Mishima

Marguerite Yourcenar (1903-1987),
French novelist and biographer,
whose idiosyncratic approach to
writing as a lesbian  left her largely
shunned by  the Feminist movement

Yukio Mishima
(1925-1970)

Joy.


Today my latest purchase from Amazon reseller came through the letterbox.


Nice, because yesterday, I completed a couple of texts that I've been reading in parallel: Marguerite Yourcenar's Mishima: A Vision of the Void, alongside Spring Snow, the first in Yukio Mishima's tetralogy 'The Sea of Fertility'. 


This reading project had been a useful little exercise for me as, although the latter novel informs the former biographical piece, the both inform me in my pursuit of understanding an enigma whose literary works I first stumbled upon a few years ago.

Berlin apartment c.1977. Bowie's
Head of Mishima in
German Expressionist style

I hadn't heard of the Japanese author until I saw a painting by David Bowie with Mishima as the subject (my sub-fanatical interest in that cultural magpie Bowie has certainly broadened my artistic horizons: in addition to reconciling my heterosexuality with queer culture (no mean feat upon a straight teenager in 1970s Britain), I have learned about, for instance, William Burroughs, Surrealism, Pop Art, cinema history, Berlin, jazz, Anthony Burgess, Little Richard, Expressionism, Aleister Crowley, none of which am I an aficionado, but, of whom previously I was ignorant). I'm sure that, in the same way, lads half a generation older than me were influenced by what Lennon or Dylan read and cited in their interviews (teenage girls' experiences are perhaps generally different... let me know, ladies).

Mishima poses as
St. Sebastian, a popular subject
of gay iconography

Mishima was, in 1960s Japan, a well-known author, film star, martial artist and paramilitary captain, who ritually committed suicide after a futile coup attempt at a Japanese military base in 1970. His final speech from a balcony to assembled, jeering soldiers outlined how aghast he was at what Japan had become as a nation. Any appraisal of him, however, as an ultra-nationalist or authoritarian needs to be preceded by a keener understanding of him as a family man, a producer of sensual prose and by gaining an appreciation of his attitude towards his own sexuality and the homoerotic.


As a Westerner, to read a short story by Mishima is to take a small step towards comprehending what motivates or perturbs individuals living in a culture alien from ours, with generally strange sensibilities and manners, allegiances and religious beliefs. Culture is that which adorns a life once the bare necessities are catered for, yet Freud saw it as something that controls us, hems us in, contains us in our pursuits of pleasure or satisfaction. Nietzsche was another who contrasted a Dionysian hedonism with an Apollonian rigidity in cultured mankind and was quick to blame Socrates for this detachment from baser drives. The Japanese frame of reference, however, must be analysed from a different historio-philosophical perspective, one that acknowledges an insular national existence that had lasted for centuries and which had been so thoroughly and rapidly transformed as the powers at Japan's helm strove to bring their nation into the industrialising world of the 19th and 20th centuries. It is that burgeoning globalisation at the end of the 19th Century that is central to the themes of Spring Snow and which furnishes the reader, by means of the novelistic form, with a more comprehensive understanding of Mishima's grand ethos.


In 1912, Japanese society, just as stratified and mannered as the British social hierarchy of the time, is coming to terms with a change in its social dynamic: the bourgeoisie has gained an hitherto unknown influence upon the aristocracy and the imperial family, with Western ideas and fashion upturning established notions of Japanese heritage and custom. Japan's relatively recent victory over Russia had been momentous in the forming of a new national confidence within the populace. The novel centres on the formative years and adolescence of the main protagonist, Kiyoaki Matsugae and his friend Honda. The translation by Michael Gallagher deftly represents Mishima's descriptive passages concerning horticulture, clothing, mien, and the subtleties of cultured Japanese society, especially in relation to the way manners and etiquette were considered of paramount importance. We are also given useful information about Buddhism and various eschatologies. Central to the story is the romance between Kiyoaki and Satoko and the intrigues of the respective families to hide a developing scandal. It's a fine, affecting work which has interest for a wide range of reading tastes, I guess.

Photograph of Mishima's
severed head.

There are three more in the series of 'Sea of Fertility' for me to read and I'm not sure that even those will enable me to get a compass on why someone who is probably not a depressive character would plan his seppuko in such a way as to organise members of his cult to aid and abet him in his suicide and even partake of it themselves.


So now my parcel has arrived I'm going to dive into the second in the tetralogy, Runaway Horses. I don't suggest you hold your collective breaths for my review of it, but look out for one once I'm back from Turkey.