don't love -- not again! No, not again," he said to
himself.
[He eventually says, "Madam, it's you." but the lie of it is obvious, and E
tries to leave.]
She put her hands back and adjusted her hair. 169
Saburo was weary of this tedious dialogue. What caught his eye as he looked
up now and again was not a woman, but some kind of spiritual monster, some
undefinable spiritual embodiment -- hating, suffering, bleeding, or raising a
shout of joy -- pure raw nerves incarnate.
As she stood up, however, her scarf close about her neck, Saburo became
conscious for the first time that she was a woman. As she started to leave
the greenhouse, he extended his arm and barred her way.
The firm flesh of his arm collided palpably with the soft flesh of
her breasts.
[Then he holds her firmly. But she moves her head from side to
side so that their lips never meet. Then he trips, and she runs away. But
he catches up with him and pins her to the grass. Suddenly she screams. At
this he tries to run away but she is clinging on to him.
Meanwhile Y has woken up, and seeing E missing, he's coming to the garden.
En route, he picks up the mattock. [= a kind of pick that is used for digging; has a flat blade set at right angles to the handle]
[Y is unable to meet her gaze.]
His irresoluteness filled her with anger. She seized the mattock from the
old man and swung it at Saburo's shoulder. He was standing beside her in
shock, awaiting nothing, comprehending nothing. The well-honed white steel
passed above his shoulder and cut through the nape of his neck.... The next
blow slashed him across the skull.
[After a number of seemingly wordless, endless seconds, Yakichi spoke:]
Y: Why did you kill him?
E: Because you didn't.
Y: I wasn't planning to kill him
E: You're lying. You were going to kill him. That's what I was waiting
for. You couldn't save me without killing Saburo. Yet, you hesitated.
Standing there shaking. Shamelessly shaking. So I had to kill him for
you.
Y: You can't lay the blame on me!
E: Who is? Tomorrow morning, early, I'll go to the police, I alone. 173
Y: Take your time. There are a lot of things that must be thought through.
But why, oh why, did you have to kill him?
E: He was making me suffer, that's why.
Y: But it wasn't his fault.
E: Not his fault? That's not so. He got what he deserved for hurting me.
Nobody has the right to cause me pain. Nobody can get away with that. ...
Y: You are a terrifying woman. 173
In the middle of the night, she awakes. She can see nothing. The roosters
are calling. Yet there wasn't a thing. 175
[AM: I wonder, if as a storytelling device, the socks could have been
introduced at the end - he is wearing them? ]
Yukio Mishima was the most spectacularly talented young writer in Japan.
born Tokyo 1925, graduated from Peers' School 1944, receiving a citation
from the Emperor as the highest honor student. graduated from Tokyo
Imperial Univ School of Jurisprudence 1947. First novel 1948. Wrote
constantly thereafter, more than a dozen novels, many successful plays,
and a travel book. He once remarked taht his "lesser writings" included
fifty short stories, ten one-act plays, and several volumes of essays.
English translations: Shiosai (Shinchosha Literary Prize 1954) ==> Sound
of waves (1956; Five Modern No Plays tr. Donald Keene, 1957), when he
spent six months in the USA. He was married.
Mishima wrote Thirst for Love in 1959, one year after Confessions of a mask.
Committed suicide in 1970.
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