The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima (25 page)

Photo: Shinchosha

With Utaemon in 1954. Mishima had a compulsion to love, but when he gained the attention of another person, he would take flight. A rare exception was his friendship with Utaemon, the well-known
onnagata
(the actor in the Kabuki theater who takes the female roles).

Photo: Shinchosha

Early body-building: Mishima in the gym in 1956. “The average life for men in the Bronze Age was eighteen, and in the Roman era twenty-two. Heaven must then have been filled with beautiful youths. Recently, it must look dreadful . . .”

Photo: Shinchosha

Mishima in 1956 when he carried a portable Shinto shrine through the streets of Tokyo. “Through it all there was only one vividly clear thing, a thing that both horrified and lacerated me, filling my heart with unaccountable agony. This was the expression on the faces of the young men carrying the shrine—an expression of the most obscene and undisguised drunkenness in the world . . .”

Photo: Shinchosha

With Yōko Sugiyama after the announcement of their engagement in 1958. Mishima met Yōko in early April and after two meetings made up his mind: they were engaged early in May 1958.

Photo: Shinchosha

Being fitted for the morning coat for his wedding in 1958. On his return from abroad, Mishima had learned that his mother had cancer and would probably die. He immediately made up his mind to find a wife, so that Shizué would see him safely married before she died.

Photo: Shinchosha

The wedding reception at International House. He stipulated that his bride must be neither a
bungaku shojo
(a bluestocking) nor a
yumeibyō kanja
(a celebrity hunter), and he had five other requirements . . .

Photo: WWP—Shinchosha

Visiting New York in 1960. Mishima treated Yōko with a consideration that far exceeded the kindness shown to their wives by most Japanese husbands of his generation. For example, he took Yōko with him on his foreign travels. She had never been abroad, and when Mishima embarked on a long journey around the world in late 1960, she accompanied him. They were in New York, where they saw the première of Mishima's modern No plays, in an off-Broadway production.

Photo: Eikoh Hosoe

He posed for an album of photographs by the fashionable photographer Eikoh Hosoe. In these magnificent pictures he appears in a number of extraordinary poses—lying on his back in his garden against a baroque ornament, stripped naked, with a white rose in his mouth, or lying upon his hairy chest. The album
Barakei
(“Torture by Roses”) gave Mishima a bad reputation in some quarters. Critics and other writers who disliked him said he was going off his head at last.

Photo: Shinchosha

Watching a rehearsal of one of his plays in 1963. “Plays awaken a different part of my desire, that part which is unsatisfied by writing novels. Now, when I write a novel, I want to write a play next. Plays occupy one of the two magnetic poles of my work.”

Photo: Shinchosha

In front of his home on the outskirts of Tokyo in 1965. “Surprised by luxury in which Mishima lives,” I noted in my diary. “Modern, three-story home set well back from road in quiet suburb of Tokyo . . . Very solid house with solid walls, painted white. Maid at the door in cap and apron!”

Photo: Shinchosha

With the celebrated actress Haruko Sugimura, the leading figure in the Bungakuza theatrical group. “I believed optimistically that once the performance was finished the curtain would fall and the audience would never see the actor without his make-up. My assumption that I would die young was also a factor in this belief . . .”