In the decadent West people often get together and have all kinds of pointless, speculative conversations. The current political climate being what it is, one subject that frequently comes up, at least amongst my friends, is whether you would be prepared to die for a cause, or an ideal. During these debates my position is unequivocal; my answer is a firm no. No. Never. Not under any circumstances. My vehemence can, in part, be explained by my cowardice. I am, I freely admit, a rum coward. I’m not dying before my time for anything, or anyone. Yet I do also have philosophical objections. The problem for me with any ideal – truth, honour, justice, whatever – is that they don’t concretely exist, or they don’t exist, as some kind of Platonic form, outside of man. Someone who dies for an ideal is, to me, just a dead idiot, because their ideal, which is necessarily subjective in character, dies with them. So, when a suicide bomber blows himself or herself up, or if a monk sets himself on fire, I’m not concerned with which side of the political fence that person sits, I’m more struck by their illogical, flawed thinking.Ordinarily my stance does not cause me any problems. I speculate, I argue, then I go home and, I dunno, have a wank and watch TV [this is a joke, I don’t have a TV]. However, as I came to read Runaway Horses, the second volume of Yukio Mishima’s The Sea of Fertility tetralogy, I realised that my rationalist frame of mind prevented me from being able to fully engage with large parts of the book. Of course, it is not necessary to be able to identity with Iaso Iinuma, the young would-be militant-terrorist at the centre of the novel, and, in any case, even I am able to understand, even to some extent appreciate, the quixotic nature of living a life of purity and heroism, but a lot of Runaway Horses philosophically and spiritually left me cold. For example, the pamphlet of The League of the Divine Wind, which deals with a samurai rebellion/insurrection, and which appears in its entirety [60 pages, ffs], was unfathomably dry [I didn’t think it possible to make reading about the samurai so boring, but Mishima managed it – perhaps this was intentional?], and alien in its glorification of violence and ritual suicide. This kind of thing isn’t limited to the pamphlet either; there’s a lot of stuff in the book, voiced mainly by Iaso and his followers of course, about the beauty of death, or ‘sublime death,’ which at times took on almost an erotic flavour. I just cannot, no matter how hard I try, get my head around all that, nor do I really want to, because if there’s one thing I don’t think is attractive, that I will never be able to accept, it is that.It is Honda’s presence that was crucial in terms of me being able to navigate the novel; without him I think I may not have persevered beyond the opening stages. If you have read Spring Snow you will know Honda as the studious and serious friend of Kiyoaki Matsugae. In that book I felt as though his role was somewhat confused; he was a rationalist, and yet unquestioningly helped his friend in his irrational endeavours. Yet even if you wanted to see him as the voice of reason – which is, I think, how Mishima saw him – he was too much of a peripheral figure. What I mean by this is that one could have cut his character entirely, and the book would have had largely the same impact. In Runaway Horses, he is a thirty eight year old judge. He is then more mature and confident, of course, and much is made, by the author, of his reserved and logical approach; therefore he is the perfect foil for Isao. Importantly, although he is largely absent from the middle section of the book, this time around he is much more central to the plot and actually raises objections when confronted with the boy’s fanaticism. For example, when Iaso loans Honda a copy of The League of the Divine Wind pamphlet the judge returns it with a letter explaining his concerns about the impact such a text could have on a young man.“Every excitement that could send one pitching headlong is dangerous.”“The League of the Divine Wind is a drama of tragic perfection. This was a political event that was so remarkable throughout that it almost seems to be a work of art. it was a crucible in which a purity of resolve was put to the test in a manner rarely encountered in history. But one should by no means confuse this tale of dreamlike beauty of another time with the circumstances of present-day reality.”Moreover, not only does Honda give voice to some of your own queries and bemusement [or my bemusement anyway], but he allows one to read the book as an investigation into extremism, rather than simply as propaganda. This is hugely important. I’ve written before about how I am not at all interested in judging the private lives of authors; and that holds true here too. However, that does not mean that if the author’s private life, or dubious politics, filtered through into the work that one cannot comment or criticise; it simply means that I would not reject a work solely on the basis of any controversy surrounding the author’s behaviour. Mishima, it is always worth reiterating, was a fanatic Nationalist himself, at least towards the end of his life; and these things as subjects are dealt with in Runaway Horses. So far, so what. It becomes an issue only because there are parts of this book where violent extremism is written about in glowing terms, where Iaso and his followers are glorified:“Izutsu showed his lovely recklessness. He spoke out gallantly, his face flushed and glowing.”Lovely recklessness? Really? At times the language in the novel made me shift uncomfortably in my seat, although, if you were being as fair as possible, you could say it is, like with Spring Snow, merely a case of the style being in tune with the subject. Yet I don’t buy that, I’m afraid. So, Honda is vital, or was vital for me, because he shows that Mishima was prepared to question – at least in his work – Iaso’s beliefs. Without that questioning, even though Honda isn’t entirely out of sympathy for the extremists, one could have put Runaway Horses in the same category as The Birth of a Nation.As you can tell, the book caused me quite some consternation, and my thoughts about it, as the structure of this review will no doubt attest, are far from clear. Would I recommend it? No, or certainly not to the casual reader, because it isn’t actually a very good novel. In certain circumstances, however, one might consider it worth reading. First of all, Mishima once said in an interview that Japanese culture or mentality is defined by both elegance and brutality; while I am not in a position to say whether that is entirely true I would say that certainly Mishima’s own personality was centred around that dichotomy; and so the rugged Runaway Horses, especially when paired with the graceful Spring Snow, is useful if one wants to know more about the man himself, and about how he saw the world.Secondly, there are probably very few books that are as relevant, almost terrifyingly so, as this one is right now. Alien, baffling, and glorifying it might be, but this is a genuine glimpse into the workings of extremist/terrorist groups, and the mindset of the individuals involved, from someone who knew what he was talking about; this is not irony, it is not satire, it is the real deal. So, we see the young boy who is seduced by quixotic right-wing literature, a boy whose family-home life is a source of unhappiness or embarrassment [in what was the only time Mishima attempted to look for an excuse or explanation of Iaso’s frame of mind he mentions that he would have been aware and shamed by his mother’s less than chaste past – his interest in manly endeavours could, in this regard, be thrown into a new light]. We also see how levelling fanaticism can be; Iaso and his followers all lack personality, they are full of rhetoric and psychobabble but very few individual characteristics. If you have come across any true accounts of young men becoming enamoured with fanaticism this will be a familiar tale.Finally, while Runaway Horses is at times fascinating, if you view the book dispassionately and adjust your expectations accordingly, it is only really enjoyable – in the conventional sense – in relation to the previous volume, Spring Snow. When one reads a multi-volume work half of the fun is in the development of certain characters as they age and have children, get married and so on. In Runaway Horses, Honda appears again, as previously mentioned, as does Iinuma, Prince Toin, and Marquis Matsugae, the father of the central character from Spring Snow, Kiyoaki. However, Iaso Iinuma is not only the son of Kiyoaki’s former tutor, he is, as far as Honda is concerned, the reincarnation of Kiyoaki himself. For a western reader, this seems like a bold, potentially ridiculous, move, and yet Mishima manages to pull it off. In fact, that Iaso was once Kiyoaki gives his character a depth he would otherwise lack, for one is able to see his passion in terms of Kiyoaki’s passion – one is for an ideal and the other was for a girl, but both are irrational, immature and destructive. Furthermore, the nature of reincarnation is that one is reborn because of mistakes, or sins, in a past life; Kiyoaki was effete and ineffectual, Iaso is the opposite; so it is almost as though the soul or essence of Kiyoaki has gone from one extreme to another. The two characters are, on the surface, completely different yet ultimately very similar; and I thought that was very clever and satisfying.-----THE SEA OF FERTILITYVolume 1: Spring Snow https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Sea of Fertility by Yukio Mishima“The most complete vision we have of Japan in the twentieth century.” tt-Paul Theroux On the morning of November 25th 1970, the three-time Nobel nominee and 45 year old Yukio Mishima (the pen name of Hiraoka Kimitake) finished The Decay of the Angel, the final book in his seminal Sea of Fertility tetralogy. It was published into the world much akin to John Kennedy Tool's A Confederacy of Dunces: as renowned for its literary merit, as it was for the strange circumstances surrounding its publication. After turning in the final draft to his editor for publication he gathered together the members of Tatenokai (the Shield Society), his private army. They stormed the Japanese Self Defense Force in Ichigaya, and after securing control of the complex Mishima delivered an impassioned speech to the troops, calling for them to throw off the shackles of Western influence and return Japan to its pure roots.Rather than inspire a coup d’etat, the soldiers refused to listen to Mishima’s speech, jeering and mocking him instead.. After finishing, Mishima calmly retreated from the balcony. After writing 40 novels, 18 plays, 20 short story collections, over 20 collections of essays, a libretto and a film, the incredibly prolific Mishima committed ritual suicide by seppuku in the commandant's office.tBorn into a samurai family in 1925, Mishima was raised to serve The Emperor in the wake of WWI while Japanese society was beginning what would become rapid Westernization. Widely considered one of the most important voices of Japanese post-war literature, the Sea of Fertility is his crowning masterpiece.tThe title stems from the large, dark and basaltic plain on Earth’s Moon, called the Mare Fecunditatis (The Sea of Fecundity or Fertility). It is located at about the same place on the moon as Japan and the Sea of Japan are located on the Earth, and the lunar sea itself resembles an upside down sea of Japan. This obvious inverted allusion to dualism/pluralism is strongly resonant throughout the saga. Named maria (Latin for “seas”), they were originally mistaken by early astronomers. This obviously Western allusion further fuels the conflicted dualism of East/West that Mishima asserts as the downfall of classical Japanese culture and success.tThe books are separated into time periods, covering about 60 years of Japanese 20th century history. Spring Snow looks at Japan wrestling with the integration of the Western world into Japanese culture in a post WWI climate. The story focuses on the ill-fated romance between 19 year old Kiyoaki Matsugae, his “star-crossed lover” Satoko Ayakura, and Kiyoaki’s best friend Shigekuni Honda who bears witness to the tragedy. Despite the book’s focus on Kiyoaki, Honda is the true protagonist of the tetralogy, and as begins to lose more and more of its national character, Honda follows Kiyoaki on an epic transmigration of the soul.Runaway Horses picks up 19 years after the end of Spring Snow and Mishima at once dives into the rising political climate leading up to the second World War. Honda follows young Isao Iinuma and his rampant nationalistic spirit while slowly realizing Isao bears the soul of his long deceased friend Kiyoaki. Complete with a 100 page novel-within-a-novel, romanticized depictions of seppuku, assassination plots and the beginnings of a lengthy meditation on Buddhist transmigration of the soul, Honda narrates Japan through the increasingly polarized separation of the Japanese classes in the years before the outbreak of the war.tThe most heavily outright philosophic of the four novels, The Temple of Dawn spends almost a full quarter of the book following Honda’s inquiries into Zen Buddhism, his various interpretations on transmigration vis-à-vis Theravada, and Mahayana Buddhist philosophy, Hinduism and a pilgrimage through the ancient Indian holy city of Benares. tConfusing the pattern of Kiyoaki/Isao’s rebirth, this time Honda is shocked to find the soul of his friend inhabiting the body of the beautiful Thai princess Ying-Chan (Princess Moonlight), who as a young girl, maintains the memories of her previous lives. As she matures, and eventually makes her way to Japan, however, Honda finds she demonstrates no recollection of her childhood or her previous incarnations. Mishima continues to use the backdrop of historical Japan as a dramatic set for his incredibly well crafted and complex characters. A prime example is the progression of Honda’s relationship with Ying-Chan, which begins at the onset of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, and continues to its dramatic conclusion in the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as the Americans occupy Japan, rapidly and forcefully Westernizing Japan overnight.Mishima finished the tetralogy with an apocalyptic mirror exposing the modern Japanese soul with his The Decay of the Angel. Honda finally becomes a father, as he adopts the brilliant, heartless and malicious orphan Tōru Yasunaga. Tōru is the antithesis of Kiyoaki. In fact, Mishima concludes the migration of the dying angelic soul through a synthesis of his previous incarnations ending in nothingness.tThe body of work, which amounts to almost 1,400 pages across the four texts, was translated by 3 different translation teams (Spring Snow and Runaway Horses were both done by the same translator) but the sheer strength and precision of Mishima’s prose transcends any variation in the mood throughout the series. His sentences are sharp, clear and bursting with life. He has a talent for creating incredibly detailed and visceral scenes to allow his characters to meander about within. Reading Mishima is an experience like no other, as his writing forces the reader to slow down and enjoy each unique sentence as a drop of poetry. From within his beautifully created universe his talent to penetrate the psyche of his characters and create such vivid and living people seems almost unparalleled in contemporary Japanese literature.tA truly momentous work of the 20th century, and one of the most intriguing depictions of Japan from one of her most passionate advocates; I can not strongly enough recommend it. As it is an investment in time, energy, constant thought and contemplation, The Sea of Fertility is a far cry from standard brain candy, but it is an investment with a high yield of return, and one that will remain with you long after the soul of Kiyoaki is put to rest.
Do You like book Runaway Horses (1999)?
Not quite as powerful and moving as Spring Snow (as I remember it), Runaway Horses still had me captivated through its duration. In a sense, its the darkest coming-of-age story there is, the protagonist being intent on the glory of slaying himself by seppuku, after reading of the old exploits of the League of the Divine Wind. This character trait is thrown into an entirely different light with the story of the author, who committed ritual suicide himself after finishing the Sea of Fertility series of four books, of which this title is the second.I'll need to take a break for a little bit, but I'm excited to keep going with the third and fourth books – the "cosmic nihilism" (phrase from the back of the book) is entrancing as much as its existentially challenging, and the writing leaves me wondering at the marvels scattered beautifully throughout the book.
—C
Feeling positive about the re-read. I think I'm going to love it as much as I loved the scenes from "Mishima A Life in Four Chapters":http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIacGG...======Kochi-ken in Chapter 3!:"The man was a poverty-stricken farmer from Kochi Prefecture in Shikoku. He had sold his daughter to an Osaka brothel, and then, having received less than half of what he had been promised, he had gone to see the madam. Enraged by her insults, he had begun to beat her and had become so carried away that he had killed the woman."======"Runaway Horses" is not as beautiful as "Spring Snow" and the story is not nearly as accessible. It's a much dirtier book; the high school smells of kids, the vague love interest is a divorcee, most of the action takes place on the stained tatami mats of hired rooms. Kiyoaki, the hero of "Spring Snow", was always remembering the time he carried an Imperial Princess’s train and she smiled at him. Isao, the hero of "Runaway Horses", is always reading a pamphlet about an insurrection that ended with everyone cutting open their stomachs. Kiyoaki composed poetry with the Taisho Emperor, Isao discusses how he would cut open his stomach after serving the Showa Emperor a rice ball (regardless of whether the Showa Emperor liked his rice ball or not). Kiyoaki and Satoko used Kitazaki's boarding house for their rendezvous, Isao and Lt. Hori use it to discuss Isao cutting open his stomach. In fact, with Isao it's all about cutting open his stomach. But Mishima takes Isao to some very lonely and very depressing places before allowing him the inevitable end. I wonder if Mishima went to those places before his?Essentially, "Runaway Horses" is seedier, crazier and feels more Japanese. In comparison, "Spring Snow" seems more like "japonisme".I love, love, love the continuity from "Spring Snow"; the flashbacks, the dreams, the Bobby Ewings stepping out of the shower and the whole of the last season was a dream. No, it isn't that nuts. But there are some great "Kiyoaki's back!" moments.I worry, worry, worry that Honda is becoming dead boring. I remember that the next book is him on holiday admiring temples for the first 200 pages ... ganbarre!
—David
Fanaticism can become its own kind of tragedy, transforming those we know into strangers before conspiring to take them away entirely. When the reality of it becomes personal its easy to feel the ache. It's a lot harder to cause that ache in perfect strangers, giving them a front row seat to someone's inevitable immolation. Now imagine trying to do that with the gap of a temporal and cultural context. That's what Mishima manages to accomplish here and on some levels its amazing.Set in the years before WWII breaks out, we rearrive some nineteen years after the events of the first novel. Kiyoaki's friend Honda is now a court judge of some respect. During a trip he makes to a kendo tournament, he runs into Kiyoaki's old tutor Iinuma and his son Isao, who is quite near a kendo champion. But when he sees Isao bathing beneath a waterfall, he sees three birthmarks and remembers his doomed friend's last words to him, "I'll see you again. I know it. Beneath the falls." At which point he realizes that the boy is a reincarnation of his old friend, which is great until the boy gives him a copy of the story of the League of the Divine Wind, about a group of people who tried to assassinate people in the government, failed, and then proceeded to kill themselves. Realizing that the young Isao is very much taken up with this ideal of purity and restoring the country to its perceived glory, the book becomes a sort of race against time as Honda strives to save this new version of his friend from a youthfully tragic demise.If the first book centered around a crystalline depiction of a star-crossed romance and sometimes seemed a little naive for it (understandable, given the point of view), this novel is far more obsessed of the notions of purity and how that can exist in a county that is being corrupted by outside forces from the inside, if that makes any sense. The whole feel is of a society trapped inside a lurching transition, being dragged across centuries without anyone really asking their permission, and not everyone is along for the ride. In a way, the themes of this book seem far closer to Mishima's heart than the first novel (especially given his actions later in life), and he takes a lot to time to delve into the ideas of purity and the nature of Japan itself, the tug between the old traditions of the emperor and the new ways of capitalism. A good chunk of the beginning of the book is devoted to the League of the Divine Wind pamphlet depicting those actions, and while it also foreshadows the remainder of the novel, it also tells you where its interests truly lies. All of the objections to it seem half-hearted, the bleating cries of people who have gotten too old to want to see real change and instead just want degrading stasis. Isao looks to that as the ideal and from the moment he gives the pamphlet to Honda, you get the sense that he's doomed as well, no matter how hard the other man will try.But the novel really isn't written FOR Westerners and people without a basic working knowledge of Japanese histories and attitudes around that time period may be a bit lost in the beginning, because we're not given much context. Although a quick reading on the subject will give you the general gist of why people weren't happy, especially the May 15 Incident of 1932. Most of the novel follows the actions of Isao and his followers as they plot to assassinate a number of officials and then depart to heaven on a divine wind, and the matter of factness in which they plan their suicides is chilling, especially as you realize you're dealing with modes of thinking completely pivoted from that of Western cultures. And in those little actions is the tick of inevitability, Isao is so young and so fervent in his beliefs that there's only really two options, that the beliefs will transform him utterly or he will change in a manner that will make him alien to his former self. Honda wants the boy to remain in his beautiful purity and passion without sticking a knife in his gut, but from the start the two can't be reconciled. Isao is unwavering and while that makes him more monolithic than his previous incarnation, it also makes him a more fascinating character, because he blends that sense of poetry filtered through the idea of the political, albeit one that has its own brand of perfection at odds with the real world. At its most basic its the story of a boy ill-suited to live in the world that he inhabits, and so while he tries to change that world into one where he can be comfortable, if that isn't possible, he has to depart for a place where that beauty and comfort might exist.Mishima's prose is just as beautiful this time around, even if more of it is devoted to idealistic diatribes (witness Isao's later speech to a judge about his beliefs in Japan) but he can still surprise, not only in the nature of the prose (there's one passage describing hugging someone through a kimono that is delicately perfect) but in the little configurations of the mystical and irrational that exist at the sides of the novel and inform the actions without becoming the main focus. Isao is the reincarnation of Kiyoaki (and maybe the incarnation of someone further down the line) and in those little intersections the novel takes on the frozen haze of a dream, a world where proof of reincarnation exist but still proves nothing, the echoes that exist and are only seen when you look for them, much like Japan itself, where the mystical can live alongside the modern and both beliefs can be held true simultaneously. There's a beauty in that and its telling, as hopeless as the novel can be with all its winging toward desolate inevitability (everyone's plan fail except for the corrupt, it seems) you still have that moment where Honda sees his best friend under the falls in a new body, as he predicted, and you realize that its a world where nothing is ever truly lost if you're patient enough, and you never stop looking. Which is hope in itself, and worth remembering.
—Michael Battaglia
