The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima (35 page)

In the meantime, the melancholy within me became enlarged and I was astonished by the realization that the endless fatigue, which I used to take as a condition of “collapse” common to the young, metamorphosed into something the reverse of the corrupt—something which urged me on. I fell in love with kendo, and found true significance only in the clear echo of bamboo sword on sword and the fierce, fanatic shouts. After that I wrote my short story “Ken” [“Sword”]. How can I explain my mental condition? Am I rotten or in a state of exaltation? Slowly, a purposeless sorrow and anger pile up within me; sooner or later these had to combine with the intense cry of the young officers of the Ni Ni Roku Incident. This incident has been with me for the past thirty years, going back and forth between my conscious and my subconscious . . . The desire to console the spirits of the true heroes who had influenced me for so long, to restore their reputation and to reinstate them, was always deep within me. But whenever I consider the matter further, I am at a loss how to treat the Emperor's ningen sengen. The history of the Shōwa period [the reign of Hirohito] is divided in two by the defeat in war, and one like me who lived through both parts [of the Shōwa era] continuously cannot help desiring to find a real continuity and a basis for theoretical consistency. This seems perfectly natural for a man, whether he is a writer or not. The ningen sengen declaration by the Emperor himself was more important than the new Constitution which provides that the Emperor be a symbol. I was forced to the point where I could not help but describe the shadow of the Ni Ni Roku Incident; thus I started
Eirei no Koe
. It may seem strange if I use the word “aesthetics” in this context. But I came to realize that
there is a hard, huge rock at the very foundation of my aesthetic—the Emperor system.

Whatever one may feel about Mishima's imperialism, there is no denying his passion. It was a turning point in his life when in 1966 he shut himself up for three days in a hotel in Tokyo and poured out his feelings in
Eirei no Koe
, a work of eighty pages in length. It was after writing
Eirei no Koe
, he told me three years later, that he decided to create the Tatenokai. His frame of mind in early 1966 was vividly illuminated by
Eirei no Koe
, the refrain of which runs: “
Nadote Sumerogi wa hito to naritamaishi
” (“Why did the Emperor have to become a human being?”). The work, most Japanese critics agree, is not a fine piece of literature, and the book was quickly forgotten, once the scandal of its publication died down. It is important, however, to know more about Mishima's attitudes at this time. He expressed himself forcibly in an interview about
Eirei no Koe
headed “Theory of the Emperor,” which he granted the
Sunday Mainichi
magazine early in March 1966:

MISHIMA
: This is a theme I wanted to write about someday. Of course, there is a great possibility that I would be counterattacked from many sides because the work itself has a dual aspect. I was quite prepared for this.

Q
.: What do you think about the Ni Ni Roku Incident?

MISHIMA
: This incident occurred when I was eleven and had a big spiritual influence on me. My hero worship and feeling of collapse, which I experience now, are both derived from the incident.

Needless to say, I support the young officers, the so-called traitors. Therefore, I was beside myself with rage with those authors who have denounced them in their works as men who betrayed the army.

The action of the young officers could have brought about the Shōwa Ishin, the Shōwa Restoration, and was based on a belief in national salvation. But they were called traitors because the cowardly, sniveling, timid old vassals who surrounded the Emperor plotted against them. Consequently,
the Emperor has responsibility; he accepted it. The Emperor should send an Imperial messenger [to the graves of the dead] as soon as possible, to end the dishonor of those who were bereaved.

Q
.: What was your intention in writing?

MISHIMA
: I wrote
Tōka no Kiku
from the point of view of the vassals, and “Patriotism” was a story about a single young officer who was left out of the rising.

This time [in
Eirei no Koe
] I wrestled with the spirit of the incident head on.

There is a tendency now for journalists to avoid discussing the chrysanthemum [the Imperial family], America, and the Sōka Gakkai [a militant Buddhist sect], letting these subjects be taboos. Authors do the same. The best kind of self-discipline for writers and journalists is introspection.

That the Communist Party has also ceased to criticize the Emperor system is also cowardly.

I can say that my frustration with the modern trend lay behind my decision to write and to complete this story [
Eirei no Koe
] in a short space of time.

Q
.: Do you think the prewar Emperor system is the only one for the nation?

MISHIMA
: Yes. The
kokutai
, the national system, has collapsed since the Emperor made his ningen sengen. All the moral confusion of the postwar period stems from that. Why should the Emperor be a human being? Why must he be a God, at least for us Japanese? If I explain this matter, it all boils down to a question of “love” in the end. In modern times nations have moved forward from the physiocratic to the capitalist system. This is unavoidable. Feudalism collapses, the nation industrializes and then cannot but become a modern welfare state—the most desperate of conditions. In the meantime, the more a nation modernizes, the less meaningful, the cooler, become personal relationships. For people who live in such a modern society love is impossible. For example, if A believes that he loves B, there is no means for him to be sure of it, and vice versa. Therefore, love cannot exist in a modern society—if it is merely a mutual
relationship. If there is no image of a third man whom the two lovers have in common—the apex of the triangle—love ends with eternal skepticism. This is what [D. H.] Lawrence calls agnosticism. From ancient times the Japanese have had an image of the apex of the triangle (God), which was a God in a physiocratic system; and everyone had a theory of love, so that he should not be isolated.

The Emperor was the absolute for us Japanese.

That is why I always say that [Shinto] festivals are necessary.

Q
.: What about the Imperial family today?

MISHIMA
: I am of course an imperialist. And I think one who says what he wants to say is a patriot.

The present situation of the Imperial family is chaotic.

For example, treating Princess Michiko [consort of the Crown Prince] as a film star is nonsense. They [the media] simply boost her popularity. I think they should underline Michiko's worship at the Grand Shrine of Ise [the main Shinto shrine] following Prince Akihito; after all, she graduated from a Catholic university. The Crown Prince should also visit the Jieitai Staff College and should offer cigarettes with the stamp of the chrysanthemum upon them to those who are bursting with patriotism.

One cigarette may be worth 100 million yen in the future. These are the people on whom the Imperial family can rely, ultimately.

The unfortunate thing for His Majesty is that there were no able advisers around him. The vassals closest to him were all educated in England, and those Japanese educated there all became opportunists and such weak characters, determined only to maintain the status quo.

One exception was Shigeru Yoshida [the most famous of postwar Prime Ministers], who was a symbolic figure, the first Japanese to resist the British and U.S. system during the Occupation by a skillful “English” counterattack.

Secondly, His Majesty did not have the chance to contact young men.

At the time of the Ni Ni Roku Incident, His Majesty was
filled with deep hatred. If he were a human being, he should naturally have been enraged by the assassination of his own men. But His Majesty as a God should not be. If he had had contact with the young officers, he could have understood what lay behind the incident and would not have trampled on the faith of young patriots.

Q
.: What do you think should be the future of Japan, including the Imperial household?

MISHIMA
: Since I am an author, I wish to look at the human situation, so the actual system must be the concern of politicians, I think. Although the present lot of politicians are corrupt . . .

After the publication of
Eirei no Koe
, Mishima became a favorite of the Uyoku, the violent right, and also the right wing of the Liberal Democratic Party, the ruling conservative party. He did not associate with the former, which has criminal elements. He did, however, become friendly with many conservative leaders, including Prime Minister Sato and his sharp-witted wife. But his imperialism was unique; it had the same narcissistic quality which characterized all Mishima's thoughts and actions—as is clear in these selected quotations from a long dialogue which took place in 1966 between Mishima and the right-wing bigot, Fusao Hayashi:

[The leaders of the Meiji Restoration] succeeded in Westernizing Japan ninety-nine percent. The remaining one percent was the definition of the Emperor as sacred and untouchable—this was the fort against Westernization.

The Emperor is infallible. He is the most mysterious existence in the world.

To me, the Emperor, works of art, and Shinpuren are symbols of purity. I want to identify my own literary work with God.

The two first statements are orthodox enough. The last is true to Mishima. I think that he sometimes confused himself with God or with the Emperor. He remarked to me once: “There is no one I can respect in Japan today, the situation is hopeless, there is no
one to take account of . . .” There followed a long pause. A strange expression flitted across his face. “Except perhaps the Emperor . . .”

In other writings he revealed a masochistic side to his character. This matters, for it showed that hara-kiri was not simply an act of loyalty toward the Emperor, an act of
kanshi
(the suicide of remonstration); Mishima also wanted to hurt himself. So much is apparent from the autobiographical essay I have often gone back to for insights,
Sun and Steel
: “Pain, I came to feel, might well prove to be the sole proof of the persistence of consciousness within the flesh, the sole physical expression of consciousness. As my body acquired muscle, and in turn strength, there was gradually born within me a tendency toward the positive acceptance of pain, and my interest in physical suffering deepened. Even so, I would not have it believed that this development was a result of the workings of my imagination. My discovery was made directly, with my body, thanks to the sun and the steel.” In his use of imagery, Mishima was fairly specific about the instrument which should cause pain—a knife: “The subtle contradiction between self-awareness and existence began to trouble me. I reasoned that if one wants to identify seeing and existing, the nature of the self-awareness should be made as centripetal as possible. If only one can direct the eye of self-awareness so intently toward the interior and the self that self-awareness forgets the outer forms of existence, then one can ‘exist' as surely as the ‘I' in Amiel's
Diary
 . . . Let us picture a single, healthy apple . . . The apple certainly exists, but to the core this existence as yet seems inadequate; if words cannot endorse it, then the only way to endorse it is with the eyes. Indeed, for the core the only sure mode of existence is to exist and to see at the same time. There is only one method of solving this contradiction. It is for a knife to be plunged deep into the apple so that it is split open and the core is exposed to light.”

Mishima classified various of his writings—“Patriotism,”
Eirei no Koe
, and
Sun and Steel
among them—under the heading of his River of Action. They outlined his reasons for committing himself to action. The commitment itself came in the latter part of 1966, when he applied to train at Jieitai camps after his completion of
Spring Snow
. The second stage of his commitment began in the
early summer of 1967 when he began to look around for young men to join his private army or militia—he preferred the second term. This was a time when the left-wing student Zengakuren had begun their campaign against the government in earnest, and right-wing student bodies, though few in number, had organized themselves against the ultra-left. Mishima had, therefore, a number of places to look for potential recruits. He settled on two groups: a small contingent of students who published a little-known, right-wing magazine, the
Ronsō Journal
, whose leader was a student named Kuramochi; and a group of students at Waseda University, the Tokyo university at which the ultra-left was most active. Among those was a twenty-one-year-old from Yokkaichi, a coastal town near Nagoya, whose name was Masakatsu Morita. Mishima kept in touch with both sets of students during 1967, and though of the two he had preferred the Waseda group—perhaps because they were cohesive and well defined—he was forced to settle for the support of the
Ronsō Journal
youths, as the former would have nothing to do with Mishima at first, taking him for an exhibitionist, an odd fellow.

Mishima launched his activities with the
Ronsō Journal
youths—these activities were at first confined to meetings and long conversations—at a session held in the offices of the magazine. One of those present described the scene to Azusa Hiraoka, and we are indebted to Mishima's father for this description of a scene which might have come straight from a morbid passage in
Confessions of a Mask
. There were about a dozen people present, gathered around a table in the seedy office of the building in Kami-Itabashi where the
Ronsō Journal
had its headquarters. “On a piece of paper he [Mishima] wrote in sumi [Chinese ink]: ‘We hereby swear to be the foundation of
Kōkoku Nippon
[Imperial Japan].' Then he cut his little finger with a penknife and asked everyone else to follow his example. They dripped blood from their fingers into a cup, all standing, until it was full to the brim; then each signed his name on the piece of paper, dipping a
mōhitsu
[brush] into the cup and signing in blood . . . Some of the people felt faint and one had to rush out to vomit. Mishima then suggested that they should drink the blood . . . He picked up the glass and asked: ‘Is anyone here ill? None of you have VD?' All seemed well. He
called for a saltcellar and flavored the cup; then he drank from it. The others followed his example. ‘What a fine lot of Draculas,' said Mishima, looking around at the youths with their red mouths and teeth, laughing his raucous laugh.” Afterward the students placed the cup, with whatever blood was left, in the safe of the
Ronsō Journal
. Then Mishima called for coffee and cakes and they sat down to eat.