The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima by Henry Scott Stokes Page B
Authors: Henry Scott Stokes
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strangely sentimental maturity in us. It arose from our thinking of life as something that would end abruptly in our twenties; we never even considered the possibility of there being anything beyond those few remaining years.â This was a state of affairs with which Mishima was perfectly âhappyâ: âMy journey into life was postponed day after day, and the war years were going by without the slightest sign of my departure.Was this not a unique period of happiness for me? Though I still felt an uneasiness, it was only faint; still having hope, I looked forward to the unknown blue skies of each tomorrow. Fanciful dreams of the journey to come . . . the mental picture of the somebody I would one day become in the world and of the lovely bride I had not yet seen, my hopes of fame . . .â And he thoroughly approved of the war, from the safety of the GakushÅ«in: âI found childish delight in war, and despite the presence of death and destruction all around me, there was no abatement of the daydream in which I believed myself beyond the reach of harm by any bullet. I even shuddered with a strange delight at the thought of my own death. I felt as though I owned the whole world.â
Mishimaâs âhopes of fameâ depended on publication of
Hanazakari no Mori
. He sought out literary men. From Shizuo ItÅ, the poet of the Roman-ha, he obtained an introduction to a literary editor, Masaharu Fuji of ShichijÅ ShÅin, a small but influential publishing house in Tokyo. Fuji later recalled their meeting in 1943: âMishima was a very polite young man with dead pale skin. He had a large head and dark eyebrows. I introduced him to Fujima Hayashi [a poet] and Hayashi took an instant liking to him when Mishima rejected his offer of a beer in a polite but stiff way.â Mishima hoped that Fuji would publish his book; but this proved impossible. Censorship, which was handled by the military authorities, was not the problemâthough many leading Japanese writers were running into trouble at that time; Mishima had backing from the establishment. The difficulty was shortage of paper. All resources were devoted to the war effort and there was no paper to spare for
Hanazakari no Mori
.
In October 1943 Mishima had bad news. His friend, Azuma, with whom he was publishing the little magazine
Akae
, had died. Mishima closed the magazine and published an obituary in the Gakushūin quarterly. His own future was unpredictable; the authorities were drafting university students and he had only a year left at the Gakushūin.
At nineteen, Mishima remained a romantic. And yet his fantasies had become more grandiose and narcissistic. As Hashikawa later remarked: âHe thought of himself as a genius, he believed that he could become whatever he likedâthe Emperor of Japan,a literary genius, even the kamikaze of beauty. He thought his potential unlimited.â The reality was somewhat different, however. Mishima was a frail youth, âashamed of my thin chest, of my bony, pallid arms,â and he only just passed his army medical in May 1944. He was still at the GakushÅ«in at the time and took his medical at Shikata, the home town of JÅtarÅ, where the Hiraokas had retained a
honseki
, a registered place of residence, though they no longer owned land there. The army doctors laughed when Mishima failed to lift a hay bale in a test of strength (the local farm boys easily lifted it above their heads any number of times), but they classified him 2-B, just qualifying him for service. He would eventually be drafted into a rough local regiment and serve in the ranks. (Had he volunteered in Tokyo, he would have become an officer in a unit there, but Azusa hoped, by registering the boy at Shikata, to delay the time when he would be called to active military service. With luck, the war would be over before Mishima was drafted.) In July 1944, Mishima and the rest of the class were
Mishimaâs âhopes of fameâ depended on publication of
Hanazakari no Mori
. He sought out literary men. From Shizuo ItÅ, the poet of the Roman-ha, he obtained an introduction to a literary editor, Masaharu Fuji of ShichijÅ ShÅin, a small but influential publishing house in Tokyo. Fuji later recalled their meeting in 1943: âMishima was a very polite young man with dead pale skin. He had a large head and dark eyebrows. I introduced him to Fujima Hayashi [a poet] and Hayashi took an instant liking to him when Mishima rejected his offer of a beer in a polite but stiff way.â Mishima hoped that Fuji would publish his book; but this proved impossible. Censorship, which was handled by the military authorities, was not the problemâthough many leading Japanese writers were running into trouble at that time; Mishima had backing from the establishment. The difficulty was shortage of paper. All resources were devoted to the war effort and there was no paper to spare for
Hanazakari no Mori
.
In October 1943 Mishima had bad news. His friend, Azuma, with whom he was publishing the little magazine
Akae
, had died. Mishima closed the magazine and published an obituary in the Gakushūin quarterly. His own future was unpredictable; the authorities were drafting university students and he had only a year left at the Gakushūin.
At nineteen, Mishima remained a romantic. And yet his fantasies had become more grandiose and narcissistic. As Hashikawa later remarked: âHe thought of himself as a genius, he believed that he could become whatever he likedâthe Emperor of Japan,a literary genius, even the kamikaze of beauty. He thought his potential unlimited.â The reality was somewhat different, however. Mishima was a frail youth, âashamed of my thin chest, of my bony, pallid arms,â and he only just passed his army medical in May 1944. He was still at the GakushÅ«in at the time and took his medical at Shikata, the home town of JÅtarÅ, where the Hiraokas had retained a
honseki
, a registered place of residence, though they no longer owned land there. The army doctors laughed when Mishima failed to lift a hay bale in a test of strength (the local farm boys easily lifted it above their heads any number of times), but they classified him 2-B, just qualifying him for service. He would eventually be drafted into a rough local regiment and serve in the ranks. (Had he volunteered in Tokyo, he would have become an officer in a unit there, but Azusa hoped, by registering the boy at Shikata, to delay the time when he would be called to active military service. With luck, the war would be over before Mishima was drafted.) In July 1944, Mishima and the rest of the class were
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