by Hiroaki Sato
1 Fukuda Tsuneari, “Kamen no kokuhaku ni tsuite,” Mishima Yukio, Kamen no kokuhaku (Shinchōsha, originally 1950), 210–20.
2 Matsumoto, Tokuhon, entry of May 1949.
3 Yashiro, Kishu tachi no seishun, 94–95.
4 Ibid., 66. “Kataku ni tsuite,” Zenshū 27, 178–80.
5 Yashiro, Kishu tachi no seishun, 99–108 (Chapter 7) and Chapter 11. Kimura, Bungei henshūsha, 160.
6 Gene Reeves, trans., The Lotus Sutra (Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2008), 113. Burton Watson, trans., The Lotus Sutra (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 56–57.
7 All included in Zenshū 21. The Wise Men from the East was printed in the March 1939 issue of Hojinkai Zasshi.
8 Letter to Azuma, January 26, 1941, Zenshū 38, 51.
9 “Gikyoku o kakitagaru shōsetsugaki no noto,” Zenshū 27, 222–29. Hofmannsthal’s words are translated from the Japanese Mishima quotes.
10 Jon Livingston, Joe Moore, and Felicia Oldfather, eds., Postwar Japan: 1945 to the Present (New York: Pantheon, 1973), 133–38. Miyazawa Kiichi, then Ikeda’s aide and later minister of finance (five times) and prime minister, described the conditions of the Japanese economy at the time Dodge came to impose his plans following his death, in 1964. “Mr. Dodge’s ban’yū,” Handō, “Bungei Shunjū” ni miru Shōwa-shi, vol. 2, 293–310. Michael Schaller, The American Occupation of Japan: The Origins of the Cold War in Asia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 145.
11 The account left by Takeuchi Keisuke, one of the ten arrested, and jailed, and interrogated, shows how rampant the police and prosecutorial brutalities were at the time, besides the disheartening fact that “the defense lawyer” was in cahoots with the authorities. Even as the nine of them were acquitted, Takeuchi, evidently innocent, was sentenced to death and died in prison just before the execution, in 1947. “Oishii mono kara tabenasai,” “Bungei Shunjū” ni miru Shōwa-shi, vol. 2, 320–40.
12 Yamazaki’s testament and such are included in Zenshū 2, 695–99.
13 Kimura, Bungei henshūsha, 155–56.
14 Andō, “Nichiroku,” 132–33.
15 “Mukashi to ima no kakaku,” Keizai Yōran (Keizai Kikakuchō Chōsakyoku, 1999), 8–9.
16 Nosaka, Kakuyaku-taru gyakkō, 18. As Nosaka notes, kakuyaku, “brilliant,” “glittering,” was one word Mishima used at the moment of his characters’ death.
17 Letter to Kawabata, September 10, 1956, Zenshū 38, 271.
18 Yuasa, Roy to Kyōko, 106. The word for “pompom girl” is pan-pan, the etymology of which is debated to this day, one candidate being the Indonesian word for woman, perempuan. Okuyama Masurō, comp., Kieta Nihongo jiten (Tokyōdō Shuppan, 1993), 224 and the Wikipedia entry on the word.
19 Hashikawa Bunzō, “Mishima Yukio den,” Hashikawa Bunzō chosakushū, vol. 1 (Chikuma Shobō, 1985), 276.
20 “Kōgen hotel,” Zenshū 27, 423–27. The essay has a passage that may scandalize an American or European reader; Mishima takes a bath with the 4-year-old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Watanabe and plays with her.
21 “Bōgetsu bōjitsu,” Zenshū 27, 147–48. Characteristically, in this lighthearted, self-deprecating essay, Mishima cites Delacroix’s description of Théodore Géricault in his Journals and refers to the Book of Revelations.
22 Shibusawa Tatsuhiko, Mishima Yukio: Oboegaki (Chūō Kōron Sha, 1986), 15.
23 For a complete list, see Yashiro, Kishu-tachi no seishun, 131.
24 For the Asahi Shinbun article and Mishima’s essay, “Kumo no Kai hōkoku,” Zenshū 27, 350–52, 714–16. See also Yashiro, Kishu-tachi no seishun, 132–33.
25 Yomota Inuhiko, ed., Ōoka Shōhei: Bungaku no unmei (Kōdansha, 1990), 57–68. Nakamura’s haiku went: Hachi no ki no moenokoritaru yosamu kana, “With just the embers of the potted tree left, the night is cold.”
26 Yuasa, Roy to Kyōko, 86–89.
27 Kinjiki refers to seven specific colors whose use was restricted to the Tennō and his immediate relatives but it appears not to be part of gay lingo. Ishii Tatsuhiko, by private correspondence.
28 Letter to Kawabata, September 10, 1956. Zenshū 38, 269–71.
29 Full sentence: “La mort, nous l’avons déjà remarqué, je crois, dans l’analyse des Confessions, nous affecte plus profondément sous le règne pompeux de l’été.” Here Baudelaire is discussing Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.
30 Fukushima Jirō, Mishima Yukio: Tsurugi to kanbeni (Bungei Shunjū, 1998), 61–82, 103–36.
31 Letter to Kawabata cited above (note 17).
32 Helmuth Ketel (1893–1961) in Chintao Doitsu-hei furyo kenkyūkai, no. 0395 www.melma.com/backnumber_150772_4743420/ (accessed July 11, 2012).
33 Nosaka, Kakuyakutaru gyakkō, 20.
34 Ibid., 21–22.
35 Andō, “Nichiroku,” 134. See also Inagaki Taruho’s taidan, “An Evening with Mr. E(dogawa),” which was originally published in the May 1951 issue of Sakka, and is included in Taruho’s Zenshū, vol. 3 (Chikuma Shobō, 2000), 346–66.
36 Yuasa, Roy to Kyōko, 117–20. “Gorgeous” and “graceful” are the English words Yuasa chose. Kajima Mieko made public only one letter she received from Mishima. That was the one she had from him when she married, in 1957, and she made it public when he married, in 1958. Zenshū 38, 964.
37 Handō, Shōwa-shi: 1926–1945, 317. During the grand ceremony to celebrate the 2,600th anniversary of Japan’s foundation (in a.d. 1940), Handō, then fifteen, was surprised to hear, on the radio, Prince Takamatsu offering formal felicitations to the Tennō, ending his words with “Shin Nobuhito.” He did not know even the Tennō’s own brothers were his “subjects.”
38 Kojima Tsuyoshi, Kindai Nihon no Yōmeigaku (Kōdansha, 2006), 173–74. Yoshida’s grandson and Prime Minister Asō Tarō’s book, Yoshida Shigeru no ryūgi (PHP Kenkyūsho, 2000). For kokutai, see Chapter Sixteen: “The 2.26 Incident, Yūkoku.”
Chapter Ten: Going Overseas
1 Letter to Kawabata, September 10, 1951. Zenshū 38, 269–71. Stanford University’s online archive, “Guide to the Wallace Earle Stegner papers: concerning the Asian-American Literary Exchange, 1949–1954” (accessed July 11, 2012).
2 Hino Ashihei’s “soldier trilogy” consists of The Wheat and the Soldier (Mugi to heitai), which, published in August 1938, sold 1.2 million copies; The Soil and the Soldier (Tsuchi to heitai), September 1938; and The Flower and the Soldier (Hana to heitai), August 1939. All three were published by Kaizōsha. In 1940, Hino received the Asahi Shinbun Culture Award for the trilogy.
3 Hino Ashihei, “Yobitai ichinichi nyūtai ki,” Handō, “Bungei Shunjū” ni miru Shōwa-shi, vol. 2, 404–22.
4 Nakano Yoshio, “Jieitai ni kansuru shikōteki teian.” Nakano Yoshio, Akunin Raisan, ed. Anno Mitsumasa (Chikuma, 1990), 298–99.
5 Yomota, Ōoka Shōhei, 66.
6 Apollo no sakazuki, Zenshū 27, 507–641. Unless otherwise noted, episodes in this section come from this book.
7 “Enshigan no tabibito,” Zenshū 27, 651–52.
8 “Radiguet ni tsukarete—watashi no dokusho henreki,” Zenshū 29, 147.
9 Apollo no sakazuki. Zenshū 27, 529–30. The group discussion “Salome to sono butai.” Zenshū 39, 242.
10 Letter to Kawabata, September 10, 1951, Zenshū 38, 279. Gore Vidal’s own 1995 introduction to The City and the Pillar (New York:Vintage, 2003), xiii–xiv. Christopher Bram, Eminent Outlaws (New York: Twelve, 2012), 8–9. Gore Vidal, Point to Point Navigation (New York: Doubleday, 2006), 147.
11 Donald Richie, The Japan Journals: 1947–2004 (Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press, 2004), 46–47.
12 Donald Richie’s private letter, 9 June 2004.
13 Letter to Kawabata, February 13, 1952, Zenshū 38, 272–73.
14 “Minami no hate no miyako e,” Zenshū 28, 70.
15 Apollo no sakazuki, Zenshū 27, 567–68. The English name, “market gardening ants,” is Huxley’s. The description Mishima quotes, in Japanese, is likely to come from Huxl
ey’s book simply titled Ants, published in 1930.
16 Saeki Shōichi, Hyōden: Mishima Yukio (Chūō Kōron Sha, 1988; originally Shinchōsha, 1978), 183–224. Nathan, Mishima, 112.
17 Andō, “Nichiroku,” 145–46. This letter to Kamogawa is one of those that appeared in print somewhere but then were prevented from becoming more “public.” It is not included in Zenshū 38.
18 “Paris ni horezu,” Zenshū 27, 645–46.
19 Rand Castile, The Way of Tea (Tokyo and New York: John Weatherhill, 1971), 177.
20 The English quotation here is from Sir Richard Jebb’s translation of Oedipus at Colonus. In the nietzsche.holtof.com translation, Silenus says: “What would be best for you is quite beyond your reach: not to have been born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best is to die soon.”
21 Joshua Foa Dienstag, “Nietzsche’s Dionysian Pessimism,” American Political Science Review, vol. 95, no. 4, December 2001, 929.
22 “Hanjo haiken,” Zenshū 27, 659–64.
23 “Eiga Rondo no koto,” Zenshū 27, 670–73.
24 “Jean Rossi-saku, Aoyagi Mizuho-yaku Fukō na shuppatsu,” Zenshū 27, 676–78.
25 “Eiga Shōjo Olivia,” Zenshū 27, 679–81.
26 “Nikutai no akuma,” Zenshū 27, 697, and “Shiseru wakaki tensai Radiguet to eiga Nikutai no akuma ni taisuru watashi no kansatsu,” Zenshū 28, 25–28.
27 Shōno Junzō, one of Itō’s students at junior high school, respected his teacher’s wishes and excluded the four poems Mishima named from the Shinchōsha edition he edited in 1968: Itō Shizuo, Tachihara Michizō, Maruyama Kaoru.
28 July 29, 1955, Shōsetsuka no kyūka, Zenshū 28, 637–38.
29 “Itō Shizuo,” Zenshū 28, 126–29.
30 “Gendai seinen no mujun o han’ei—Hoan Daigaku,” Zenshū 28, 149–53.
31 Yashiro, Kishu-tachi no seishun, 187–89, 193–94; also 19–23, 71–81. Akutagawa quoted, ibid., 148. Mishima, Watashi no henreki jidai, Zenshū 32, 309.
32 “Katō Michio-shi no koto,” Zenshū 28, 535–37. See also Yashiro, Kinshu-tachi no seishun, 20–23.
33 Letter to Keene, July 29, 1962, Zenshū 38, 380. Yashiro’s accounts vary. When he wrote about it for the first time, he appears to have specified the date (December 31, 1953) and the place (a bar on the Ginza)—see the section on the last part of 1953 in Matsumoto Tōru’s Tokuhon—but when he assembled his recollections in a book, he was not quite certain. Yashiro, Kishu-tachi no seishun, 211–12. Mishima also played with Keene’s name, unless of course Keene himself did. The set of characters he came up with for him in the same letter was , “Roaring Naruto’s demonic trope”—Naruto being the strait between Awaji Island and Shikoku famed for its giant tidal whirlpools.
Chapter Eleven: The Girlfriend
1 “Kamijima no omoide,” Zenshū 28, 455–57. Originally written for a local publication, hence the polite language. The proper pronunciation of what Mishima called “Kamijima” may be Kamishima, though it may be depend on who is doing the pronunciation.
2 Hiraoka, Segare, 97–99.
3 “Jūhassai to sanjūyonsai no shōzōga,” Zenshū 31, 216, 220–22. The original title for Gunzō was Bungaku jiden, “literary autobiography.”
4 For the comments on The Sound of Waves, see Matsumoto, Tokuhon.
5 Yomota Inuhiko, Nihon eiga-shi 100 nen (Shūeisha, 2000), 132–33.
6 Mishima wrote at least a dozen articles on Kamishima and The Sound of Waves. Most of the information in the preceding paragraphs related to Mishima is extracted from “Shiosai roke zuikōki,” Zenshū 28, 377–83, and “Kamijima no omoide” (note 1, above).
7 Yomota, Nihon eiga-shi 100 nen, 134.
8 Sometimes translated as Hell Screen.
9 “Nakamura Shikan ron,” Zenshū 27, 151–52.
10 Another name of jōruri. This came about because in the 1910s the Bunraku became the sole troupe to perform jōruri, the others having closed shop.
11 “Boku no Jigokuhen,” Zenshū 28, 338. One of the sources of the play is “Saru-Genji sōshi,” as Mishima makes clear in “Iwashi-uri koi no hikiami ni tsuite,” Zenshū 28, 385–86. The story is included in Ichiko Teiji, ed. and annot., Otogi sōshi (Iwanami Shoten, 1958).
12 Liza Dalby and Nagasaka Junko by private communications.
13 “Eiga, kekkon o kataru,” in Yamauchi Yukihito, ed., Mishima Yukio eiga-ron shūsei (Wise Shuppan, 1999) 386–95.
14 Andō, Mishima Yukio no shōgai, 170.
15 Minakami Tsutomu, Kinkaku enjō (Shichōsha, 1986; originally 1979), 243–44.
16 Nakamura Mitsuo, “Kinkakuji ni tsuite,” Mishima Yukio, Kinkakuji (Shinchōsha, 1960), 306.
17 “Muromachi no bigaku—Kinkakuji,” Zenshū 33, 401–2.
18 Okuno Takeo, “Kaisetsu,” Ishihara Shintarō, Taiyō no kisetsu (Shinchōsha, 1957), 318–20.
19 July 6, Shōsetuka no kyūka, Zenshū 28, 576.
20 “Shinjin no kisetsu,” Zenshū 39, 263.
21 “Ishihara Shintarō-shi,” Zenshū 29, 201–2.
22 Shōsetsuka no kyūka, Zenshū 28, 578–79.
23 Letters to Gotō Sadako remain uncollected.
24 “Muromachi no bigaku—Kinkakuji,” Zenshū 33, 400–402.
25 Ibid., 401–2.
26 Letter to Tamari, November 9, 1955, Zenshū 38, 686.
27 Tamari Hitoshi, geppō to Zenshū 28.
28 “Bodybiru tetsugaku,” Zenshū 29, 285.
29 Yuasa, Roy to Kyōko, 123.
30 Okuno, Mishima Yukio densetsu, 337–39.
31 “Jikkanteki sports-ron,” Zenshū 33, 162–65.
32 Okuno, Mishima Yukio densetsu, 364.
33 Yuasa, Roy to Kyōko, 121–27.
Chapter Twelve: The Kinkakuji
1 “Bi no katachi,” Zenshū 39, 277–97.
2 Nakamura Mitsuo, “Kinkakuji ni tsuite,” Mishima Yukio, Kinkakuji (Shinchōsha, 1960), 306–7.
3 Saeki Shōichi’s afterword, Mishima Yukio, Kinkakuji (Shinchōsha, 1960), 298–99.
4 “Atogaki,” Zenshū 28, 387–89. For his program note, see Zenshū 22, 687–89.
5 Andō, “Nichiroku,” 167.
6 “Kaisetsu,” Mishima Yukio, Hanazakari no mori, Yūkoku (Shinchōsha, 1967), 285.
7 Letter to Mishima, October 23, 1956, Kawabata Yasunari, Mishima Yukio, Ōfuku shokan, 98–99. Letter to Kawabata, November 1, 1956, Zenshū 38, 278–80. The sales figure is from Andō, “Nichiroku,” 198.
8 April 12, 1959. Ratai to ishō, Zenshū 30, 225.
9 Letter to Harold Strauss, July 30, 1955. Kawabata Zenshū hokan, vol. 2 (Shinchōsha, 1984), 371. The main part of Kawabata’s letter had to do with the “extremely shy” William Faulkner’s visit to Japan.
10 Keene’s letter quoted by Mishima, March 19, 1959, Ratai to ishō, Zenshū 30, 215.
11 The New York dispatch quoted in full, Zenshū 29, 777–78.
12 Richie, Japan Journals, 148 and elsewhere. Also, Peter Grilli, e-mail of October 24, 2004.
13 Donald Keene, comp. and ed., Modern Japanese Literature: From 1868 to Present Day (New York: Grove Press, 1956), 429–38.
14 Ratai to ishō, Zenshū 30, 149–51.
15 Yamamoto’s comment quoted in Tokuhon. Ishii Tatsuhiko, “Rokumeikan,” Kokubungaku, July 1986 (Mishima special), 94.
16 James Legge, trans., The She King; The Book of Ancient Poetry (Trübner and Co., 1876), 190.
17 “Kaidai,” Zenshū 22, 656–57, 659–61.
18 Tomita Hitoshi, Rokumeikan—gi-Seiyōka no sekai (Hakusuisha, 1984), 224–27.
19 “Rokumeikan no koto domo,” Zenshū 37, 807–8.
20 Kuno Akiko, Rokumeikan no kifujin: Ōyama Sutematsu (Chūō Kōron Sha, 1993), 204. Ōyama Sutematsu, the author Kuno’s great grandmother, spent ten years in the US, from 1871 to 1881, and attended Vassar. She was unusually long-legged for a Japanese woman of the day, Kuno writes.
21 Claude Schumacher, ed., Victor Hugo: Four Plays (Methuen, 2004), xxxii. Lucretia’s cry in Richard J. Hand’s translation.,
ibid., 286.
22 Muramatsu, Mishima Yukio no sekai, 362.
23 Comments on The Rokumeikan are in “‘Rokumeikan’ ni tsuite” (three essays with the same title) and “Gakuya de kakareta engekiron,” Zenshū 29, 288, 326–27, 334–45, 419–31.
24 “Hidari no hiza no chiisana kizuato,” Zenshū 29, 423–24.
25 “Kame wa usagi ni oitsuku ka—iwayuru kōshinkoku no sho-mondai,” Zenshū 29, 278.
26 Letter to Kawabata, November 1, 1956, Zenshū 38, 279–80.
27 “Shōsetsu to wa nani ka,” Zenshū 34, 735.
28 NHK morning interview on January 26, 1958. Zenshū 30, 9.
29 “Britannicus shūji no ben,” Zenshū 29, 500–501.
30 “Shūjisha atogaki,” Zenshū 29, 510–15.
31 “Chōhen shōsetsu no gekika—Kinkakuji ni tsuite,” Zenshū 29, 537–38. Speilhagen’s observation is translated from the Japanese Mishima quotes.
32 “Hanjo ni tsuite,” Zenshū 29, 593–94. The English translation is from Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, trans. M. D. Herter Norton (New York: W. W. Norton, 1949), 202. Or, as William Needham has it in his translation (online): “at her prime she lamented not one who had left her embrace empty but the one who was no longer possible, the one who had grown by their love,” http://archive.org/stream/TheNotebooksOfMalteLauridsBrigge/TheNotebooksOfMalteLauridsBrigge_djvu.txt (accessed July 11, 2012). An English translation of the original Hanjo, by Royall Tyler, is included in Donald Keene, ed., Twenty Plays of the No Theatre (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), 129–45. In the translation, it is called Lady Han.
33 Andō, “Nichiroku,” 213. “New York buratsuki,” Zenshū 30, 265–68.
Chapter Thirteen: Overseas Again
1 “Mukashi to ima no kakaku,” Keizai Yōran, 270, 5 (for statistics). For Nakano’s words, Handō, Shōwa-shi: sengo-hen: 1945–1989, 413. For a general description, Rōyama Masamichi, Yomigaeru Nihon, Nihon no rekishi series, vol. 26 (Chūō Kōron Sha, 1967), 36.
2 Rōyama, Yomigaeru Nihon, 210–20.
3 “Denki sentakuki no mondai,” Zenshū 29, 125.