The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima (24 page)

In the Ukei ceremony, one learned the will of the gods with the aid of sacred pendants—Shinto divine symbols—and positive and negative slips of paper. On this occasion both requests gain a negative response. After the ceremony, the men burn the slips of paper and drink the ashes with water. The next year, the Saga Rebellion occurs. Otaguro thinks that this is a chance not to be missed and performs a second Ukei. Once again the gods reply in the negative. The feeling of Sonno Jōi is strong among the group and in that year fifteen followers of the four men are made priests. In 1877, on March 18, the government proclaims the decree abolishing the wearing of swords, and shortly afterward comes another decree ordering former samurai to trim off the topknots from their heads. These two announcements convince the group to take action. Alone, Kaya decides to present a petition and then to commit hara-kiri.

Otaguro performs the Ukei ceremony for a third time in May. This time he receives an affirmative reply from the gods. Accordingly, he prepares a plan for the assassination of government officials in the Kumamoto area; some army officers are also added to the list. He gathers men together in secret from the neighborhood. His plan is: (1) One party of thirty men to assassinate the general at the Kumamoto barracks, and also to kill the local governor and the chairman of a local commission in their homes. (2) A second party to attack the artillery camp in the barracks. (3) A third party to attack the 2,000-man-strong infantry garrison at the camp. Kaya decides to join the group again three days before their day of action.

The sole preparation is prayer. They would not arm themselves with guns, because they hate these abominable Western weapons. (When obliged to walk under electric power lines, they cover their heads with white fans.) They arm themselves instead with sword,
spear, and halberd. They have oil also, to set fire to the camp. Very few of them wear armor. Their treasured possession is a sacred tablet, the Mitamashiro, and Otaguro carries it on his back. The decision is made to attack on October 24.

The attack begins at midnight. The general is killed and the governor and chairman are injured. But by early morning the majority of the rebels attacking without guns are also dead. The two leaders, Otaguro and Kaya, have been shot. Otaguro asks his brother-in-law to give a coup de grâce by kaishaku. Forty-six survivors of the attack retire to Kinposan, a hill west of the castle, and decide to disperse and hide. Seven boys are ordered home, and three severely injured men commit hara-kiri.

Thereafter, the rebels commit hara-kiri in a variety of places, some at home, others in the mountains. One is a boy of sixteen. Six men flee by ship to Konoura and wait there for news. After receiving a report of the defeat, they climb Omidake Mountain early in the morning, make a circle with rope and with the sacred pendants and papers on a flat spot, and all commit perfect hara-kiri.

Almost all the rebels commit hara-kiri or are burned to death, but one man, Kotaro Ogata, surrenders. Arrested and in prison, he puzzles over the failure of men with such dedication, purged of impurity: how is it that divine assistance was not forthcoming? The will of the gods is hidden, but Ogata concludes by giving voice to the spirit of the samurai: “Were we to have acted like frail women?”

Isao worships the “purity” of these men who sacrificed their lives in the Shinpuren Incident. Paying a visit to a lieutenant of a regiment stationed in Azabu in central Tokyo, he reveals his wish to commit hara-kiri “on a cliff . . . just at sunrise . . . under a pine tree . . . looking down at the shining sea.” At a second meeting, the lieutenant introduces Isao to a member of the Imperial family, a prince, and Isao gives him his copy of the pamphlet on the Shinpuren Incident. Toin no Miya, the prince, has been told in advance of Isao's idea of sacrificing himself for the Emperor, and he asks: “Supposing the Emperor turns down your idea, what would you do?” Isao replies that he would commit hara-kiri. Loyalty, says Isao, using a parable, is to prepare hot
nigirimeshi
(a simple rice
dish) for the Emperor as a present. If the Emperor refuses the food, for whatever reason, Isao would commit hara-kiri. Equally, if he accepts the dish, Isao would commit hara-kiri, for it is a grave sin for a somo, a humble subject, to make
nigirimeshi
for the Emperor. One kind of loyalty would be to make the food and then not present it, but this would be loyalty without bravery. Real loyalty would be to present the
nigirimeshi
, without regard to one's life. Prince Toin is greatly moved by the speech and comments: “With such young men we can have hope for the future.” He gives Isao a cake upon which his crest has been pressed.

Isao, thus encouraged, plans, with a group of friends, to assassinate government and business leaders; they will also blow up the Bank of Japan. His father, however, who is receiving money from Kurahara, one of the tycoons Isao plans to murder, informs the police of the plot; the boy is arrested and put in prison. (Honda, meanwhile, has been meditating on his discovery of Isao; he has become greatly disturbed and his thoughts have drifted toward romanticism. When he hears that Isao is to be put on trial, Honda gives up his judgeship. He makes his way to Tokyo and offers himself as defense counsel for Isao, whom he defends with help from Prince Toin.) In prison, Isao reads
The Philosophy of the Japanese Wang Yang-Ming School
, by Dr. Tetsujirō Inoue, a description of the teaching of the neo-Confucian school whose maxim is: “To know and not to act is not yet to know.” He is attracted by a chapter on Heihachirō Ōshio, a nineteenth-century hero who sacrificed his life in an attack on the great merchant houses in Osaka, who were hoarding rice at a time of famine. There was no fearing the death of the body, Dr. Inoue summed up; only the death of the spirit.

At his trial, under examination by the judges, Isao gives an account of the two sources of his inspiration. One has been Yōmeigaku, the teaching of the Chinese Wang Yang-ming, a soldier philosopher who broke the hold of Confucianism on China in the sixteenth century. Isao says: “Yes, Your Honor. In the philosophy of Wang Yang-ming there is something that is called congruity of thought and action: ‘To know and not to act is not yet to know.' And it was this philosophy that I strove to put into practice. If one knows of the decadence of Japan today, the dark clouds that envelop
her future, the impoverished state of the farmers and the despair of the poor, if one knows all this is due to political corruption and to the unpatriotic nature of the
zaibatsu
, the industrial combines, who thrive on this corruption, and knows that here is the source of the evil which shuts out the light of our most revered Emperor's benevolence—with such knowledge, I think, the meaning of ‘to know and to act' becomes self-evident.”

His second inspiration has been the Shinpuren Incident: “I had faith that the dark clouds would one day be blown away and that a bright and clear future lay ahead for Japan. Wait as I might, however, that day did not come. The longer I waited, the darker the clouds became . . . Who was to carry word to heaven? Who, mounting to heaven through death, was to take upon himself the vital function of messenger? . . . To join heaven and earth, some decisive deed of purity is necessary. To accomplish so resolute an action, you have to stake your life, giving no thought to personal gain or loss. You have to turn into a dragon and stir up a whirlwind . . .” He concludes: “Loyalty, I think, is nothing else but to throw down one's life in reverence for the Imperial Will [the Emperor]. It is to tear asunder the dark clouds, climb to heaven, and plunge into the sun, plunge into the midst of the Imperial Mind. This, then, is what my comrades and I pledged within our hearts.”

Shortly afterward, the judge lets Isao go free. Following his release, he hears a report that Kurahara, the business leader who finances his father, has committed an impiety at the Ise Shrine—the shrine of the sun goddess. Ten days before Isao's release, Kurahara had been in the Kansai, attending a meeting of bankers; he had visited Matsuzaka, a famous place for beef, and eaten an inordinate amount of meat (meat eating is a custom introduced to Japan from the West). On the following day he had visited the Ise Shrine, accompanied by the governor of Mie prefecture, as an honored guest of the shrine. While listening to the recital of norito, of prayers, Kurahara had put down on his chair his sprig of
tamagushi
(a sacred leaf), to have a hand free to scratch his back; then he had sat down on the
tamagushi
by mistake, failing to realize what he had done. The right-wing press make much of this incident. Kurahara had unknowingly profaned the most holy shrine in the country.

Isao is unimpressed by the story when he first hears it. Later, however, when drinking with his father and Honda, he learns the secret of his father's tie with Kurahara and is told that his father had informed on him. He weeps. “I've lived for the sake of an illusion. I've patterned my life upon an illusion. And this punishment has come on me because of this illusion . . . Maybe I ought to be reborn a woman. If I were a woman, I could live without chasing after illusions.”

Honda helps the boy to bed and watches over him as he sleeps. He hears him say as he dreams: “Far to the south. Very hot . . . in the rose sunshine of a southern land.” Two days later Isao evades his father's assistant, buys a short sword and a knife in the Ginza, and takes a train to Atami, where Kurahara is reported to be.

He reaches the cottage where Kurahara is staying at about ten at night. Crossing an orchard, he looks into a lighted room, furnished in Western style, in which a fat, stern-looking old man is sitting on a sofa. Isao waits until a maid has left the room, then he dashes in with his sword. Kurahara stands up but does not cry out.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?”

“Take the punishment you deserve for profaning the Grand Shrine of Ise,” Isao says calmly.

“What?” Kurahara exclaims, unable to remember anything.

The old man looks very frightened. He makes a movement of his body and Isao jumps at him. Holding the businessman to him, he thrusts the sword through his heart. Kurahara's eyes open wide and his false teeth fall out. Isao pulls out his sword and dashes from the room, brushing the maid aside.

He heads for the sea close by, looking for a cliff. At last he finds the high cliff he seeks. Making his way toward its top, he pauses to pluck a mikan, a tangerine. He eats the fruit and rests, getting his breath back. He has run and is out of training after months in prison. Isao takes off his jacket and gets out his knife. He has lost the sword. A cold wind blows from the sea.

“The sun will not rise for some time,” he thinks, “and I can't afford to wait. There is no shining disk climbing upward. There is no noble pine to shelter me. Nor is there a sparkling sea.”

He takes off his shirt and unbuttons his trousers. Far away there are voices: “The ocean. He must have got away in a boat.”

Kimitaké Hiraoka—the young Mishima—at eight. A pencil drawing by Akiko Sugiyama. “For many years I claimed I could remember things seen at the time of my own birth. Whenever I said so, the grownups would laugh at first, but then, wondering if they were not being tricked, they would look distastefully at the pallid face of that unchildlike child . . .”

Natsuko Hiraoka, Mishima's grandmother, drawn by Akiko Sugiyama. She resolved to take personal responsibility for his upbringing and virtually kidnapped the little boy from his mother.