by Hiroaki Sato
Persona
A Biography of Yukio Mishima
Naoki Inose
with Hiroaki Sato
Stone Bridge Press • Berkeley, California
Published by
Stone Bridge Press
P. O. Box 8208, Berkeley, CA 94707
510-524-8732 • [email protected] • www.stonebridge.com
Front jacket design by Noda Masaaki and Noda Emi.
Back jacket photograph © Museum of Modern Japanese Literature, Tokyo. Used by permission.
Text © 2012 Naoki Inose and Hiroaki Sato.
This is an expanded adaptation in English of Persona: Mishima Yukio den, published in 1995 by Bungei Shunjū (Tokyo, Japan).
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Inose, Naoki.
[Perusona. English]
Persona: a biography of Yukio Mishima / Naoki Inose; with Hiroaki Sato.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61172-008-2 (cbk); ISBN 978-1-61172-524-7 (ebk).
1. Mishima, Yukio, 1925–1970. 2. Authors, Japanese—20th century—
Biography. I. Sato, Hiroaki, 1942–. II. Title.
PL833.I7Z63713 2012
895.6'35—dc23
[B]
2012030595
For Ron Bayes and Rand Castile
The range, variety, and publicness of the career sound ominously familiar to me. . . .
I only regret we never met, for friends found him a good companion, a fine drinking partner, and fun to cruise with.
GORE VIDAL
Mishima definitely lived. He was a true genius in living.
NOSAKA AKIYUKI
Contents
Preface
Prologue
CHAPTER ONE Peasant Ancestors and Grandfather
CHAPTER TWO Samurai Ancestors and Grandmother
CHAPTER THREE “The Boy Who Writes Poems”
CHAPTER FOUR Literary Correspondents
CHAPTER FIVE First Love
CHAPTER SIX The War and Its Aftermath
CHAPTER SEVEN To Be a Bureaucrat or a Writer
CHAPTER EIGHT Confessions
CHAPTER NINE Boyfriends, Girlfriends
CHAPTER TEN Going Overseas
CHAPTER ELEVEN The Girlfriend
CHAPTER TWELVE The Kinkakuji
CHAPTER THIRTEEN Overseas Again
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Marriage
CHAPTER FIFTEEN Kyōko’s House
CHAPTER SIXTEEN The 2.26 Incident, Yūkoku
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Assassinations
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Contretemps
CHAPTER NINETEEN The Nobel Prize
CHAPTER TWENTY Shinpūren, Men of the Divine Wind
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE “The Way of the Warrior is to die”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Death in India
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE The Anti–Vietnam War Movement
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Sun and Steel
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE The Shield Society, Counterrevolution
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX The Yakuza
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN Wang Yangming: “To know is to act”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT The Constitution
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE Hailstones, Ghouls, Golden Death
CHAPTER THIRTY Toward Ichigaya
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: The Seppuku
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Preface
This is an expanded adaptation in English of Inose Naoki’s biography Persona: Mishima Yukio den (Bungei Shunjū, 1995). Inose’s Persona is a unique depiction of the bureaucratic and political aspects of Japanese history since the late nineteenth century as they relate to Mishima. This English adaptation greatly augments Mishima’s literary, theatrical, and ideological theories and activities, not to mention his pursuit of various sports, to suggest how he brought them all together into one focus: death.
Since Inose wrote Persona, partly based on interviews conducted in 1994, a number of things have changed—notably, Japan’s bureaucratic structures and positions in consequence of administrative reforms in the past dozen years. But such things are left as they were up to the mid-1990s so far as they do not affect this account of Mishima’s life.
In this book, all Japanese names are given the Japanese way, family name first (except on the cover). Following Japanese custom, Japanese people are sometimes referred to by their personal name, rather than by their surname. Among the prominent writers since the late nineteenth century this occurs most notably with Natsume Sōseki, who is usually called Sōseki, and Mori Ōgai, Ōgai. Mishima Yukio was the penname of Hiraoka Kimitake. His teachers and school friends most often addressed him by his surname with or without a post-nominal compellation: -sama, -san, -kun. His family members or close friends usually called him by his personal name, often by his pet name, Kimichan or Kō-chan, the second one because the sinified pronunciation of Kimitake is Kōi.
The macron is used to indicate a long vowel in Japanese except where common use makes it needlessly conspicuous (as in Tōkyō for Tokyo) and where the theaters and other establishments have their own roman spellings (as in Nissay for Nissei in the theater name).
The word tennō, usually translated as “emperor,” is retained in this book, except when used as a title, as in the Emperor Meiji, and in a few other circumstances. This is because the Japanese word, along with the English word “emperor,” has created a host of misconceptions, both in Japan (intentionally) and abroad (willfully) after the country tried to join the imperialist powers in the second half of the nineteenth century. More important, the tennō institution had a special meaning in Mishima’s thinking all his life, but particularly when it came to the fore in his argument on Japanese history and Constitutions.
Unless noted, translations from the Japanese are all mine.
Many people have helped to make this this expanded English adaptation possible, starting with Inose Naoki. He sent me books, including many of his own, answered questions, and provided me with some of the interview transcripts. The unreferenced quotations in this book come from the interviews he conducted.
Hirata Shigeru, Ishii Tatsuhiko, Takagaki Chihiro, and Kakizaki Shōko helped to collect books for this biography. Among them, Shōkosan is hardest to thank. She went out of her way to find and buy many books for me.
Kyoko Selden helped me with a range of things with her erudition; she also found for me part of a text of Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien at Cornell University Library. Ishii Tatsuhiko acquired a number of articles related to Mishima and helped me with his extensive knowledge of theater. Jeffrey Angles made many magazine articles in English available to me online. Alexander Truskinovsky acquired for me Melvin J. Lasky’s A Letter from Salzburg, a lively account of the selection process of the fourth Formentor Literary Prize, in 1961. Ken Aoki at The Institute for Medieval Japanese Studies, Columbia University, copied for me Kihira Teiko’s Mishima Yukio no tegami, an account of her association with Mishima in the early postwar years that was serialized in eighteen installments in the weekly Asahi, from December 13, 1974 to April 11, 1975.
Lili Selden sent me the English translations of Akutagawa Ryūnosuke’s story, Butōkai, and Pierre Loti’s story, Un Bal a Yeddo.
Col. Jaxon Teck and his wife, Arlene, helped me with US military terms; Arlene also edited one chapter. Ueda Akira and Takii Mitsuo got in touch with the Japan Self-Defense Forces (SDF) to clarify certain matters. Akira-san also gave me i
nformation on Tokyo that I, a New York City resident, could not readily acquire, such as distances and the state of certain institutions. Noguchi Nobuya helped me with the Japanese judiciary. Carlin Barton straightened me out on certain Latin and Greek names and terms; in doing so she determined that the name of one figure assumed to be from classical Greece in Confessions of a Mask cannot be clarified with certainty. Doris Bargen and Guido Keller helped me with some German terms and expressions.
Gail Malmgreen and Peter Filardo, of Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University, found information on Pearl Kluger at the American Committee for Cultural Freedom, Mishima’s guide in New York when he visited the United States for the first time, in 1952. Peggy McElveen, Director of Equestrian Programs at Saint Andrews Presbyterian College, answered my equestrian questions. Sakai Tatemi clarified the use of agents in Japan. Takagaki Chihiro enlightened me on certain films. Liza Dalby and Nagasaka Junko imparted some of their deep knowledge on kimono.
Nagasaka Toshihisa went to the Film Center, of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, to see and acquire details on what is left of the 1945 Japanese movie Ware ni tsuzuku o shinzu, one of the films the US Occupation confiscated and did not return to Japan until 1967.
Donald Richie gave me details on Meredith Weatherby, the translator of Confessions of a Mask and The Sound of Waves, and matters related to Mishima in New York, in 1952.
Ron Bayes and Rand Castile told me about their meetings with Mishima. Mr. Bayes, a North Carolina poet laureate, opened for me a path to Mishima Yukio by asking me to translate one of his plays, My Friend Hitler, for St. Andrews Magazine more than three decades ago. He followed it with a request to translate The Terrace of the Leper King—the “leper king” being the appellation of Jayavarman VII, the builder of Angkor Tom. These translations led J. Thomas Rimer to commission me, for the Pacific Basin Institute, to translate the Mishima novel Silk and Insight (M. E. Sharpe, 1998). The same translations also led to My Friend Hitler and Other Plays of Yukio Mishima (Columbia University Press, 2002).
I thank Luke Bouvier for finding and translating Refrains, a poem by Guy-Charles Cros; Forrest Gander for translating a stanza of García Lorca’s poem, Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías; Guido Keller for translating a stanza from Friedrich Hölderlin’s Heimkunft; Michael O’Brien for translating passages from Baudelaire and stanzas from Gabriele d’Annunzio’s Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien; and Alexander Truskinovsky for translating a paragraph from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.
I thank Susan Lyn McCombs for her invaluable editorial assistance in correcting and clarifying a number of words, phrases, and paragraphs.
Finally, as always, I thank my wife Nancy for reading countless revisions of the manuscript with patience and care, over a period of ten years.
HIROAKI SATO
New York City
Persona
Hiraoka Kimitake (Mishima Yukio) Family Tree
* * *
1 The Matsudaira was the family that produced the founder of the Tokugawa shogunate (1603–1867), Ieyasu (1543–1616). The family necessarily spawned a number of branches but continued to represent the most prestigious samurai lineage under Tokugawa rule—second only to the Tokugawa.
2 Naomune was a descendent of the Matsudaira, but was adopted by the Nagai family. The Chinese characters for his name are also read Naoyuki, Naotoshi, Naotada.
3 Yoritaka’s first son, who was forced to disembowel himself because of political contretemps. His second son, Yoriyasu (1854–1940), became the subject of Mishima’s short stories. His third son, Yorihira (1858–?), became a swords judge for the Imperial Household.
4 Yoritaka’s third daughter; she had four other sisters.
5 Iwanojō’s first daughter and one of his twelve children (six girls and six boys). Of the twelve children, the boys, except for one who died of Spanish flu when in higher school, all attained distinguished positions: naval commander, economist, banker, and corporate president (two). All six girls, including Natsuko, married men who attained high positions.
6 Takichi’s second son; he had one older and one younger brother and a sister. Sadatarō’s older brother, Manjirō (1860–1923), became a distinguished lawyer.
Prologue
The Tokyo Shōken Kaikan is located in Kayaba-chō, Nihonbashi. Despite its name, Tokyo Securities Hall, it is an office building that has no direct involvement with securities trade. But among its tenants are the Japan Securities Dealers Association and the Association of Tokyo Stock Exchange Regular Members. After all, just two buildings to the west the place name changes to Kabuto-chō, which is Japan’s Wall Street, where the buildings for the Tokyo Stock Exchange and prominent brokerage houses stand shoulder to shoulder. The Bank of Japan is less than half a mile from the Tokyo Stock Exchange, in Hongoku-chō. Near the central bank is the namesake of the Nihonbashi District, the Japan Bridge, though the view of the concrete bridge is largely blocked by the superhighway that runs by the bank. All distances in Japan are measured from its midpoint.
The Association of Tokyo Stock Exchange Regular Members occupies the third floor of the Tokyo Shōken Kaikan. When interviewed, Nagaoka Minoru had just become its advisor. He was short, somewhat on the plump side, and seventy years old. In a dark-brown suit made of English fabric and a Mila Shön tie of a similar color, he had a youthful complexion, with few wrinkles, and maintained a gentle smile on his face. He smoked, three packs daily of the domestic brand Miné (Peak), though by then antismoking had become the rage. He charmed you, moving the topic of conversation with sophisticated ease from the writings of the magical manipulator of traditional Japanese Izumi Kyōka, the kiyomoto recitation, haiku, to the baseball team Yomiuri Giants—although, even as he made it clear he’d be prepared to respond to any question you might think of, his eyes occasionally showed a cold, forbidding glint.
The position of advisor to the Association of Tokyo Stock Exchange Regular Members is a nebulous one. It would not be widely off the mark to describe it as a kind of medal for someone with an illustrious career who recently completed his five-year stint as chairman of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. One sign of his status was the spaciousness of his office. Add the reception area, and it was more than one thousand square feet. The office had been refurbished for him, with new armchairs and rugs, color-coordinated to match a Marie Laurencin painting hanging on a wall.
Nagaoka was also one of the five members of the National Public Safety Commission. Chaired by the Minister of Home Affairs, the commission met every Thursday morning in a special room at the Ministry of Home Affairs, in Kasumigaseki. It had the authority to appoint and dismiss the commissioner of the National Police Agency, the superintendent of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, and the heads of all prefectural police agencies. In some ways the commission membership was honorary. But in government ranking, its members were one notch above the administrative vice minister, the highest position Japanese bureaucrats could attain. Each ministry had two vice ministers, parliamentary and administrative, but their boss, the minister, and the parliamentary vice minister were members of the Diet and were thus political appointees. The administrative vice minister actually ran the place. That was the rank Nagaoka had attained, and he had done so at the Ministry of Finance, which traditionally scooped up, as a matter of entitlement, the cream of the crop from the annual higher civil-service examination takers, the elite of the elite of Japanese society.
Nagaoka, in fact, had enjoyed all the plums attendant to those who achieved highest bureaucratic ranks. In 1980, upon retiring from the ministry as administrative vice minister, he “descended from heaven” to become chairman of the Japan Tobacco Monopoly. He spearheaded its privatization, one fad of the day, and, when the work was done, became president of the privatized entity, Japan Tobacco, Inc. He then became chairman of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The advisorship to the association mentioned earlier and other positions and powers followed. His had been a model career or, as the Japanese put it,
one “drawn for a pictorial illustration” of an illustrious man.
Nagaoka was called The Don of Finance. A man sitting on top of the old-boy network of the Ministry of Finance, he most recently had helped place two of his former colleagues in prestigious positions amid the rising calls for taking such powers away from bureaucrats to give them to politicians: Yamaguchi Hidemitsu as chairman of the Tokyo Stock Exchange and Matsushita Yasuo as chairman of the Bank of Japan.
Imagine: Mishima Yukio could have been this man.
On December 24, 1947, Wednesday, twenty-six future bureaucrats reported to work on their first day with the Ministry of Finance. It was two years and four months after Japan’s calamitous defeat in the Second World War. US Occupation forces had absolute sway, things American were swamping the land, and it was Christmas Eve. But there was nothing festive about the day. The Finance Ministry building in Kasumigaseki having been requisitioned by the Occupation, the agency was housed in an elementary school in Yotsuya. The rickety doors squeaked. The smoke from coal-burning stoves filled the rooms. Petitioners packed the corridors. The general atmosphere was dark, dirty, and dismal.1
Each of the twenty-six men was handed two papers: one announcing his appointment to the ministry and the other his assigned post. The monthly base salary was ¥1,350, a sum less than what a carpenter working full-time would make. Nagaoka Minoru was assigned to the budget bureau. Among the remaining twenty-five was Hiraoka Kimitake , who was assigned to the banking bureau. Nagaoka recognized him. He had seen him twice before: once, when they happened to be seated side by side while waiting for their employment interviews; the other, just about a week before that, when he went to a dance hall named, in English, The Esquire. Social dance had recently come into style. The most popular were American types such as fox trot, jitterbug, and rumba, but the Continental tango also had a solid following.