Persona

by Hiroaki Sato

  6 Letter to Shimizu, March 5, 1942, Zenshū 38, 547–48.

  7 “Dōwa zanmai,” Zenshū 26, 53.

  8 Satō Sōnosuke, “Jūsannendo no shishū,” Kōhon: Miyazawa Kenji zenshū, vol. 14 (Chikuma Shobō, 1982), 1082.

  9 Letter to Azuma, February 24, 1941, Zenshū 38, 59.

  10 Sept mystères du destin de l’Europeis, by Jules Romains and translated into English as Seven Mysteries of Europe and briefly reviewed in Foreign Affairs in 1941, and Tragédie en France, by André Maurois and translated into English as Tragedy in France, were both published in 1940. The Japanese translation of the title of the latter is France yaburetari, “France Defeated.” A commentator on a 2005 reissue of the Japanese translation notes that the original Japanese edition appeared in October 1940, just a month after Maurois’s book was published. Germany’s occupation of Paris occurred on June 14 that year.

  11 “Kaidai,” Zenshū 15, 705–6. A decade later Mishima rewrote the story by changing the narrator, though not the title.

  12 Letter to Azuma, January 21, 1941, Zenshū 38, 49–50.

  13 “Radiguet,” Zenshū 26, 80–87. About the same time perhaps, Mishima wrote two unfinished essays: “Radiguet to sono sakuhin,” of which “Radiguet” evidently is a rewrite, and “Le Diable au corps ni tsuite,” Zenshū 36, 511–18.

  14 Hagakure nyūmon, Zenshū 34, 475.

  15 “Issatsu no hon,” Zenshū 32, 624. “Waga seishun no sho,” Zenshū 33, 596.

  16 Okuno Takeo, Mishima Yukio densetsu (Shinchōsha, 1993), 103.

  17 Shigeta Mariko, Tahuho/Miraiha (Kawada Shobō Shinsha, 1997), 25, 63. Hatori Tetsuya’s “Sakka annai,” Kawabata Yasunari, Suishō gensō, Kinjū (Kōdansha, 1992), 307.

  18 “Kaisetsu,” Zenshū 36, 170.

  19 “Sanpūko ga happyō sareru made,” in Inagaki Taruho zenshū, vol. 8 (Chikuma Shobō, 2001), 231. An inveterate rewriter, Inagaki later changed the title to “Utsukushiki itokenaki fujin ni hajimaru” (included in Inagaki Taruho zenshū, vol. 7, Chikuma Shobō, 2001), a phrase that appears in Mori Ōgai’s translation of Faust. The eight stories in the original selection were dispersed into three volumes of the twelve-volume zenshū: 1, 3, and 7.

  20 Letter to Azuma, November 16, 1941, Zenshū 38, 101–2.

  21 “Favorite,” Inagaki Taruho zenshū, vol. 3 (Chikuma Shobō, 2000), 177–78.

  22 Letter to Azuma, December 29, 1941, Zenshū 38, 109.

  23 Azuma Fumihiko sakuhinshū, 55.

  24 There is a chronological discrepancy between Mishima and Azuma on this story. Azuma noted that he completed Winterscape in November 1942, a year after Mishima’s letter. The chronology attached to a collection of his writings, with Mishima’s foreword, more or less follows Azuma’s dating and notes that Azuma wrote the story “from November to December” 1942. It adds that, with Muro’o Saisei’s compliments, the story was published in the February 1943 issue of Mita Bungaku. Azuma Fumihiko sakuhinshū, 55, 413. In the letter discussed here Mishima congratulates Azuma on the news that his story has been accepted by Mita Bungaku with Saisei’s high praise. Zenshū 38, 109–10.

  25 Shimizu Fumio, “Hanazakari no mori o megutte,” geppō, Mishima Yukio zenshū (first series), vol. 1 (Shinchōsha, 1975).

  26 See Chapter Sixteen: “The 2.26 Incident, Yūkoku.”

  27 Odakane Jirō, Hasuda Zenmei to sono shi (Chikuma Shobō, 1970), 148 (statement of purpose), 140 (Hasuda’s diary of February 17, 1938), and 476–83 (Moto’ori Norinaga).

  28 Uiyamabumi.

  29 Simon Winchester, The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 29.

  30 Handō, Shōwa-shi tansaku 1926–1945, vol. 6 (Chikuma Shobō, 2007), 384.

  31 Nakamura Yukihiko, ed. and annot., Ueda Akinari shū (Iwanami Shoten, 1959), 312.

  32 Odakane, Hasuda Zenmei, 508–19. For Mishima’s thoughts on the Niwa incident, “Taidan: Ningen to Bungaku,” Zenshū 40, 151–53.

  33 Odakane, Hasuda Zenmei, 5–7, 578–87. Odakane, after interviewing those who were involved with Hasuda, emphasized that Hasuda’s action was partly because of the suspicion that Nakajō was Korean. A later writer ascertained that Nakajō was not, but even if he was, there were a number of Korean officers in the Japanese Army, including a lieutenant general.

  34 Shimizu Fumio, “Mishima Yukio no koto,” Gunzō special Nihon no sakka 18: Mishima Yukio (Shōgakukan, 1990), 76. Odakane, Hasuda Zenmei, 593–94.

  35 Odakane, Hasuda Zenmei, 464.

  36 Letter to Azuma, July 24, 1941, Zenshū 38, 81. Also, Zenshū 15, 707. For some reason, Horiguchi translated the title of the poem not as rufuran, “refrains,” but as shanson, “chanson.”

  37 Horiguchi Daigaku, Gekka no ichigun (Shinchōsha, 1955), 125–26. In his translation, Horiguchi changed the title from “Refrains” to “Chanson.” Mishima used the second stanza as the epigraph to his story.

  38 “Hanazakari no mori, Yūkoku kaisetsu,” Zenshū 35, 173.

  39 Odakane, Hasuda Zenmei, 9–20.

  40 This is more or less Shimizu’s recollection. Mishima himself has left different accounts, saying in one that it was largely his own devising and in another that he worked out the Yukio part with Shimizu. He liked Man’yōshū-style tanka and admired the tanka poet Itō Sachio (1864–1913), so they suggested Yukio as sounding alike, etc. “Man’yō-chō ga sukide—watashi no penname,” Hokan, 156–57. In that brief essay, written for the weekly Mainichi, he suggests that the name sounded “sissy” and he was “embarrassed” by it. See also “Atogaki” to the 6-volume Mishima Yukio sakuhinshū, Zenshū 28, 114–15. His father Azusa’s account is very different. Hiraoka, Segare, 94–96. Azuma’s father, Suehiko, a noted scholar of law and a publisher, thought that Mishima was inspired by the name Yukiko, a character in one of his son’s stories. Azuma Fumihiko sakuhinshū, 396.

  41 Shimizu, “Hanazakari no mori o megutte.”

  42 “Kamunagara no michi” and “Radiguet,” Zenshū 26, 88–90 and 80–87.

  43 Letter to Azuma, November 10, 1941, Zenshū 38, 100.

  44 Hiroaki Sato, “Repercussions of War Gone Bad,” Japan Times, January 25, 2009.

  45 Hayashi, Taiheiyō sensō, 122–24, 234–36.

  46 Letter to Azuma, January 7, 1942, Zenshū 38, 111.

  47 Kaisen no shōsho can be found at http://homepage1.nifty.com/sira/war/index.html (accessed July 11, 2012).

  48 “Taishō,” Zenshū 37, 708–9. The two Chinese characters for the word are also read Ō-mikotonori.

  49 Odakane, Hasuda Zenmei, 470 (Itō’s Taishō), 486–87 (Haru no yuki), and 504–5.

  50 Letter to Azuma, February 16, 1942, Zenshū 38, 116.

  51 Karafuto Nichinichi Shinbun, August 22, 1930, 2.

  52 Letter to Azuma, February 3, 1943, Zenshū 38, 141.

  53 “Shōwa 19-nen Shōgatsu,” Zenshū 26, 418–19.

  54 “Batsu (Bōjō Toshitami cho Matsuei),” Zenshū 27, 149–50.

  55 Letter to Tokugawa, September 25, 1943, Zenshū 38, 704–5.

  56 “Kiken,” Zenshū 19, 619–20.

  Chapter Five: First Love

  1 “Gakushūin no sotsugyōshiki,” Zenshū 29, 499.

  2 “Jūhassai to sanjūyonsai no shōzōga,” Zenshū 31, 224.

  3 Yamamoto Shichihei, Ichi-kakyū shōkō no mita Teikoku Rikugun (Bungei Shunjū, 1987), 29.

  4 Matsumoto, Tokuhon, 1944 section.

  5 Letter to Azusa and Shizue, January 14, 1945, Zenshū 38, 814.

  6 Mitani, Kyūyū, 14 and 50.

  7 Fuji Masaharu, Fuji Masaharu sakuhinshū, vol.1 (Iwanami Shoten, 1988), 404–7.

  8 Letter to Azuma, September 4, 1943, Zenshū 38, 962–63.

  9 Letter to Shimizu, November 14, 1943, Zenshū 38, 581.

  10 The Hosei University online series: “Genron, shuppan, gakumon kenkyū ni taisuru dan’atsu,” http://oohara.mt.tama.hosei.ac.jp/rn/senji2/rnsenji2-176.html (accessed July 11, 2012). Noda Untarō, Hai no kisetsu (Shūdōsha, 1958), 3–4.

&nb
sp; 11 Letter to Fuji, March 25, 1944, Zenshū 38, 855.

  12 “Hanazakari no mori shuppan no koro,” Zenshū 30, 285.

  13 “Watashi no henreki jidai,” Zenshū 32, 278.

  14 Okuno, Mishima Yukio densetsu,131–32.

  15 Karafuto Nichinichi Shinbun, August 22, 1930.

  16 “Kaidai,” Zenshū 15, 708–9.

  17 Shōno Junzō et al., eds., Itō Shizuo, Tachihara Michizō, Maruyama Kaoru (Shinchōsha, 1968), 23, 112.

  18 Letter to Shimizu, November 4, 1943, Zenshū 38, 581–82.

  19 Odakane, Hasuda Zenmei, 506–7.

  20 Odakane Jirō, Shijin, sono shōgai to unmei: shokan to sakuhin kara mita Itō Shizuo (Shinchōsha, 1965), 725–26.

  21 Itō Shizuo, Itō Shizuo zenshū, 312–314. Mishima’s foreword to Hasuda Zenmei to sono shi, Zenshū 36, 60–63.

  22 “Itō Shizuo-shi o itamu.” Zenshū 28, 138–39.

  23 “Batsu ni kaete.” Zenshū 26, 441. “Itō Shizuo-shi o itamu.” Zenshū 28, 138–39.

  24 “Waga aishōgin,” Zenshū 36, 649.

  25 Letter to Shimizu, August 25, 1944, Zenshū 38, 594.

  26 Hayashi, Taiheiyō sensō, 354.

  27 Ibid., 327–35, 417–24. Iwami, Kishi Nobusuke, 84–85. 156–57. This made Kishi suspect that he might be assassinated. The commander of the Tokyo Kenpeitai indeed came to threaten him, but Kishi managed to repel him.

  28 Mitani Takanobu, Kaisōroku (Chūō Kōron Sha, 1999), 37, 75–79.

  29 Liza Dalby, Kimono: Fashioning Culture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), 131 and elsewhere. The collection of descriptions of daily life during the war by ordinary people, Sensō-chū no kurashi no kiroku (Kurashi no Techō Sha, 1979), has photos and descriptions of monpe, 20–21.

  30 Waga shishunki, Zenshū 29, 370.

  31 “Musuko no bunsai,” etc., Zenshū 39, 131. It is a threesome discussion between Mishima, Shizue, and Tamura Akiko, an actress-director of the Bungaku-za.

  32 Mitani, Kyūyū, 162.

  33 Hiraoka, Segare, 87.

  34 “Hanazakari no mori no koro,” Zenshū 34, 616–17.

  35 Letter to Azuma, March 15, 1942. Zenshū 38, 959.

  36 Both letter and article are included in F. D. Dickins’s biography, The Life of Sir Harry Parkes, Sometime Her Majesty’s Minister to China and Japan (London: Macmillan, 1894). See the translation by Takanashi Kenkichi, Parkes den (Heibonsha, 1984), 84–92.

  37 Mishima spelled it in his notes for the story, Zirkus.

  38 Letter to Azuma, July 29, 1943, Zenshū 38, 169–70.

  39 Paul Kahn, adapt., The Secret History of the Mongols: The Origin of Chingis Khan (Cheng and Tsui Company, 1998), 11–12.

  40 Mishima reading “Circus” and other works on cassette tape (Shinchōsha, 1988).

  41 Noda Utarō, Hai no kisetsu (Shūdōsha, 1958), 117, 136–38, 227–31. As to when Noda initially conveyed Mishima’s wishes to Kawabata, see Kawabata Yasunari, Mishima Yukio, Ōfuku shokan (Shinchōsha, 2000; originally 1977), 211–12.

  42 The letters between Kawabata and Mishima are assembled in Kawabata Yasunari, Mishima Yukio, Ōfuku shokan. Mishima’s letters to Kawabata are also included in Zenshū 38. Some of Mishima’s early letters to Kawabata and all of Kawabata’s letters to Mishima are included in Kawabata Yasunari zenshū hokan 2: Shokan raikan shō, nikki, techō, note (Shinchōsha, 1984).

  43 “Kūshū no ki,” Zenshū 26, 515–18.

  44 Hiraoka, Segare, 111. Also, Mishima’s letter to parents on January 29, 1945, Zenshū 38, 827–28.

  45 Muramatsu, Mishima Yukio no sekai, 63.

  46 Mitani, Kyūyū, 15–16.

  47 “Baldassare no shi,” Zenshū 26, 578–79.

  48 Marcel Proust, Pleasures and Days, trans. Andrew Brown (Hesperus Press, 2004), 14.

  49 Letter to Mitani and letter to Azusa and Shizue, January 20, 1945, Zenshū 38, 905 and 818–19.

  50 Okuno, Mishima Yukio densetsu, 137.

  51 The Brothers Čapek, R.U.R. and The Insect Play (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961). The description of the brothers comes from the back cover of this edition.

  52 “Shōwa 19-nen Shōgatsu,” Zenshū 26, 618–19.

  53 Letter to Mitani, January 6, 1945, Zenshū 38, 903.

  54 Alan Tansman, “Bridges to Nowhere: Yasuda Yojūrō’s Language of Violence and Desire,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, vol. 56, no.1., June 1996, 69.

  55 Konishi Jin’ichi, Nihon bungei-shi, vol. 5, (Kōdansha, 1985–1992), 841.

  56 Robert Wargo, The Logic of Nothingness: A Study of Nishida Kitarō (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2005), 1–7.

  57 Quoted in Oketani Hideaki, Shōwa seishin-shi: sengo-hen (Bungei Shunjū, 2003), 344. For Tansman’s partial translation, see “Bridges to Nowhere,” 38.

  58 Konishi, Nihon bungei-shi, 840.

  59 Hiromatsu, “Kindai no chōkoku” ron, 181.

  60 Oketani, Shōwa seishin-shi, 150–52.

  61 “Kakekotoba,” Zenshū 26, 380–83. The essay was published in the November 1943 issue of Bungei Bunka.

  62 “Watashi no henreki jidai,” Zenshū 32, 274–75.

  63 The quoted words are of Gen. Curtis LeMay, who, with Robert McNamara, planned and executed the incineration of Japan; these words are cited in many places. The figures are from the Tokyo air raid survivor Saotome Katsumoto’s reconstruction of the raid in Tokyo dai-kūshū (Iwanami Shoten, 1971),183–90. For a brief account of the raid, see Ronald H. Spector, Eagle against the Sun: The American War with Japan (New York: Free Press, 1985), 504–5. For Mary McCarthy, see Kai Bird and Lawrence Lifschultz, Hiroshima’s Shadow (Branford, CT: Pamphleteer’s Press, 1998), 303. It took fifty-seven years for Saotome and others to create a museum to commemorate the disaster, The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage. See also Hiroaki Sato, “Great Tokyo Air Raid Was a War Crime,” Japan Times, September 30, 2002 (online; accessed July 11, 2012).

  64 Mitani, Kyūyū, 63. The account here blends what Mitani says in his book and what Mishima says in Confessions and My Puberty.

  65 Saotome, Tokyo Dai-kūshū, 191–212.

  Chapter Six: The War and Its Aftermath

  1 Inose Naoki, Shōwa 16-nen natsu no haisen (Chūō Kōron Sha, 2010; originally 1983). The title of the book, which is devoted to the Total War Research Institute (Sōryokusen Kenkyūsho), says that the war had been lost even before it started. Terasaki and Miller, Shōwa Tennō dokuhakuroku, 246–48.

  2 Hayashi, Taiheiyō sensō, 378–79.

  3 Ishihara Kanji, Sensō-shi taikan, (Chūō Kōron Shinsha, 2002), 30. Tsunoda Fusako, Amakasu tai’i (Chikuma Shobō, 2005), 302–6. Aoe Shunjirō, Ishihara Kanji (Chūō Kōron Shinsha, 1992), 440–41.

  4 Nakano’s “Senji saishō-ron” can be found (with Japanese encoding) at http://www.sal.tohoku.ac.jp/~kirihara/senji.html (accessed July 11, 2012).

  5 Kihira Teiko, Chichi to ko no Shōwa hishi (Kawade Shobō Shinsha, 2004), 144–54.

  6 Nichibei shōtotsu no hisshi to kokumin no kakugo (Keibunkan, 1921). The 128-page book probably was an extended version of one of Uesugi’s speeches. Three years earlier, Uesugi had published a much larger book titled Nihonjin no dai-shimei to shin-kiun, “The great mission for the Japanese and a new opportunity.” He was a demigod among rightwingers.

  7 Ōmori Yoshitarō, “Hito to shite no Minobe Tatsukichi hakushi,” Handō Kazutoshi, ed.,“Bungei Shunjū” ni miru shōwa-shi, vol. 1 (Bungei Shunjū, 1995), 297. The Marxist scholar-journalist Ōmori’s article was originally published in 1935.

  8 Parabellum was the penname of the German author Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff. The book published in the US was a translation. The July 12, 1908 review in the New York Times was titled “Banzai—How Japan Fought the U.S.—and Lost.”

  9 The General Staff devised this measure, which Ōnishi himself called gedō, “something outside the command structure, heretical,” Ōnishi was opposed to the idea of going to war with the United States.” Handō, Shōwa-shi tansaku 1926–1945, vol. 6 385, 398, 412. In Nobilit
y of Failure (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975), Ivan Morris devotes a whole chapter to the subject, in “The Kamikaze Fighters.” He dedicated the book to Mishima Yukio.

  10 The five-syllable phrase kamikaze no (kamukaze no) was originally an epithet that modified Ise, the region typhoons frequently visit. Ise is where the most important shrine was built.

  11 Handō, Shōwa-shi tansaku 1926–1945, vol. 6, 405. Ugaki Matome, Sensōroku (Hara Shobō, 1968), 126–36.

  12 Hiromatsu, “Kindai no chōkoku” ron, 17–19. Nakamura Mitsuo, Nihon no kindai (Bungei Shunjū, 1968), 9.

  13 The short essay is partially quoted in Noda, Hai no kisetsu, 114–15. Yokomitsu wrote it at the request of the all-powerful Information Bureau (Jōhō-kyoku) that planned to publish a propaganda magazine for the Chinese.

  14 Letter of Mitani, April 21, 1945. Zenshū 38, 917–18. Mitani, Kyūyū, 92–93.

  15 “Shōwa 20-nen 8-gatsu no kinen ni,” Zenshū 26, 551–59.

  16 Letter to Shimizu, June 18, 1943, Zenshū 38, 574.

  17 By private correspondence.

  18 “Watashi no henreki jidai,” Zenshū 32, 279.

  19 Yamamoto Shichihei, Aru ijō taikensha no henken (Bungei Shunjū, 1988), 79–80. This story is worth citing if only because Yamamoto, who served the war as a lieutenant in an artillery unit, was among the most skeptical writers on the war.

  20 There is a problem with this poem. It may well have been a concoction. Wakabayashi Tōichi wrote poems, one of them even set to music, but his writings assembled for a memorial volume by a group of survivors half a century after his death do not include it or make any reference to it. So who wrote the poem? Probably the makers of the film on the soldier. But, whether it was in fact written for the film is well nigh impossible to ascertain today. The script, by Yasumi Toshio, was apparently lost. The movie itself was confiscated by the Occupation, and by the time it was returned to Japan by agreement between the Library of Congress and the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, in 1967, only 8 minutes of the original 92 remained. The remaining portion does not have anything like a poem like this. Private correspondence from Nagasaka Toshihisa, who saw the move at the National Film Center.