by Hiroaki Sato
CHAPTER FIVE
First Love
From there I could not see the shape of the Golden Pavilion. I could only see the swirling smoke and the fire soaring into heaven. An abundance of sparks flew among the trees, and the sky above the Golden Pavilion looked as though sprinkled with gold dust.
—The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
Why did Mishima not choose the officercandidate course as his graduation from the Higher Division of the Peers School neared? Yamanashi Katsunoshin, President of the Peers School, sounded “accusatory” when he learned he had not taken the exam for officer candidates during the summer, Mishima wrote in Confessions of a Mask. They were in a car going to the Ministry for the Imperial Household, in September 1944. The top graduate in the school’s department of literature that year, Mishima received a silver watch in the name of the Tennō and three German novels with the Nazi Hakenkreuz embossed on each from the German ambassador who attended the ceremony and books from the Peers Club. The trip was to express gratitude.1
As Japan prepared for war with the United States and others, the four-year college term was shortened by three months in late 1941, and the four-year higher-school term by six months the following year. In November 1943, the draft age was lowered from twenty to nineteen. It did not take a retired admiral, which Yamanashi was, to see that Mishima would have a hard time as a soldier in private second class, which was what you became when drafted. Any sensible man with a higher education would have tried to be an officer candidate in one form or another.
Not that Mishima had not physically improved. “Until I was fifteen or sixteen I was terribly weak physically and was constantly bullied,” he recalled some years after he started bodybuilding. Yet by the time he was eighteen, he was “strong and confident enough not to fall aside during a march.”2
But that was his own assessment. His report card in his final year in the Higher Division shows that he got As in all subjects except for athletics, in which he got B+. The grade may seem good enough, but probably not to the army officer in charge.
Other than his draft physicals result of Second Class B, the reason Mishima did not opt for the officer-candidate course could have been simple. Each officer assigned for military training at schools reported to his regiment each student’s physical aptitude.3 The officer at the Peers School may not have recommended Mishima for that course. Though important, it was not as if everyone with his education opted for an officer candidate course even at that dire phase of the war. Of the twenty-four who graduated from the Peers School’s liberal arts division that September, eight, including Mishima, chose not to.4 Also, Mishima had not given up on an officer-candidate course, as he indicated in his letter to his parents in January 1945.5
In the event, Mitani was probably trying to put the best face on his friend when he later suggested that Mishima did not choose an officer-candidate course because he “wanted to fight the enemy through literature” for “his enmity was quite fierce,” not because he might be lucky enough not to be drafted.6
Publishing His First Book
Once the possibility arose of having his book out before being drafted, as it did, Mishima worked hard to see to it that this was done. It was Fuji Masaharu who came up openly with the idea first. In writing about Hayashi Fujima’s poetry in the August 1943 issue of Bunka Bungei, Fuji suggested that “The Forest in Full Bloom,” along with a few other stories, ought to be published as a book, adding that if no one published it, he would do it.
In his memoir, Fuji was vague about his role, saying it was the poet Itō Shizuo who urged him to publish such a book, even confessing he arranged the publication without reading the novella and other stories very well. He soon passed the matter on to the physician-poet Hayashi and wasn’t really involved in the matter—all this because he was nonplussed by the young man’s correct manners and polite language when he first met him; he was from a lower stratum of society and spoke the Osaka dialect, he explained.7
Behind it all was the effort of Shimizu and others of Bunka Bungei to have a book published for their extraordinarily talented young friend. Fuji wrote Hasuda on August 14: “Concerning Mr. Mishima’s writings, I have made several soundings, and have now reached the point of needing the manuscript (a cutout from Bunka Bungei would do, too).” Hasuda, in turn, wrote Mishima on August 16, with Japan’s postal system working fine despite the pressures of war. “My poet friend in Kyoto, Mr. Fuji Masaharu, has seriously thought about publishing a book of your fictional writings from a reputable publisher, and he says the chances are good,” he said. “If you are agreeable, do accept his kind thoughts. Kindly put together a manuscript and send it to me. Also, consult Mr. Shimizu on this.”
Overjoyed, Mishima told Azuma Fumihiko on September 4: “The idea of having a selection of my fictional writings out from a Kyoto publisher has suddenly come into being, so it appears that I can send my first book out to the world.” He added: “Book-publishing these days takes an inordinate amount of time. Mr. Itō Shizuo’s book of poems to be issued in mid-September (Kōbundō) has been under preparation since before February, Mr. Fuji says, and he says to me, Well, you better get used to the idea that it’ll take a year [for my book to come out].”8
That fall when he met Mishima, Fuji told him that he planned to submit the “project application” after “the New Year”—January.9 What is a “project application”?
In 1940 Kishi Nobusuke, along with other “reform bureaucrats,” made a major effort to turn Japan into a “controlled economy,” creating what would later be called the 1940 Regime. In August the government rearranged the publishing industry and in December set up an Association of Japanese Publishing Culture to “pursue and implement the mission of the publishing culture enterprise as it relates to the building of Japanese culture and the establishment of a national-defense nation and to devise a proper management of this industry, so that it may bear the fruit of patriotism in publishing.” In short, the government added to the existing system of rationing of printing paper a requirement for permission on what could be published. The “project application” was part of the new censorship regime.
In February 1943, the association changed its name to the Association of Japanese Publishing (AJP) in compliance with the Publishing Enterprise Ordinance, which was issued on the basis of the National Mobilization Law of 1938 created in response to Japan’s worsening war with China. The move was to put the publishing industry under tighter government control. In the process the total of 3,743 publishers that existed in Japan then were reduced to a mere 203 houses, forcing many to merge and many to go out of business.10 It was “a great earthquake in the publishing world,” as Mishima called it.11
“Because in those days paper needed for publishing was under control, and speech control was made during the procedure of applying for paper, I remember lining up for the item called ‘purpose of publication’ in the project application big bluffs that would pander to the trends of the day in various ways,” Mishima recalled a dozen years later. “It seems that even in those days I wasn’t a youth of excessive integrity.”12 The “trend of the day” was, of course, patriotism. So, Mishima said, among others, the publication of his stories would help “maintain and preserve the literary traditions of our Imperial Nation.”13
Amid the paper shortage and rationing and the requirement for patriotic content, there was a loophole of sorts: a publisher could push for a publication if paper was made independently available. Mishima had a source for the needed paper, a great one.
At the time, because of the war, arranging an ikōshū—a posthumous collection of one’s writings in book form—was common, not just by the surviving relatives and such but by writers themselves.14 Shizue told Azusa that their son ought to have such a book out before he died. Azusa agreed, however reluctantly, and called Ōji Paper, knowing of course that Fujiwara Ginjirō did not just feel profoundly indebted to Mishima’s grandfather, Sadatarō, but also revered him as the man who helped create the pulp
industry in Japan.15 Here’s part of Mishima’s “Journal for The Forest in Full Bloom.” “Shichijō” is the publisher Shichijō Shoin.
February 4: phone Shichijō.
February 6, night: Mr. Okazaki [Kazuichi] comes to visit.
February 7: write a letter to Mr. Okazaki about the bookstore [Shichijō].
February 20: submit [a plan application] to the AJP.
February 24: go to Shichijō.
March 7: AJP gives informal approval.
March 8: send publication application to the bookstore.
[three items skipped]
April 14: Informal approval [for publication].
April 24: Formal approval [for publication] given.
[rest omitted]16
Okazaki Kazuichi was the head of the secretariat at Ōji Paper, a position comparable to that of senior vice president in today’s American corporation. Mishima probably called Shichijō Shoin on February 4 to ascertain that the publisher would expedite the publication of his book if paper were made available. Okazaki, in his visit with the Mishimas, probably promised to do his best to supply the needed paper.
At the time, Fujiwara Ginjirō himself was in an important government post. He was serving the Tōjō cabinet as “administrative inspector” with the portfolio of Minister of State. In November 1943, when Prime Minister and Minister of the Army Tōjō combined the Ministry of Commerce and Industry with the Planning Bureau to create the Ministry of Armament and assumed its ministership as well, he also created a new post of “administrative inspector” and gave it to Fujiwara.
A planned economy, whether controlled or centralized, inevitably creates unplanned surpluses and shortages, as is known from the Soviet Union’s experience. One factory may have enough material for producing what it is supposed to, but not enough coal, let us say, that is needed to power the machines. Another factory may have enough coal but not enough material to use the coal. Such distortions worsened as general shortages became the norm in wartime Japan. The traditional rivalry between the two services, the army and the navy, did not help. The “administrative inspector” was tasked to assess and reduce such “inefficiencies.” He was thus the overseer of wartime production.
This appointment in effect made Fujiwara Kishi Nobusuke’s superior twice. In Admiral Yonai Mitsumasa’s cabinet, which came into being in January 1940, Fujiwara was Minister of Commerce and Industry and Kishi its Vice Minister. In the new arrangement, Kishi was “demoted” from Minister of Commerce and Industry to Vice Minister of Armament, though he was also given the post of Minister of State without Portfolio. He had become Minister of Commerce and Industry under the Tōjō cabinet in October 1941 with the understanding that only he could manage the industrial production essential for a total war. Now, with Tōjō’s cabinet restructuring, Kishi had two superiors: Tōjō, yes, and Fujiwara. This may have been one reason Kishi turned against Tōjō and led the way to his downfall.
Mishima and Poet Itō Shizuo
As soon as he received the publication permission he had sought, on April 24, Mishima wrote Itō Shizuo to ask if he would write a preface to his book. Itō, a junior high school teacher in Osaka, was a lyric poet prominent in the Japan Romantic School. Devoted to German poets such as Rainer Maria Rilke, Erich Kästner, and especially Friedrich Hölderlin—while a student at the Imperial University of Kyoto he was reputed to own the largest collection of Hölderlin’s poems and books about them in Japan17—Itō wrote poems of convoluted imagery and syntax and had a small but important coterie of admirers, among them Hagiwara Sakutarō.
Indeed, one aspect of Mishima’s literary thinking was revealed in his letter to Shimizu mentioned above. Expressing his admiration for Hagiwara’s poetry such as represented by the line “Spring flares out like smallpox”—his book in 1917, Howling at the Moon (Tsuki ni hoeru), with its neurosis and neurotic use of language, had ushered in modern poetry in Japan—Mishima asserted that “Japan would be in serious trouble” if it accepted unthinkingly the Asianist-Japanist theorist Ōkawa Shūmei’s dismissal of Heian literature as “soft and feeble,” adding that to think about the military crisis Japan faced was not the same as “applauding Tōjō-san’s speeches.”18
Ōkawa, who had studied Indian philosophy at the Imperial University of Tokyo and for a few decades had as wide an influence as the political theorist Kita Ikki, would become, following Japan’s defeat, the only non-governmental civilian the International Military Tribunal for the Far East indicted for war crimes. But he was released during the trial because of his odd behavior. He famously kept slapping the head of Tōjō sitting in front of him, muttering nonsense, and was judged to be insane.
Itō, at any rate, contributed poems to Bunka Bungei, which published his second book of poems, in 1940, and the book, like his first, won a prize. His third, Spring Hurries (Haru no isogi), also won a prize. He sent a signed copy to Mishima when it came out, in the fall of 1943.
Itō’s response to Mishima’s request came soon enough, at the end of April. He declined. So Mishima decided to make the request face to face. As it happened, the following month he had to go to Kansai for the physicals for draftees. He left Tokyo one day earlier than necessary, and visited Itō on May 17. Itō wrote in his diary: “There was a telephone call at school; around two o’clock, Hiraoka Kimitake came. Before that Fuji Masaki [Masaharu’s alternate name] had come to school; he said he’d taken a few days off and come home because he was finally being shipped off to the front on the Continent. . . . I went to visit him with Hiraoka; we were treated to supper.”
On his way back to Tokyo after the physicals in Shikata, Mishima stopped in Osaka once more to see Itō. Itō’s entry in his diary on the 22nd notes, “Hiraoka came to the school around three. Offered him supper. Philistine. Kanbori [Shinobu] came. Gave me apples. [Mishima] stayed until about nine-thirty. Walked him to the station.”
“Philistine” is a strong word—so strong that Odakane Jirō, in his book on Hasuda and his death, suggested that Itō may have been the one who was a philistine, not Mishima. Kanbori, who went on to become a Man’yōshū scholar, was a student in Itō’s class, and he had brought apples for Itō. In contrast, Mishima not only put himself in such a position as to require the poet to invite him to supper but also probably asked him for a foreword again. If Kanbori represented “deference,” Mishima embodied “pride” approaching arrogance. Odakane even suggested Itō’s inferiority complex deriving from class differences.19
But Odakane may have gone a little too far in making that argument. Itō was poor for most of his adult life, as he knew perfectly well, and out of his meager salary as a junior-high-school teacher he had to repay his father’s large debt. Also, by the time Itō met Mishima, food shortages were so acute as to require most travelers to take their own food with them. And in this book, Odakane needed to emphasize Hasuda’s special relationship to Mishima and most likely planned to have Mishima’s foreword, which he indeed asked for and got. Most tellingly, in his massive volume on Itō five years earlier, he almost skimped on the conflict, commenting only that Itō’s reaction was quite like him.20
Mishima wrote to thank Itō as soon as he came home. That further put off the poet. Itō jotted in his diary on May 28: “Letter from Hiraoka; not amusing. Overreaching strained prose.”21
Failing to have Itō’s laudatory preface, Mishima chose to laud the poet in his afterword to his first book, an act he mocked himself, however lightly, when Itō died, in 1953.22 The first proofs came on May 31 and there was no time for further maneuvering. He wrote:
Mr. Itō Shizuo is a poet whom I have held dear and respected as a rare Romanticist since boyhood. When he, in his home not far from a mausoleum made in the ancient world, talked about Mr. Hagiwara Sakutarō, talked about the use of documents in National Learning, and talked about an essential education for a poet, his eyes, at once breezy and aflame, were beautiful.
As he kindly walked me to the station along a dark cobbled road, he said, “I like things th
at are a bit warped and off, like someone who says something, then looks at you.” Mysteriously, I still remember his words vividly. Then he talked about the goodness of an orderly who brings a meal for his superior officer and as he enters his room announces, “I’m coming in, sir!”
When Itō died, Mishima recalled to note that the citation of this story in his afterword showed how “to me in those days, military life was an idée fixe full of terror.”23
Despite his private impressions of Mishima, Itō would remain courteous to the much younger man, at least outwardly, and Mishima a steadfast admirer of Itō’s poetry: he would write half a dozen articles in praise of his poetry. In 1968, when asked, in one of those surveys of writers’ opinions Japanese publishers routinely conduct, to name the verse he “loved to recite,” Mishima quoted the opening lines of Itō’s poem, “A Song of the Wilderness” (Kōya no uta): “For the beautiful day when I die, / fantasy of linked peaks! May you not erase / your white snow.”24
The only thing left for Mishima to do was to wait for the appearance of the book, which was scheduled for October 15. The half-a-year waiting period was full of anxieties. The Allied Powers’ large-scale bombings of Germany were adequately reported, and some in the military provided candid accounts of the coming catastrophes. In February 1944, for example, the ladies’ monthly Shufu no Tomo carried an article by a Col. Katō Yoshihide, Staff Officer of the Central Antiaircraft Command, who wrote: “Judging from the way air raids are recently carried out in Europe, this is no longer something as lukewarm as a war of nerves. What they do is the so-called carpet bombings that make no distinction between day and night. . . . The enemies rain down incendiary bombs . . . and the raids are conducted with one hundred bombers, two hundred bombers, and these they do repeatedly.”