The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima (37 page)

Thus, hope of a last-minute withdrawal abandoned, I had come to Shinjuku that afternoon. I found my way through the unfamiliar maze of department stores, underground passages and platforms, all connected to one another, and finally arrived at the Ōdakyu Line. The platform from which the 3:10 train for Gotemba was to leave was crowded. People had formed lines at the painted white marks on the platform, waiting to board the train the instant the doors were opened; and others were dashing about, trying to get seat tickets. It was a scene peculiar to Japan, one of disciplined frenzy. Amid the crowds I spotted three athletic-looking youths in dark suits and ties, two of whom had familiar faces. Their eyes were darting about and at that moment met mine. They were journalists from a small right-wing magazine with which Mishima was associated, the
Ronsō Journal
. We exchanged bows, and they told me that it would soon be time to board the train, an express with a scenic observation car. This was the Romance Car, so named by the Ōdakyu Line in honor of the weekend lovers and honeymoon couples whom it hoped to attract as customers. As the automatic
doors opened, my guides gestured me to go aboard and showed me to my seat. To my surprise, they too sat down: it was clear that they were going to accompany me all the way to Gotemba, as they had three sets of tickets. The third member of the party stayed on the platform, peering in at us from time to time; he was to phone Gotemba to confirm that we were on our way.

Mishima had left nothing to chance. Honored as I was by the extreme care being taken to ensure my arrival at Gotemba, I wondered why he was going to so much trouble. The explanation must be that he greatly desired publicity for the Tatenokai and regarded
The Times
of London as a suitable vehicle. Having failed to have the Tatenokai taken very seriously in Japan, he hoped to have a little attention overseas. (Mishima's love of self-advertisement reminded me of Norman Mailer, as did the erotic quality of his writing; but the two men had little else in common, unless it was an interest in boxing.)

The train pulled out of Shinjuku at 3:10 precisely. Our departure was followed by loudspeaker announcements about our journey in the disturbing singsong accent adopted by Japanese women speaking to the general public. Then we were brought hand towels, timetables, and menus for tea by uniformed girls. Before the tea arrived, my companions showed me a copy of the
Ronsō Journal
, issue No. 27. I had never seen the magazine before, and my interest was aroused, as I wondered if this could be a guide to the political beliefs of members of the Tatenokai, to which these two belonged. But if I had expected this to be a fanatical right-wing publication, I was disappointed. On the cover was the beaming face of Prime Minister Sato, the least charismatic right-wing figure imaginable, a friendly ally of big business. An article on the left-wing Zengakuren, the mass student movement, caught my attention: it included a recent breakdown of the strengths of the Zengakuren factions, or inner groups, one which looked like police information. Two weeks before, I had gone to Sugamo Prison to pay a visit to a leader of the largest of these factions, and one question on my mind at the time was whether the Tatenokai represented a reaction, if a belated one, to the activities of these left-wing students, whose movements had by this time been thoroughly broken by the police, and whose leaders had been locked up. I
chatted about this with my two companions, but because of the language barrier we made little progress.

My interest reverted to the weather. We had been traveling for forty-five minutes and were already close to the foothills of Mt. Fuji; and as I looked out of the windows at the snow lying deep in the villages and at the slow-moving traffic on the roads, I wondered how the clothing I had brought would stand up to the night ahead. In contrast to the two youths, who wore suits, I had dressed in ski clothing, ready for the night to come; I had brought heavy sweaters and a black anorak to go on top. I had also armed myself with my secret weapon against the cold, a Japanese haragake, a woolen hoop which goes around the stomach. Boots had been the biggest problem, as I had had a choice between heavy Henke ski boots with flip buckles and a pair of U.S. Vietnam boots with canvas sides; I had taken the Henke, huge as they were. It was just as well. All we could see from the windows were yellow clouds, promising a bitter night. I had never been as close as this to Mt. Fuji, but we could see nothing except snow-laden clouds.

At Gotemba station we leaped out onto a snowy platform and were greeted by a man in a gray-blue uniform who had been given our seat numbers and had thus identified us. He saluted and announced that he was Sergeant Imai. We hurried through the ticket gate. In front of the station, parked so that it would not block traffic, stood a small American-type Willys Jeep, left-hand drive. The seat beside the driver was covered with white cloth, and I was given this seat of honor, in front of which there had been placed a plastic yellow Hong Kong flower in a holder. My companions sat in the rear of the jeep, and we were whisked along the snowy main street of the small town of Gotemba, past a row of shops, and out along a straight road in the direction of Mt. Fuji, the forests of which we could see through the gloom. After a minute or two the jeep slowed down and we turned sharp right through the gates of a military compound, attracting brisk salutes from the sentries. Right on time, at a quarter to five, we arrived at regimental headquarters, a long, nondescript building, into which we were quickly led, the two men from the
Ronsō Journal
turning one way at the door, while I was led in the opposite direction, the sergeant carrying my weekend bag with the sweaters.

Once inside the building, I was led along a corridor to a door on which my escort knocked loudly. We entered a small office with a large desk. On the walls were a regimental standard and some plaques, one of which commended Chiimu-waaku in the large
katakana
letters which I had learned to read: “Teamwork.” On one side of me was a big tank full of goldfish, and on the other an empty chair, placed in front of the desk. It was a comfortable military man's office. A man in uniform, whom I took to be the regimental commander, rose to meet me with a smile. As we shook hands he simultaneously produced from his breast pocket a small white
meishi
, the name card without which one is naked and a nobody in Japan. I played my
meishi
with my left hand, having also learned to do this trick some years before, and we examined one another's credentials. He was Hiroshi Fukamizu, the colonel in command of the infantry regiment based at Camp Fuji, and he was responsible for the Fuji military school. With the manner of a Japanese well accustomed to meeting foreigners, he gestured toward the empty chair at my side, and instructed the sergeant to leave my bag with me.

The third man in the room was Mishima. No matter how many times I met him, I was surprised by his small stature. He came up to above my shoulders, but he always seemed shy about his height, as if feeling dwarfed. That well-known head, with its heavy black brows, large staring eyes, and ears sticking out a fraction, seemed for a moment to sit ill upon his shoulders. He drew himself in, and we shook hands. I quickly accepted the colonel's invitation to be seated, and watched Mishima relax as he also took his chair and reached for a cigarette from a tin of Peace which he carried with him. He smiled as he surveyed my ski clothes and my boots. For my part, I was seeing him in the role of military man for the first time, clad in denims and brown polo-neck jersey, with his hair cut even shorter than usual; only short black bristles remained on his large skull.

The colonel, the greetings over, expressed doubts about my Henke boots. How far did I expect such objects to carry me in bad conditions, in deep snow? It was a question of getting used to them, I replied; I had bought them six years before, and I knew how heavy they were. Fukamizu smiled, not reassured, and diplomatically
turned the conversation to the subject of the boots of his own men. The Jieitai budget was insufficient to cover necessary supplies, he said, and they were even short of boots at Camp Fuji. I could believe him: the gray-blue uniforms adopted almost twenty years before, the peeling paint on the outside of the buildings, and the Willys Jeep all told the same story—lack of funds. If one compared the Japanese military budget with European defense budgets, it was small, at that time; but the real contrast was with the Americans, as their forces were on Japanese soil. It would take time to put things right, and get proper boots for his men, said Fukamizu, and Mishima agreed, puffing on his Peace cigarette.

At this point a bugle was sounded, and the commander rose from his seat behind the desk. It was 5 p.m., and time for the evening meal, Mishima explained. We trooped out behind the commanding officer, who led the way to a mess close by, where we were joined by half a dozen officers. The meal was one of fried prawns, with a delicious salad and hot soup. It was a special supper in my honor, I suspected—I was accumulating moral obligations, yet I was not Japanese and could spare myself the nice calculations which a Japanese must make under such circumstances (a familiar internal dialogue for the foreigner in Japan). The talk at table was of local politics, but I listened to Mishima's translation with only one ear as I stoked myself up for the long night ahead; it might be our last hot meal for many hours. The officers talked about the situation in Gotemba, where a conservative mayor had just been elected, and about the problem of
iriaiken
, the rights of entry of farmers and foresters into land in use for military purposes around Mt. Fuji. On the northern side of the mountain there had been trouble at an artillery range where the farmers had interrupted firing practice. The farmers were being supported by the opposition political parties in Tokyo and also by the national press. Here was the problem of the Jieitai in Japan in microcosm; the armed forces had no accepted place in postwar society.

It was to my great relief that I heard, finally, the news that the Tatenokai all-night exercise had been canceled because of the bad weather and the deep snow. Mishima's plans had for once been thwarted. It was the first time in our acquaintance that he had been forced to change his plans completely, but he took the reverse
in his stride. In a loud voice he discussed the training program of the Tatenokai at the camp, equating Camp Fuji to Fort Benning in the United States. The comparison between the two leading military training establishments in the two countries was somewhat farfetched, as the latter is very much bigger, but Mishima, as usual, wanted everything to be larger than life, in accordance with his romantic view of the world. The Tatenokai training was going very well, he said. There were two parties at the camp, one of two dozen men doing a refresher course of one week, and a second which would be in the camp with him for an entire month. Mishima would boast how they ran a mile a day and marched twenty-eight miles a day, but they would not be doing so under these conditions. We were all being given a break, thanks to the weather.

I had escaped the all-night exercise after all, but Mishima had in store for me an experience which, if different, was quite as severe as scrambling about the forests of Mt. Fuji at night. After the evening meal he suggested that we pay a visit to the Tatenokai billeted nearby. We left the regimental headquarters and trudged through the snow. Lights were shining in a barracks close at hand, and Mishima led the way there, and along a corridor in the building. He stopped at a door, opened it briskly, and led us into the room beyond. It was full of young Japanese men in denims. Some sat at a long table close to us, and others were lying on their bunks, double-decker beds which occupied much of the room, where they were reading
manga
(comics) or chatting. This was an hour of relaxation, and there was none of the activity which I associated with a barracks, no polishing of boots or pressing of uniforms. One or two of the young men came forward and joined Mishima and me as we took our seats at the table by the door, and others moved into the background. This was no doubt by prearrangement; Mishima did not leave such things to chance.

I asked Mishima if I could put questions to the Tatenokai members, and he introduced me to the few who sat with us as Stokes-san of
The
(London)
Times
, taking a cigarette from his tin as he did so; he was going to translate for me. Most of the Tatenokai members were university students. This was the first fact which I established, talking to a twenty-two-year-old from Waseda University
in Tokyo. I asked this youth, Ikebe, why he had joined the Tatenokai. His reply was that he had been attracted by what he described as Mishima's
jintoku
, a word which the writer translated as “personality.” I should understand, he added, that the Tatenokai was not a code organization, by which I took him to mean that it was not secret, and in no way dangerous; Mishima's English was usually excellent, but on this occasion we were having translation problems. There was, I suspected, a second barrier to communication. I had the feeling that Mishima had briefed the students what to tell me, and that he had told them to say that the Tatenokai was not dangerous. Mishima, if this was so, had correctly anticipated that I had come to Camp Fuji with the idea that the Tatenokai was an extremist group; I did not like the movement, as I thought, simply, that it was right-wing.

The next student to whom I spoke took, however, a recognizably independent line of his own, and my reservations about the way the meeting was going disappeared. Mishima had introduced him as Morita; he was a twenty-three-year-old student from Waseda. Morita's appearance was not unusual in any way, and he made no impression on me at all; later I could not even remember what he looked like. He was serious and at first sight dull, and I put him down simply as a conscientious student who was playing a leading role in the Tatenokai. (When I looked at photographs of Morita later, after his suicide with Mishima, I could recall his features: the heavy jowls which one finds in a few Japanese faces, big lower jaws, thickening toward the ears and suggestive of strength of character. He was not good-looking; there was no trace of sensitivity about his heavy face, or any mark of intelligence on his brow. But there was no doubt about his strong personality; he was a born leader.)