by Hiroaki Sato
20 The Tokugawa government set up the Kaisei-jo, the Institute for Discovery and Fulfillment, in 1863, for foreign studies. It changed its name to Kaisei Gakkō (Kaisei School) when the regime changed to Meiji in 1868.
21 Frank Gibney, Five Gentlemen of Japan: The Portrait of a Nation’s Character (Avon, CT: EastBridge, 2003; originally 1953), 100.
22 Fukushima, Saitei shiryō, 74–75.
23 Gendai Hyōgo-ken jinbutsu-shi (Ken’yūsha, 1911), 67. Available online from the National Diet Library http://kindai.da.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid/777760/72 (accessed July 11, 2012).
24 Nosaka, Kakuyaku-taru gyakkō, 167–70. Nosaka’s summary account may be among the best.
25 “Takahara Kaidō cho Kyokuhoku Nippon jo,” Natsume Sōseki zenshū 11 (Iwanami Shoten, 1966), 598. In Mishima Yukio no shōgai, 17–18, Andō Takeshi says he is tempted to speculate that Sadatarō may have been the model for Hiraoka Tsunetarō in Sōseki’s 1909 fiction Sorekara and Yasui (with no personal name) in his 1910 fiction Mon. But, even if Sōseki was untruthful in saying he did not know much about Sadatarō, Sadatarō’s meteoric rise in the bureaucracy and his conduct in his personal life make Andō’s speculation no more than an idle fantasy. In Sorekara, Hiraoka Tsunetarō is the protagonist Daisuke’s friend and a failed bank employee whose wife, Michiyo, becomes the object of Daisuke’s passionate love. In Mon, Yasui is the protagonist Sōsuke’s student friend who leaves Japan for Manchuria when his wife O-yone and Sōsuke fall in love with each other. This is noted here only because Andō’s unthinking suggestion is cited in some references.
26 Fukushima, Saitei shiryō, 81–94. Fukushima quotes the July 7, 1914 editorial of the Karafuto Nichinichi Shinbun defending Sadatarō in its entirety.
27 Nosaka, Kakuyaku-taru gyakkō, 83.
Chapter Two: Samurai Ancestors and Grandmother
1 The characters for Nagai Naomune are also read Naotada, Naotoshi, and Naoyuki.
2 George Sansom, A History of Japan 1615–1867 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1963), 21.
3 Tanabe Taichi (1831–1915), Naomune’s contemporary diplomat, named the three vassals in his talks on Japan’s diplomatic history of the period, Bakumatsu gaikō-dan, in 1898.
4 Naomune’s grandson, Dr. Nagai Tōru’s memoir. Etsugu, Mishima Yukio bungaku no kiseki, 103.
5 Masao Miyoshi, As We Saw Them: The First Japanese Embassy to the United States (Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2005), 19–20.
6 Katsube Mitake, ed., Hikawa seiwa (Kadokawa Shoten, 1972), 380.
7 Konishi Shirō, Kaikoku to jōi, Nihon no rekishi series, vol. 19 (Chūō Kōron Sha, 1974), 130–60.
8 Ibid., 443.
9 Tsunabuchi Kenjō, Kō: Enomoto Takeaki to gunkan Kaiyōmaru no shōgai (Shinchōsha, 1986), 126.
10 Katsube, Hikawa seiwa, 173.
11 It was only five years after the Japanese had started to learn from the Dutch how to sail the oceans, and the Japanese ocean-going skills and discipline were inadequate for what proved to be the thirty-seven-day crossing of the Pacific Ocean, more than thirty days of it in stormy weather. As it happened, the USS Fennimore Cooper had been shipwrecked while surveying Japanese harbors and ports, and its captain, John M. Brooke, and his ten-man crew were aboard the Kanrin Maru to return to the US, and that helped. There was also Japan’s strict class system not based on talent, knowledge, and skill that rendered the work of the Japanese crew less than ideal. In modern naval parlance, Kimura Yoshitake (Kaishū) was commander-in-chief of the ship, Katsu Rintarō (Kaishū, in different Chinese characters) captain. Brooke regarded Kimura as embodying the worst aspects of the class system even as he thought well of Katsu, but the system so rankled Katsu that he once announced, in the midst of the Pacific, his decision to abandon the Karin Maru to return to Japan by one of the small boats that the ship carried, as Kimura recalled later. Katsube, Hikawa seiwa, 306–10. Iwamoto Yoshiharu, ed., Kaishū zadan (Iwanami Shoten, 1983), 244–49. Matsuzaki Kin’ichi, ed., Fukuō jiden (Keiō Gijuku Daigaku Shuppankai, 2009), 129–39. Miyoshi, As We Saw Them, 25–26.
12 Ōya Atsushi’s section in the Watashi no rirekisho series, vol. 22 (Nihon Keizai Shinbun Sha, 1964), 417–18. Muramatsu Takeshi, Mishima Yukio no sekai (Shinchōsha, 1996), 23–24.
13 Sansom, A History of Japan, 18–21.
14 Takahashi Tomio, Seii tai-shōgun (Chūō Kōron Sha, 1987), 216.
15 Sansom, A History of Japan, 235–39.
16 The requirement that a samurai be accomplished in both literary and martial arts was codified in Article One of the first Regulations for the Military Houses laid down by the Tokugawa government in 1615. Ishii Shirō, ed., Kinsei buke shisō (Iwanami Shoten, 1974), 454. For an interpretation of bunbu ryōdō by an early follower of the Wang Yangming ideals, Nakae Tōju, see Hiroaki Sato, trans. and comp., Legends of the Samurai (New York: Overlook Press, 1995), xxii–xxiii.
17 Yamakawa Kikue, Bakumatsu no Mito-han (Iwanami Shoten, 1991), 324–46. Yamakawa Kikue, Buke no josei (Iwanami Shoten, 1990), 147–61.
18 For Nagai Naomune, see the entry for the winter recess of 1937, Zenshū 42, 45. For Matsudaira Yoriyasu, “‘Matsudaira Yoriyasu den’ sōsaku note,” Hokan, 414–21. There Mishima gives the two Chinese characters for Naomune the reading “Naotoshi” and refers to him by his court title, genbanokami, “chief of temples, shrines, and diplomacy.”
19 “Shinkan,” Hokan, 28–33. The incomplete story is Ryōshu (Fief Lord), Zenshū 20, 654–56.
20 “Olympia,” Zenshū 26, 76–79.
21 Actually, Taka had fourteen children but two of them died soon after birth.
22 Muramatsu, Mishima Yukio no sekai, 25.
23 Sadatarō’s brother, Manjirō, was also married to a descendant of a high-ranking samurai. His wife, Hisa(ko), was a daughter of Sakurai Keizō, whose father was the house administrator (karō) of the Akashi Matsudaira fiefdom. Etsugu, Mishima Yukio bungaku no kiseki, 228.
24 Hiraoka, Segare, 34.
25 Nosaka, Kakuyaku-taru gyakkō, 81.
26 Ibid., 82. In US terms today, Sadatarō’s debt would be $23 million relative to the US President’s annual pay of $400,000. Among the products in which Sadatarō involved himself were “Japanese paper,” black lead, coal in Taiwan, sugar in the South Pacific, pulp in Karafuto (successful), colonial real estate, and furs (pp. 170–71). On New Year’s eve of 1919, he was arrested in Dairen (today’s Dalian) on suspicion of heroin smuggling—evidently for political funds. He was released apparently because he was a former high government official. In Mishima Yukio no shōgai, 18, Andō Takeshi quotes fully the Tokyo Nichinichi Shinbun article reporting the arrest.
27 Hiraoka, Segare, 33.
28 Etsugu, Mishima Yukio bungaku no kiseki, 86–91.
29 Nosaka, Kakuyaku-taru gyakkō,, 80.
30 Andō, Mishima Yukio no shōgai, 31. Quoted from Kafū’s Danchō-tei nichijō.
31 “Shinkan,” Hokan, 30.
32 “Hiraoka Kimitake jiden,” Zenshū 26, 420–21.
33 Hiraoka, Segare, 36–39.
34 Ibid., 37–38.
35 Nosaka, Kakuyaku-taru gyakkō, 130–31, 178–79, and elsewhere. Nosaka’s speculation is worth mentioning because it created a good deal of controversy. See also Itasaka, Kyokusetsu: Mishima Yukio, 142–48.
36 Hiraoka, Segare 42. Hiraoka Shizue, “Boru no gotoku,” Gunzō special Nihon no sakka 18: Mishima Yukio (Shōgakukan, 1990), 198, 204.
37 “Meiji to kanryō,” Zenshū 32, 32–33.
38 Nosaka, Kakuyaku-taru gyakkō, 109–11, 180, and elsewhere.
39 Hiraoka, Segare, 33–34, 252–53.
40 Kishi Nobusuke, Waga seishun: oitachi no ki, omoide no ki (Kōzaidō, 1983), 190–93.
41 Kitaoka Shin’ichi, “Kishi Nobusuke,” in Watanabe Akio, ed., Sengo Nihon no saishō-tachi (Chūō Kōron Sha, 2001), 144–49. Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925–1975 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1982), 113–14.
42 Iwami Takao, Kishi Nobus
uke: Shōwa no kakumeika (Gakuyō Shobō, 1999), 21, 53–85, and elsewhere.
43 Kōno Ichirō, Kōno Ichirō jiden, ed. Denki Kankō Iinkai (Tokuma Shoin, 1965), 72–74.
44 Hiraoka, “Boru no gotoku,” 202.
45 John Nathan, Mishima: A Biography (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1974), xiv–xv.
46 Hiraoka, Segare, 45–46.
47 Hiraoka, “Bōru no gotoku,” 197.
48 Muramatsu, Mishima Yukio no sekai, 15–17.
49 Mitani Makoto, Kyūyū: Mishima Yukio (Chūō Kōron Shinsha, 1999). 167. Muramatsu, Mishima Yukio no sekai, 53–56.
50 “Homerareta koto,” Zenshū 36, 416.
51 Hiraoka, Segare, 40.
52 “Waga manga,” Zenshū 29, 166.
53 Nathan, Mishima, 30–31.
54 Hiraoka, Segare, 53–54.
55 “Kaidai,” Zenshū 15, 696.
Chaper Three: “The Boy Who Writes Poems”
1 Hayashi Shigeru, Taiheiyō sensō, Nihon no rekishi series, vol. 25 (Chūō Kōron Sha, 1967), 54. Handō Kazutoshi, ed., Shōwa-shi tansaku 1926–1945, vol. 4 (Chikuma Shobō, 2007), 153–54.
2 Radhabinod Pal, Dissentient Judgment of Justice Pal (Kokusho-Kankokai. 1999), 581. Pal was one of the eleven justices on the International Military Tribunal for the Far East but the only one versed in international law.
3 “Shina ni okeru waga guntai,” Zenshū 26, 24–25.
4 Elizabeth Gray Vining, Windows for the Crown Prince Akihito of Japan (Japan and Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle, 1989; originally 1952), 164. Then the interest in the mass killings quickly faded. Joshua A. Fogel, The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 12. In their 1959 history of Shōwa, Shōwa-shi (Iwanami Shoten), 152, Tōyama Shigeki et al. cited the figures the US journalist Edgar Snow gave in his 1941 book, The Battle for Asia: more than 42,000 killed during the Japanese occupation of Nanjing but more than 300,000 killed during the Japanese army’s advance from Shanghai to Nanjing. Hayashi Shigeru followed suit in his Taiheiyō sensō, 64, without citing the source. Since the early 1970s, when the massacre again came to the fore because of the Asahi Shinbun journalist Honda Katsuichi’s reportage from China, the assessments by historians and commentators on the numbers of Chinese soldiers and civilians killed during the rampage, which lasted four months, have varied widely, from 20,000 to 300,000. Suzuki Akira’s “Nanking daigyakusatsu” no maboroshi, which was published in 1973 and won a prize, created a sensation suggesting that the massacre was a maboroshi, “phantom.” The expanded edition of the book, Shin “Nanking dai-gyakusatsu” no maboroshi (Asuka Shinsha, 1999), is a strenuous attempt to ascribe to Edgar Snow the responsibility of creating the maboroshi—regardless, the author explains, of “whether [the massacre] occurred or not”; see p. 31. Ten years before Suzuki came out with the expanded edition of his book, however, the Kaikōsha, the association of former army officers, had compiled a documentary history of the Nanjing Battle that took into account China’s official documents and concluded that the Japanese army killed 16,000 Chinese POWs and another 16,000 civilians, a total of 32,000, the number—excluding Chinese soldiers—killed in battles. See Handō Kazutoshi, Shōwa-shi: 1926–1945 (Heibonsha, 2009), 198. As to Japanese textbooks’ varying estimates of casualties in the face of Chinese and Korean protests, see Hiroaki Sato, “No Easy Answer to Textbook Controversy,” Japan Times, Oct. 29, 2001 (online; accessed July 11, 2012).
5 Kikuchi Nobuhei, ed., Shōwa 12 nen no Shūkan Bunshun (Bungei Shunjū, 2007), 362–63. The title of this anthology misleads. The magazine from which the articles are drawn is not the weekly Bunshun, but the monthly Hanashi. The editor chose the title on grounds that the monthly in effect was the predecessor of the weekly.
6 “Aki ni-dai.” The poem was later revised, separated into two poems, and included in two of more than a dozen books of poems Mishima compiled, each with a different title. The first part, titled “Aki,” is in HEKIGA, Zenshū 37, 110–11; the second part, “Jakushū,” in Kodama, Zenshū 37, 169–70.
7 Bōjō Toshitami, Hono’o no gen’ei (Kadokawa Shoten, 1971), 9–13.
8 After Mishima’s death, there was naturally an outpouring of reminiscences published. Sakai Hiroshi’s “nonliterary” recollections, published in March 1971, were among them. Andō Takeshi, Mishima Yukio “Nichiroku” (Michitani, 1996), 35–36. Sakai also gave a talk on the same subject at the second memorial service for Mishima, http://mishima.xii.jp/kaiso/yukokuki/2th/index.html (accessed September 1, 2012).
9 “Fuseji,” Zenshū 27, 302–4. Also “Shitei,” Zenshū 27, 41.
10 “Yokokōji,” Zenshū 37, 401–2.
11 Isshūkan shishū, Zenshū 37, 521–39.
12 “Uchi no koneko,” Zenshū 23, 37.
13 “A Certain Country” and “Aru kokudo,” Zenshū 37, 319–22.
14 Mishima has left an unfinished story titled “Bōjō-haku no yaen.” He obviously meant to recreate the baroque atmosphere of the grand Bōjō mansion. Zenshū 20, 652–53.
15 “Kaidai,” Zenshū 19, 788–90.
16 Bōjō, Hono’o no gen’ei, 61.
17 Shōsetsu no kamisama—shōsetsu, “fiction,” in this instance means not “novels” so much as “short stories.” The reason Shiga won that admirable appellation, it is said, was his short story published in 1920, “The Boy’s Deity” (Kozō no kamisama). In the story, a shy member of the House of Peers happens to glimpse a boy unable to pay for a piece of sushi he is dying to eat. Later he goes to a dealer of scales, finds the same boy working as an apprentice, takes him out on the pretext of having him carry the scale he bought, and, after asking a sushi restaurant proprietress to allow the boy to eat as much sushi as he wants, disappears. At the end of the story, the author wonders whether or not he should end the story by turning the generous stranger into a deity for the boy but, deciding that would be “a little cruel” to him, leaves the matter open-ended.
18 Bōjō, Hono’o no gen’ei, 47. The Japanese word for “sentimental” here is amai. Azuma Fumihiko details his reaction to Shiga’s rejection in his story “First Frost” (Hatsushimo), included in Azuma Fumihiko sakuhinshū (Kōdansha, 2007).
19 Fujidana no sugaru, etc., Zenshū 37, 808.
20 “Haha o kataru,” Zenshū 30, 651–52. Originally a talk. Transcript published in the October 1958 issue of Fujin Seikatsu.
21 “Aku no hana—kabuki,” Zenshū 36, 216–17. The recording of this talk was not discovered until years after Mishima’s death. When it was, it was transcribed and published under the title given here.
22 “Watashi no henreki jidai,” Zenshū 32, 306.
23 Yuasa Atsuko, Roy to Kyōko (Chūō Kōron Sha, 1984), 114. Yuasa wrote essays on some parts of her life in Fujin Kōron. When they were gathered in a book, she deleted the reference to “incest” in her essay on Mishima. The original description is quoted by Yashiro Seiichi in his Kishu-tachi no seishun: ano koro no Katō Michio, Mishima Yukio, Akutagawa Hiroshi (Shinchōsha, 1985), 68.
24 Katō Shūichi, Nihon bungaku-shi josetsu, ge (Chikuma Shobō, 1991), 341. Yoshida Seiichi, “Kaisetsu,” Izumi Kyōka, Uta andon, Kōya hijiri (Shinchōsha, 2003), 279.
25 “Ajisai,” Zenshū 26, 44–50.
26 “Ajisai no haha,” Zenshū 34, 553.
27 Hiraoka, Segare, 56–57, 62, 84. “Haha o kataru,” Zenshū 30, 653–54.
28 Nosaka, Kakuyaku-taru gyakkō, 111–15. Nosaka does not directly name Mume’s sons, Yoshiaki and Shigeru, only saying they were Mume’s second and third sons.
29 Hiraoka, Segare, 110.
30 Ōuchi Tsutomu, Fascism e no michi, Nihon no rekishi series, vol. 24 (Chūō Kōron Sha, 1967), 226–28.
31 Hiromatsu Wataru, “Kindai no chōkoku” ron (Kōdansha, 1989), 126–39, Hiromatsu quotes extensively from Sano and Nabeyama’s joint statement in discussing the phenomenon of tenkō, “recanting.” Oketani Hideaki also discusses it in Shōwa seishin-shi (Bungei Shunjū, 1996), 119–24. See also Rikki Kersten,
“The Emperor and the Left in Interwar Japan,” The Emperors of Modern Japan, ed. Ben-Ami Shillony (Leiden, Netherlands, and Boston, Brill: 2008), 107–36. After recanting, many ended up supporting Japan’s imperialist causes. For an interpretation of why they did so, see Katō, Nihon bungaku-shi josetsu, 458–59.
32 “Haji,” Zenshū 28, 198.
33 Mitani, Kyūyū, 36.
34 Ibid., 164–65.
35 Akikaze ya and Akikaze ni, Zenshū 37, 804–5. The editors of this “collected poems” volume unaccountably extracted all the haiku and tanka from Mishima’s books of poems where they exist with poems in other forms and placed them in a single section. Hokan gathers together a good many other haiku and tanka, 193–96.
36 “Nagai Einosuke-shi cho Uguisu o yomite” and “Tanizaki Jun’ichirō-shi cho Yoshino kuzu dokugokan,” Zenshū 26, 57–69, 639–40. Nagai’s story, like many others of his, dealt with the lives of the downtrodden in the Tōhoku (Northeast) region. Mishima wrote these papers probably soon after he advanced to his fourth year at the Middle Division, in April 1940.
37 “Fushin,” Zenshū 37, 449. The poem is dated January 26, 1940.
38 Bōjō, Hono’o no gen’ei, 70–71, 81.
39 “Waga shishunki,” Zenshū 29, 342–46.
Chapter Four: Literary Correspondents
1 Matsumoto Tōru, ed., Nenpyō Sakka Tokuhon: Mishima Yukio (Kawade Shobō Shinsha, 1998), end of 1940. This chronology is unpaged. Hereafter referred to as Tokuhon.
2 Kane, one of Natsuko’s five sisters, was married to Isozaki Seikichi, who attained that title as an engineer. Born in 1877, he was sixty-three in 1940 when Mishima wrote the story. One of Natsuko’s brothers, Sōkichi, was a commander in the navy.
3 “Kaidai,” Zenshū 15, 702.
4 “Azuma Takashi kei o kokusu” and “Azuma Takashi chōshi,” Zenshū 26, 406–13.
5 Tomioka Kōichirō, ed., Mishima Yukio: jūdai shokanshū, (Shinchōsha, 1999). Twenty-one of these letters had appeared in the July 1988 issue of Shinchō, as Tomioka points out in his afterword. Yamaoka Yorihiro, “Azuma Fumihiko to iu bōken,” in Azuma Fumihiko sakuhinshū (Kōdansha, 2007), 393–94.