The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima (33 page)

Mishima was witty enough about his misfortunes in the boxing ring—this willingness to make himself a butt of humor was an attractive feature of the man. I used to think, when I met him years after these experiences, that this ironical Mishima was real. I believed that his physical training was an aspect of his physical exuberance and that he did not take this part of his life seriously. His narcissism sometimes got out of hand; I put this down as a quirk of character. Many others must have had a similar attitude. He was obviously a little ill; he suffered from romanticism. It was hard to believe, however, that so intelligent a man could regard himself—his body—as a temple of beauty for more than a few seconds a day.

Had one read his books more carefully, had one believed that he meant what he wrote, the mistake would have been avoided. In
Sun and Steel
he described his attitude toward body building quite clearly. With reference to his reasons for pressing on with
bodei-biru
, he remarked, first, that it was part of an educational process.
Mens sana in corpore sano
, was his argument; and he expounded the merits of classical education like an earnest English public-school boy. Second, he said he needed a “classical” body to
achieve his aim in life, which he described thus in
Sun and Steel
: “Beyond the educative process there also lurked another, romantic design. The romantic impulse that had formed an undercurrent in me from boyhood on, and that made sense only as the
destruction
of classical perfection, lay waiting within me. Like a theme in an operatic overture that is later destined to occur throughout the whole work, it laid down a definitive pattern for me before I had achieved anything in practice. Specifically, I cherished a romantic impulse toward death, yet at the same time I required a strictly classical body as its vehicle; a peculiar sense of destiny made me believe that the reason why my romantic impulse toward death remained unfulfilled in reality was the immensely simple fact that I lacked the necessary physical qualifications. A powerful, tragic frame and sculpturesque muscles were indispensable in a romantically noble death. Any confrontation between weak, flabby flesh and death seemed to me absurdly inappropriate. Longing at eighteen for an early demise, I felt myself unfitted for it. I lacked, in short, the muscles suitable for a dramatic death. And it deeply offended my romantic pride that it should be this unsuitability that had permitted me to survive the war.”

Here is the most probable explanation of Mishima's faking of his army medical in 1945, though this is a matter to which Mishima apparently never alluded later in life. A straightforward reading of
Sun and Steel
leads one to the conclusion that Mishima, while he mocked his wretched performance as a sportsman, took his body for a work of art: “The steel taught me many different things. It gave me an utterly new kind of knowledge, a knowledge that neither books nor worldly experience can impart. Muscles, I found, were strength as well as form, and each complex of muscles was subtly responsible for the direction in which its own strength was exerted, much as though they were rays of light given the form of flesh. Nothing could have accorded better with the definition of a work of art that I had long cherished than this concept of form enfolding strength, coupled with the idea that a work should be organic, radiating rays of light in all directions. The muscles that I thus created were at one and the same time simple existence and works of art; they even, paradoxically, possessed a certain abstract nature. Their one fatal flaw was that they were too closely involved
with the life process, which decreed that they should decline and perish with the decline of life itself.”

Mishima had found an alternative to literature—what he called a “true antithesis of words.” And he governed the last years of his life according to his Bunburyōdō, the dual way of Art and Action, which ended with his suicide. How did he arrive at such a system as his Bunburyōdō, one might ask. How did he make the move from the River of Body to the River of Action? The clue may be found in the passage above. His muscles had one fatal flaw: he was bound to get old. In order to achieve his romantic apotheosis he had to die while his body was still beautiful, while he was still comparatively young. Such is the argument of
Sun and Steel
.

Does one take it seriously—as a description of what went on in Mishima's mind in the mid-1960's? I think so. One test is that of intellectual coherence. The essay is consistent throughout—unlike Mishima's “political” writing in the late 1960's. A second criterion is a personal one.
Sun and Steel
has, for me, a passion that is—in retrospect—sincere, however unpleasing it may be. Talking with Mishima about the book, I discovered that he cared a great deal for what I had taken to be a mere diversion; this was not a discovery on which I acted during his life—I did not look up
Sun and Steel
. It was hard, while he was alive, to read more than a few pages of his romantic thoughts without falling asleep, hard to take seriously a tome full of dire threats when its author—so “intrepid, dispassionate, and robust,” in his own words—seemed a living refutation of his romanticism.

After his disappointment with the novel
Kyōko no Ie
, he plunged into a whirl of activity. Early in 1960 he took the lead part in a gangster film,
Karakkaze Yarō
(“A Dry Fellow”), in which he appeared, at the start of the film, exercising, stripped to the waist, in a prison yard. The film ended with the murder of the black-jacketed thug played by Mishima. (He also wrote and recorded the theme song of the film.) He appeared to be indulging his narcissism a little, no more. For the most part he led a highly controlled, hard-working life and poured most of his energy into his writing and the relentless training in gyms and kendo halls.

Three years later he posed for an album of photographs by
the fashionable photographer, Eiko 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. And the nude pictures encouraged a class of correspondents for whom Mishima was not prepared—anonymous “friends” who wrote passionate notes to him requesting still bolder nude portraits. Yet these pictures were generally felt to reflect only one part, and not a very vital part, of the man; his narcissism seemed, to most people, to be irrelevant to his literary work. Besides, it was said, he was doing such things in jest, seeking to irritate the critics whom he so despised, not only for their scrawny chests, but more on account of their flabby intellectual attitudes. Other Japanese got used to Mishima's exhibitionism, and not a great deal of attention was paid to the startling photographs which appeared in cheap weekly magazines.

Not even the famous portrait of Mishima as St. Sebastian aroused more than a flicker of interest. This was a photo taken in 1966 by Kishin Shinoyama, the leading young Japanese photographer. It showed Mishima in the pose selected by Guido Reni for the painting of St. Sebastian which—as Mishima had described in
Confessions of a Mask
—had inspired his first ejaculation. He is standing against a thick tree trunk, the lower foliage of which is visible, acting as a canopy over the man below. In the background is a hazy, Titian-like view of dappled sunlight and leaves. Mishima is shown bound at the wrists by a rope suspended from the tree above, which holds his arms high above his head. He gazes upward, with his head turned slightly to one side. He is clad only in a light, white cloth, folded about his thighs and revealing his chest, which he inflated fully for the picture. In it are implanted three arrows—one in his left armpit. The wounds are bleeding a little; a trickle of blood dribbles from each arrow.

By the time this picture appeared in Japan, the public was inured to Mishima's buffoonery. The other photographs taken by Shinoyama at this time—one of them portraying Mishima in boots,
black jockstrap, and sailor cap, leaning against a massive motorcycle—did not create a lasting impression either. This reaction, which may now appear obtuse in the West, where Mishima's portraits are well known, is understandable. Most of the time, Mishima was engaged in serious pursuits; above all, his writing. He was regarded as the leading writer of his generation; no one paid much attention to his foibles. “What trick will he think up next?” was the most common reaction. Not long after the Shinoyama pictures, he appeared in the cabaret act with Akihiro Maruyama, singing his song “The Sailor Who Was Killed by Paper Roses,” at the end of which the two men, Mishima and Maruyama, exchanged a kiss. “Mishima has done it again,” was the reaction of the weekly magazines, and the little incident was quickly forgotten.

One who underestimated Mishima's energy might think he spent all his time posing for photographers. Also in 1966 there was a picture of Mishima squatting on a tatami floor in a white
fundoshi
, bearing a long samurai sword—the weapon with which his head was to be cut off four years later. His bronzed torso and the light sweat on his body added flavor to the photos, which were shot in the house of Meredith Weatherby in Tokyo. In fact, Mishima was engaged in a thousand other activities and would rush off a series of pictures with a skilled photographer in a matter of minutes. They amused him, but he was not prepared to waste a great deal of time over them. My own reaction to these exploits—I received a batch of Mishima's latest photographs one day in 1969—was probably typical; I was shocked and then grew bored. The sheaf of pictures he sent me for publication in
The Times
of London included a portrait of Mishima dressed in a suit and standing with a No actor wearing the mask used for the play
Hagoromo
. The mask is a beautiful one, and Mishima has an absentminded, sad expression on his face which made this one of the most attractive portraits I had seen of him. A second picture was as repulsive as the first was sympathetic. It shows Mishima, naked to the waist, upper lip curled, with a
hachimaki
around his forehead on which is written the slogan
Shichisho Hokoku
(“Serve the Nation for Seven Lives”). In his hands he is holding his Seki no Magoroku sword, over which he glowers at the camera.

As he neared forty, Mishima began to worry about his age, yet he was still extremely fit five years later, showing little sign of slowing down physically. His figure was almost as good as it had been fifteen years earlier, though his shoulder muscles had a slight tendency to sag and he did not look so impressive when he inflated his chest in the style of a body-building fanatic. According to his father, Mishima's wrist was stiff and he had frequent massages to enable him to do kendo. There were other signs of encroaching middle age. During the training at Camp Fuji he could not keep up with the Tatenokai youths; he would join them only in those exercises at which he was best; push-ups, for example. On the whole, however, he was still in extraordinarily good condition for a man of forty-five. Two months before his death, he posed for a last series of photographs by Shinoyama. These, he said, should be published in a volume to be entitled
Otoko no Shi
(“Death of a Man”). Among the poses Mishima struck for this volume (still unpublished) were a number in which he committed hara-kiri. He also posed as a traffic-accident victim, covered in blood. This was his last journey down the River of Body.

5

The River of Action

The River of Body naturally flowed into the River of Action. It was inevitable. With a woman's body this would not have happened. A man's body, with its inherent nature and function, forces him toward the River of Action, the most dangerous river in the jungle. Alligators and piranhas abound in its waters. Poisoned arrows dart from enemy camps. This river confronts the River of Writing. I've often heard the glib motto, “The Pen and the Sword Join in a Single Path.” But in truth they can join only at the moment of death.

This River of Action gives me the tears, the blood, the sweat that I never begin to find in the River of Writing. In this new river I have encounters of soul with soul without having to bother about words. This is also the most destructive of all rivers, and I can well understand why few people approach it. This river has no generosity for the farmer; it brings no wealth nor peace,
it gives no rest. Only let me say this: I, born a man and alive as a man, cannot overcome the temptation to follow the course of this river.

Yukio Mishima, Catalogue to the Tōbu Exhibition

P
ART
O
NE
“P
ATRIOTISM
”

A most mysterious aspect—perhaps the most impenetrable feature—of the Japanese tradition is the Imperial system. This was crucial to Mishima's River of Action.

The role of the Emperor has been a varied one in Japanese history. Throughout feudal times the Emperors lived in Kyoto, the ancient capital, and their temporal powers were minute. The Emperor was respected as a religious and cultural symbol of state. As such, he had an important part to play in Japanese society; he was a mysterious, unseen presence. However, the actual rulers of Japan, the so-called Shogun, or Tycoon—the English word has a Japanese derivation—allowed the Emperors very little part in government. The weakness of the Imperial Court in Kyoto was ensured by successive Shogun who limited the Imperial revenues to such an extent that one Emperor was obliged to resort to the sale of samples of his calligraphy in order to pay for his modest establishment—scrolls written by him were lowered over the wall at the end of his garden in a basket. Only after 1868, when the Imperial Court was moved to Tokyo and a young Emperor installed on the Chrysanthemum Throne—the Emperor Meiji (1868–1912)—was the Japanese sovereign accorded the trappings of power. Even then, he remained largely in the hands of his senior officials, his advisers. Meiji is not known definitely to have been responsible for a single major policy decision during his long reign. Taishō, his son, who reigned from 1912 to 1926, and who was mentally deficient, also remained aloof from policy matters. The Emperor—known in the West as Hirohito—who succeeded Taishō after a period as Regent, made only two decisions during his reign, but they were important ones. He stamped out the revolt known to the Japanese as the Ni Ni Roku Incident—the rebellion of
February 1936—and he made the decision to end the Pacific War in 1945.