The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima (13 page)

Mishima's statement that he lied to the army doctor is crucial to his whole career. By doing so, he avoided military service; yet, had he served in the army, even for a short while, his view of life in the ranks would have been less romantic, later in life. Mishima's own comments on his action at the army medical were clear; a voice within him announced that he would “never attain heights of glory sufficient to justify my having escaped death in the army.” A second inner voice held that he “had never once truly wanted to die”; he had been looking forward to army service because “I had been secretly hoping that the army would provide me at last with an opportunity for gratifying those strange sensual desires of mine . . . I alone could never die.” A third voice: “I much preferred to think of myself instead as a person who had been forsaken even by Death . . . I delighted in picturing the curious agonies of a person who wanted to die but had been refused by Death. The degree of mental pleasure I thus obtained seemed almost immoral.”

The end of the war approached swiftly. The Hiraokas, Azusa having finally made up his mind to evacuate, moved out of their Shibuya house to stay with cousins at Gōtokuji, beyond Shinjuku, comparatively far from the center of the city. The air raids had been getting worse and the devastating raid of March 9, in which an estimated 100,000 people died, had persuaded Azusa to move. The spring was a dry one and the main hazard—the American B-29's dropped incendiaries—was fire. The wooden houses of Tokyo, packed closely together, went up in flames like kindling. Mishima described the scene in Tokyo after the giant raid: “The passageway over the railway tracks was filled with victims of the raid. They were wrapped up in blankets until one could see nothing but their eyes or, better said, nothing but their eyeballs, for they
were eyes that saw nothing and thought nothing . . . Something caught fire within me. I was emboldened and strengthened by the parade of misery passing before my eyes. I was experiencing the same excitement that a revolution causes. In the fire these miserable ones had witnessed the total destruction of every evidence that they existed as human beings. Before their eyes they had seen human relationships, loves and hatreds, reason, property, all go up in flame. And at the time it had not been the flames against which they fought, but against human relationships, against loves and hatreds, against reason, against property . . . In their faces I saw traces of that exhaustion which comes from witnessing a spectacular drama . . . They were loud and boastful as they related to each other the dangers they had undergone. In the true sense of the word, this was a rebellious mob; it was a mob that harbored a radiant discontent, an overflowing, triumphant, high-spirited dissatisfaction”
(Confessions)
.

The young Mishima had little to do. University classes had ceased and students no longer worked at the kamikaze factory. He stayed at home with his family, reading No plays, the dramas of Chikamatsu, the mysterious tales of Kyōka Izumi and Akinari Ueda, even the
Kojiki
and its ancient myths. “How dearly indeed I loved my pit, my dusky room, the place round my desk with its piles of books”
(Sun and Steel)
. He believed that he would die in the final cataclysm at the end of the war. On April 1 the Americans invaded Okinawa, the large island to the southwest of the main islands of Japan. Kamikaze attacks inflicted great damage on the fleet off Okinawa, and the fighting went slowly; but there was no doubt who would win. At the last moment the Japanese commanders committed hara-kiri and many officers jumped to their deaths from the cliff where they had made a last stand. Mishima, who had been mobilized once more and sent to a naval dockyard at Koza near Tokyo, heard rumors that invasion of the mainland was imminent. “I was free. Everyday life had become a thing of unspeakable happiness. There was a rumor that the enemy would probably make a landing soon in S Bay and that the region in which the arsenal stood would be overwhelmed. And again, even more than before, I found myself deeply immersed in a desire for death. It was in
death that I had discovered my real ‘life's aim' ”
(Confessions)
.

From an air-raid shelter on the outskirts of Tokyo, Mishima watched one of the greatest air attacks of the war, on the night of May 24. “The sky over Tokyo turned crimson. From time to time something would explode and suddenly between the clouds we could see an eerie blue sky, as though it were midday . . . The futile searchlights seemed more like beacons welcoming the enemy planes . . . The B-29's reached the skies over Tokyo in comfort.” Mishima saw other men who had been watching from the caves where they had taken shelter applaud when a plane was hit and fell, without knowing whether it was American or Japanese. “The young workmen were particularly vociferous. The sound of hand-clapping and cheering rang out from the mouths of the scattered tunnels as though in a theater . . . It seemed to make no essential difference whether the falling plane was ours or the enemy's. Such is the nature of war . . .”
(Confessions)
.

At the dockyard camp Mishima worked on a new manuscript, “Misaki nite no Monogatari” (“Story at a Cape”), a tale based on a childhood visit to the sea. In June,
Bungei
, a leading literary magazine, published another story of his, and in that month he received his first
zasshigenkōryo
, his first magazine fee. He wanted to find more allies in the Bundan, the literary establishment, and he met older writers whenever he had leave from the camp. Two new acquaintances were the novelists Junzō Shōno and Toshio Shimao.

In July the Japanese government made overtures of peace, secretly, via the Moscow Embassy, hoping that Stalin would serve as intermediary with America. The Potsdam Conference was about to take place, following the collapse of Germany; it was attended by Stalin, Truman, and Churchill and was an opportunity to end the war. The Japanese initiative, however, was ignored by Stalin, who had plans of his own: an attack on the Japanese positions in Manchuria and elsewhere in the Far East. He was about to end the neutrality treaty the two powers had signed in 1941. The Japanese would not make a direct approach to the United States, and the war dragged on. Following the Potsdam meeting, a communiqué was issued which repeated the Allied demand for the unconditional
surrender of Japan. The communiqué gave no assurances about the Emperor's future, and the Japanese could not respond without them.

The summer was unusually hot. Mishima wrote in
Sun and Steel
: “My first—unconscious—encounter with the sun was in the summer of the defeat, in the year 1945. A relentless sun blazed down on the lush grass of that summer that lay on the borderline between the war and the postwar period—a borderline, in fact, that was nothing more than a line of barbed wire entanglements, half broken down, half buried in the summer weeds, tilting in all directions.”

On August 6, Mishima learned that Hiroshima had been obliterated by a monstrous bomb. A second atom bomb destroyed part of Nagasaki three days later. “It was our last chance. People were saying that Tokyo would be next. Wearing white shirt and shorts, I walked about the streets. The people had reached the limits of desperation and were now going about their affairs with cheerful faces. From one moment to the next, nothing happened. Everywhere there was an air of cheerful excitement. It was just as though one was continuing to blow up an already bulging toy balloon, wondering: ‘Will it burst now? Will it burst now?' ”
(Confessions)
.

Nothing happened for almost another week. “If it had gone on any longer there would have been nothing to do but go mad,” Mishima wrote. Then, on August 14, U.S. aircraft appeared over Tokyo and dropped leaflets outlining the surrender proposals of the Allies, including a small concession on the status of the Emperor, who would be subordinate to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP)—General Douglas MacArthur—but would remain on the throne. Tokyo lay in ruins and there was no possibility of repelling an Allied invasion of the main islands. The terms were accepted by the Japanese government.

Mishima was in bed with a fever at his relatives' house at Gōtokuji when he heard the news of the surrender. “For me—for me alone—it meant that fearful days were beginning. It meant that, whether I would or no, and despite everything that had deceived me into believing such a day would never come to pass,
the very next day I must begin life as an ordinary member of society. How the mere words made me tremble!”
(Confessions)
.

The Emperor's surrender broadcast was made at noon on August 15. It could not be heard clearly; the squeaky voice of the monarch was partly drowned by static. In his first radio address, the Emperor said: “We declared war on America and Britain out of Our sincere desire to ensure Japan's self-preservation and the stabilization of East Asia, it being far from Our thought either to infringe upon the sovereignty of other nations or to embark upon territorial aggrandizement. But now the war has lasted for nearly four years. Despite the best that has been done by everyone . . . the war situation had developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage . . . Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb.”

Five hundred military officers, including General Anami, the Minister of War, committed suicide at the surrender, to “take responsibility” for the defeat and to “apologize to the Emperor.” Anami committed hara-kiri alone in his residence in Tokyo, refusing the offer of a coup de grâce; he bled slowly to death. Many officers overseas took their lives; among them was Zenmei Hasuda, Mishima's friend, who murdered his commanding officer for criticizing the Emperor and then put into effect his principle, “To die young, I am aware, is the culture of my nation,” by blowing out his brains. A handful of civilians also took their lives, including a dozen members of a fanatical right-wing organization, the Daitokuju, who disemboweled themselves in Tokyo; two of the group acted as
kaishaku-nin
, beheading their comrades with swords.

Mishima began his “life as an ordinary member of society.” “I passed the next year with vague and optimistic feelings. There were my law studies, perfunctorily performed, and my automatic goings and comings between university and home . . . I was not paying attention to anything nor was anything paying attention to me. I had acquired a worldly-wise smile like that of a young priest. I had the feeling of being neither alive nor dead.” His former desire for the “natural and spontaneous suicide of death in war” had been completely eradicated and forgotten. The twenty-year-old was in a state of shock. “True pain can only come gradually. It is exactly
like tuberculosis in that the disease has already progressed to a critical stage before the patient becomes aware of its symptoms.” Later Mishima would often refer to the experience of living through the end of the war. “My life was cut in two,” he said. “Misfortune attacked me.” The death sentence on Mishima and his contemporaries had been lifted, but their whole system of values had been shattered. For Mishima the experience was even more traumatic. During the war he had been made to feel a genius, the representative spirit of his age; after the war he was merely a student. In Hashikawa's words: “When the pressure of war was eliminated, he lost his balance.”

Mishima was in utter misery, and his agony was increased by the death of his sister, whom he loved. Mitsuko died in October 1945 of typhoid contracted from well water. Mishima looked after her in the hospital; he would stay by her bedside for hours, reading his law books. “I shall never forget the way she said, ‘Thank you, brother,' when I gave her water,” Mishima told his mother. Mitsuko, a student at the Sacred Heart School in Tokyo, died at the age of seventeen. A family friend later remarked: “It was a shame for Kimitaké that she died. She gave him a different idea of women to that which he derived from his grandmother and his doting mama. She was tomboyish and critical. He would say of her: ‘Can she really be a woman at all?' He could not understand a normal woman.”

Mishima withdrew into himself and ignored the chaotic world about him. “I would see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.” He paid no attention to the important changes in government. Although he was a law student, he did not interest himself in the “five reforms,” General MacArthur's programs for industrial, land, election, union, and educational law reform which were to lay the foundations for
demokurashi
in Japan. Nor did Mishima concern himself with social problems, although he was surrounded by them. The plight of the people of Tokyo, whose homes had been destroyed and who had little food, was acute; a roaring black market rose up and profiteers flourished. The suffering of ordinary people was immense; suicide by drinking methylated spirits was common. Mishima clung to his own little world—his “castle,” he sometimes called it, his “dark cave.” He paid little heed to the outside world,
ignoring even developments that affected the Emperor, whom General MacArthur had decreed should remain on the throne and should not be put on trial with the “war criminals”; as a condition, however, the Emperor had to make a statement disavowing the wartime ideology. The ningen sengen (human declaration)—with its implication that the Emperor was a mere mortal—was delivered on New Year's Day 1946 and contained this key passage: “The ties between Us and Our people have always stood on mutual trust and affection. They do not depend on mere legends and myths. They are not predicated upon the false concept that the Emperor is divine and that the Japanese people are superior to other races and fated to rule the world.”

Mishima picked up the threads of his literary career. He took his manuscripts to the editors of the monthly magazines. Utarō Noda, the editor of
Bungei
, later recalled in the magazine (February 1971): “He brought to me the manuscript of
Chūsei
. Reading it through, I felt that he was brilliant, but that I could not praise him one hundred percent. He struck me as like a strange plant which had skipped the natural process of maturing and had bloomed straightaway with no more than a couple of leaves on its stem.” Noda criticized Mishima's “evil narcissism.” Naoya Shiga, one of the best-known writers of the day, was also approached by Mishima, and shared Noda's critical opinion of the youth: “Shiga remembered Mishima as a boy who had been at school with his daughter for a while. He said that Mishima had often slipped manuscripts and letters into his post box. But he criticized Mishima's works: ‘His stories are all dreams. They have no reality. They are no good.' ” Noda passed on these criticisms to Mishima and encouraged him to write still more romantic tales, hoping that the boy would cure himself of his romanticism through an overdose: “He wrote two romantic short stories and brought the manuscripts to me one day when Tokyo was covered with fresh snow. I remember his seriousness that snowy day.”