Confessions of a Mask

by Yukio Mishima

  Actually, the thought that I might reach the height of an adult filled me with a foreboding of some fearful danger. On the one hand, my indefinable feeling of unrest increased my capacity for dreams divorced from all reality and, on the other, drove me toward the "bad habit" that caused me to take refuge in those dreams. The restlessness was my excuse. . . .

  "You'll surely die before you're twenty," a friend once said to me jokingly, referring to my weak constitution.

  "What an awful thing to say!" I replied, screwing my face up into a bitter smile. But actually his prediction had a strangely sweet and romantic attraction for me.

  "Want to make a bet on it?" he went on.

  "But if you bet I'll die, there'd be nothing for me to do but bet I'll live."

  "That's right, isn't it? It's a shame, isn't it?" my friend said, speaking with all the ruthlessness of youth. "You'd certainly lose, wouldn't you?"

  It was true—not only of me, but of all the students my age—that nothing approaching Omi's maturity could yet be discerned in our armpits. Instead there was only the faintest promise of buds that might yet burgeon. For this reason I had never before paid any particular attention to that part of my body. It was undoubtedly the sight of the hair under Omi's arms that day which made the armpit a fetish for me.

  It got so that whenever I took a bath I would stand before the mirror a long time, staring at the mirror's ungracious reflection of my naked body. It was another case of the ugly duckling who believed he would become a swan, except that this time that heroic fairy tale was to have an exactly reverse outcome. Even though my scrawny shoulders and narrow chest had not the slightest resemblance to Omi's, I looked at them closely in the mirror and forcibly found reasons for believing I would someday have a chest like Omi's, shoulders like Omi's. But in spite of this, a thin ice of uneasiness formed here and there over the surface of my heart. It was more than uneasiness: it was a sort of masochistic conviction, a conviction as firm as though founded on divine revelation, a conviction that made me tell myself: "Never in this world can you resemble Omi."

  In the woodblock prints of the Genroku period one often finds the features of a pair of lovers to be surprisingly similar, with little to distinguish the man from the woman. The universal ideal of beauty in Greek sculpture likewise approaches a close resemblance between the male and female. Might this not be one of the secrets of love? Might it not be that through the innermost recesses of love there courses an unattainable longing in which both the man and the woman desire to become the exact image of the other? Might not this longing drive them on, leading at last to a tragic reaction in which they seek to attain the impossible by going to the opposite extreme? In short, since their mutual love cannot achieve a perfection of mutual identity, is there not a mental process whereby each of them tries instead to emphasize their points of dissimilarity—the man his manliness and the woman her womanliness—. and uses this very revolt as a form of coquetry toward the other? Or if they do achieve a similarity, it unfortunately lasts for only a fleeting moment of illusion. Because, as the girl becomes more bold and the boy more shy, there comes an instant at which they pass each other going in opposite directions, overshooting their mark and passing on beyond to some point where the mark no longer exists.

  Viewed in this light, my jealousy—jealousy fierce enough to make me tell myself I had renounced my love—was all the more love. I had ended by loving those "things like Omi's" that, by slow degrees, diffidently, were budding in my own armpits, growing, becoming darker and darker. . ..

  Summer vacation arrived. Although I had looked forward to it impatiently, it proved to be one of those between-acts during which one does not know what to do with himself; although I had hungered for it, it proved to be an uneasy feast for me.

  Ever since I had contracted a light case of tuberculosis in infancy, the doctor had forbidden me to expose myself to strong ultraviolet rays. When at the seacoast, I was never allowed to stay out in the direct rays of the sun more than thirty minutes at a time. Any violation of this rule always brought its own punishment in a swift attack of fever. I was not even allowed to take part in swimming practice at school. Consequently I had never learned to swim. Later, this inability to swim gained new significance in connection with the persistent fascination the sea came to have for me, with those occasions on which it exercised such turbulent power over me.

  At the time of which I speak, however, I had not yet encountered this overpowering temptation of the sea. And yet, wanting somehow to while away the boredom of a season which was completely distasteful to me, a season moreover which awakened inexplicable longings within me, I spent that summer at the beach with my mother and brother and sister. . . .

  Suddenly I realized that I had been left alone on the rock.

  I had walked along the beach toward this rock with my brother and sister a short time before, looking for the tiny fish that flashed in the rivulets between the rocks. Our catch had not been as good as we had foreseen, and my small sister and brother had become bored. A maid had come to call us to the beach umbrella where my mother was sitting. I had refused crossly to turn back, and the maid had taken my brother and sister back with her, leaving me alone.

  The sun of the summer afternoon was beating down incessantly upon the surface of the sea, and the entire bay was a single, stupendous expanse of glare. On the horizon some summer clouds were standing mutely still, half-immersing their magnificent, mournful, prophet-like forms in the sea. The muscles of the clouds were pale as alabaster.

  A few sailboats and skiffs and several fishing boats had put out from the sandy beaches and were now moving about lazily upon the open sea. Except for the tiny figures in the boats, not a human form was to be seen. A subtle hush was over everything. As though a coquette had come telling her little secrets, a light breeze blew in from the sea, bringing to my ears a tiny sound like the invisible wing-beats of some lighthearted insects. The beach near me was made up almost altogether of low, docile rocks that tilted toward the sea. There were only two or three such jutting crags as this on which I was sitting.

  From the offing the waves began and came sliding in over the surface of the sea in the form of restless green swells. Groups of low rocks extended out into the sea, where their resistance to the waves sent splashes high into the air, like white hands begging for help. The rocks were dipping themselves in the sea's sensation of deep abundance and seemed to be dreaming of buoys broken loose from their moorings. But in a flash the swell had passed them by and come sliding toward the beach with unabated speed. As it drew near the beach something awakened and rose up within its green hood. The wave grew tall and, as far as the eye could reach, revealed the razor-keen blade of the sea's enormous ax, poised and ready to strike. Suddenly the dark-blue guillotine fell, sending up a white blood-splash. The body of the wave, seething and falling, pursued its severed head, and for a moment it reflected the pure blue of the sky, that same unearthly blue which is mirrored in the eyes of a person on the verge of death. . . . During the brief instant of the wave's attack, the groups of rocks, smooth and eroded, had concealed themselves in white froth, but now, gradually emerging from the sea, they glittered in the retreating remnants of the wave. From the top of the rock where I sat watching, I could see hermit-shells sidling crazily across the glittering rocks and crabs become motionless in the glare.

  All at once my feeling of solitude became mixed with memories of Omi. It was like this: My long-felt attraction toward the loneliness that filled Omi's life—loneliness born of the fact that life had enslaved him—had first made me want to possess the same quality; and now that I was experiencing, in this feeling of emptiness before the sea's repletion, a loneliness that outwardly resembled his, I wanted to savor it completely, through his very eyes. I would enact the double role of both Omi and myself. But in order to do so I first had to discover some point of similarity with him, however slight. In that way I would be able to become a stand-in for Omi and consciously act exactly as though I
were joyfully overflowing with that same loneliness which was probably only unconscious in him, attaining at last to a realization of that daydream in which the pleasure I felt at the sight of Omi became the pleasure Omi himself was feeling.

  Ever since becoming obsessed with the picture of St. Sebastian, I had acquired the unconscious habit of crossing my hands over my head whenever I happened to be undressed. Mine was a frail body, without so much as a pale shadow of Sebastian's abundant beauty. But now once more I spontaneously fell into the pose. As I did so my eyes went to my armpits. And a mysterious sexual desire boiled up within me. . . .

  Summer had come and, with it, there in my armpits, the first sprouts of black thickets, not the equal of Omi's it is true, but undoubtedly there. Here then was the point of similarity with Omi that my purposes required. There is no doubt that Omi himself was involved in my sexual desire, but neither could it be denied that this desire was directed mainly toward my own armpits. Urged on by a swarming combination of circumstances —the salt breeze that made my nostrils quiver, the strong summer sun that blazed down upon me and set my shoulders and chest to smarting, the absence of human form as far as the eye could reach—for the first time in my life I indulged in my "bad habit" out in the open, there beneath the blue sky. As its object I chose my own armpits. . . .

  My body was shaken with a strange grief. I was on fire with a loneliness as fiery as the sun. My swimming trunks, made of navy-blue wool, were glued unpleasantly to my stomach. I climbed down slowly off the rock, stepping into a trapped pool of water at the edge of the beach. In the water my feet looked like white, dead shells, and down through it I could plainly see the bottom, studded with shells and flickering with ripples. I knelt down in the water and surrendered myself to a wave that broke at this moment and came rushing toward me with a violent roar. It struck me in the chest, almost burying me in its crushing whitecap. . . .

  When the wave receded, my corruption had been washed away. Together with that receding wave, together with the countless living organisms it contained —microbes, seeds of marine plants, fish eggs—my myriad spermatozoa had been engulfed in the foaming sea and carried away.

  When autumn came and the new school-term began, Omi was not there. A notice of his expulsion had been posted on the bulletin board.

  All my classmates, without exception, immediately began chattering about Omi's misdeeds, acting like a populace after the death of a tyrant who had ruled over them:

  ". . . He borrowed ten yen from me and then wouldn't pay it back. . . . He laughed as he robbed me of my imported fountain pen. . . . He almost strangled me. . . ."

  One after another they recounted the harms he had done them, until I seemed to be the only one who had never experienced his wickedness. I was mad with jealousy. My despair, however, was slightly assuaged by the fact that no one knew definitely why he had been expelled. Even those clever students who are always in the know at every school could not suggest a reason credible enough to find general acceptance. When we asked the teachers they of course would simply smile and say it was because of "something bad."

  Only I, it appeared, had a secret conviction as to the nature of his "evil." I was sure that he had been participating in some vast conspiracy, which even he had not yet fully understood. The compulsion toward evil that some demon incited in him gave his life its meaning and constituted his destiny. At least so it seemed to me. . . .

  Upon further thought, however, his "evil" came to have a different meaning for me. I decided that the huge conspiracy into which the demon had driven him, with its intricately organized secret society and its minutely planned underground machinations, was surely all for the sake of some forbidden god. Omi had served that god, had attempted to convert others to his faith, had been betrayed, and then had been executed in secret. One evening at dusk he had been stripped naked and taken to the grove on the hill. There he had been bound to a tree, both hands tied high over his head. The first arrow had pierced the side of his chest; the second, his armpit.

  The more I remembered the picture he had made that day, grasping the exercise-bar in preparation for the pull-up, the more I became convinced of his close affinity with St. Sebastian.

  During my fourth year at middle school I developed anemia. I became even more pallid than usual, so much so that my hands were the color of dead grass. Whenever I climbed a steep staircase I had to squat down and rest at the top. I would feel as though a windspout of white fog had whirled down onto the back of my head, digging a hole there and making me all but faint away.

  My family took me to the doctor, who diagnosed my trouble as anemia. He was an agreeable man and a friend of the family's. When they began asking him for details about my trouble, he said :

  "Well, let's see what the answer book has to say about anemia."

  The examination was over, and I was at the doctor's elbow, where I could peep into the book from which he began reading aloud. The family was seated facing him and could not see the pages of the book.

  ". . . So then, next there's the etiology—the causes of the disease. Hookworms—these are a frequent cause. This is probably the boy's case. We'll have to have a stool examination. Next there's chlorosis. But it's rare, and anyway it's a woman's disease—"

  At this point the book gave a further cause for anemia, but the doctor did not read it aloud. Instead, he skipped over it, mumbling the rest of the passage in his throat as he closed the book. But I had seen the phrase that he had omitted. It was "self-pollution."

  I could feel my heart pounding with shame. The doctor had discovered my secret.

  But what no one could ever have discovered was the singular reciprocal relationship between my lack of blood and my blood lust itself.

  My inherent deficiency of blood had first implanted in me the impulse to dream of bloodshed. And in its turn that impulse had caused me to lose more and more of the stuff of blood from my body, thereby further increasing my lust for blood. This enfeebling life of dreaming sharpened and exercised my imagination. Although I was not yet acquainted with the works of De Sade, the description of the Colosseum in Quo Vadis had made a deep impression on me, and by myself I had dreamed up the idea of a murder theater.

  There, in my murder theater, young Roman gladiators offered up their lives for my amusement; and all the deaths that took place there not only had to overflow with blood but also had to be performed with all due ceremony. I delighted in all forms of capital punishment and all implements of execution. But I would allow no torture devices nor gallows, as they would not have provided a spectacle of outpouring blood. Nor did I like explosive weapons, such as pistols or guns. So far as possible I chose primitive and savage weapons—arrows, daggers, spears. And in order to prolong the agony, it was the belly that must be aimed at. The sacrificial victim must send up long-drawn-out, mournful, pathetic cries, making the hearer feel the unutterable loneliness of existence. Thereupon my joy of life, blazing up from some secret place deep within me, would finally give its own shout of exultation, answering the victim cry for cry. Was this not exactly similar to the joy ancient man found in the hunt?

  The weapon of my imagination slaughtered many a Grecian soldier, many white slaves of Arabia, princes of savage tribes, hotel elevator-boys, waiters, young toughs, army officers, circus roustabouts. . . . I was one of those savage marauders who, not knowing how to express their love, mistakenly kill the persons they love. I would kiss the lips of those who had fallen to the ground and were still moving spasmodically.

  From some allusion or other I had conceived an instrument of execution contrived in such a way that a thick board studded with scores of upright daggers, arranged in the shape of a human figure, would come sliding down a rail upon a cross of execution fixed to the other side of the rail. There was an execution factory where mechanical drills for piercing the human body were always running, where the blood juice was sweetened, canned, and put on the market. Within the head of this middle-school student innumerable victims were bound wit
h their hands behind them and escorted to the Colosseum.

  The impulse gradually grew stronger within me, arriving one day at a daydream that was probably one of the basest of which man is capable. As with my other daydreams, here again the victim was one of my own classmates, a skilled swimmer, with a notably good physique.

  It was in a cellar. A clandestine banquet was being held. Elegant candlesticks gleamed above a pure-white tablecloth; there was an array of silver cutlery flanking each plate. There were even the usual bouquets of carnations. But it was curious that the blank space in the center of the table should be so excessively large. Surely it would be an extremely large platter which was to be brought in and placed there.

  "Not yet?" one of the guests asked me. His face was in the shadow and could not be seen. His solemn voice sounded like that of an aged man.

  Now that I think of it, shadows hid the faces of all the diners. Only their white hands extended into the light, where they toyed with silver-shining knives and forks. An endless murmuring hung in the air, sounding like a group of people talking together in low voices, or talking to themselves. It was a funereal feast; the only sound that could be plainly heard was the occasional creaking or grating of a chair.

  "It ought to be ready soon," I answered.

  Again the gloomy silence fell. I could clearly sense that everyone was displeased with my answer.

  "Shall I go and see?"

  I got up and opened the door into the kitchen. In one corner of the kitchen there was a stone staircase leading up to street-level.

  "Not yet?" I asked the cook.