by Hiroaki Sato
35 Kōdachi Noaki, Tokkō no Shin’i: Ōnishi Takijirō wahei e no message (Bungei Shunjū, 2011), 296–98.
36 “Kaidai,” Zenshū 20, 793.
37 “Atogaki,” Zenshū 33, 415–16.
38 Yukio Mishima and Geoffrey Bownas, eds., New Writing in Japan (London: Penguin, 1972), 22.
39 “Aikokushin,” Zenshū 34, 648.
40 Isoda Kōichi, Junkyō no bigaku (Tōjusha, 1969), 152.
41 “2.26 Jiken to watashi,” Zenshū 34, 111–12.
42 “Eroticism,” Zenshū 31, 414.
43 Georges Bataille, Erotism: Death and Sensuality, trans. Mary Dalwood (San Francisco: City Lights, 1987), 11, 105. The English title is that of the 1987 City Lights edition of 1962 translation, Death and Sensuality: A Study of Eroticism and the Taboo.
44 “Brilliant na sakuhin,” Zenshū 31, 229.
45 Matsumoto, Shōwa-shi hakkutsu, vol. 3, 200–202.
46 Tokuoka Takao, with Donald Keene, Tōyū kikō (Chūō Kōron Sha, 1973), 147–53.
47 “Nikki,” Zenshū 31, 585–86.
48 “Ōoka Makoto cho Jojō no hihan,” Zenshū 31, 567–68.
49 Tanaka, Mishima Yukio: Kamo no kagebōshi, 197–202.
Chapter Seventeen: Assassinations
1 “Daitōryō senkyo,” Zenshū 31, 507–9.
2 “Theatre: Two Noh Plays by Mishima; Both on the Theme of Shattered Romance Presented by ANTA Matinee Series,” New York Times, November 16, 1960.
3 “Kōkaku no awa,” Zenshū 31, 517–22. The production was big enough a deal for the Japanese media and the Mainichi Shinbun carried a sizable dispatch from New York on it. The article is reproduced in Zenshū 31, 706–7.
4 Letter to Keene, October 15, 1960, Zenshū 38, 361.
5 Letter to Kawabata, November 24, 1960, Zenshū 38, 293.
6 “Porutogaru no Omoide,” Zenshū 31, 559.
7 “Pyramid to mayaku,” Zenshū 31, 524–27.
8 “Bi ni sakarau mono,” Zenshū 31, 546–58.
9 Letter to Keene, February 23, 1961, Zenshū 38, 365–66.
10 “Fūryū mutan no suisensha de wa nai,” Zenshū 31, 534–35. The statement was published in Mishima’s main publisher Shinchōsha’s weekly magazine.
11 Muramatsu, Mishima Yukio no sekai, 349–52.
12 Such as the second issue of Scandal Dai-sensō (Rokusaisha, 2002). This issue reprints both “sealed” stories, Fūryū mutan and Seiji shōnen shisu. The literary critic Watanabe Hiroshi says Ōe’s story Seventeen, which continues to be published, is “crippled” without Seiji shōnen shisu. Watanabe Hiroshi, “Kaisetsu,” Ōe Kenzaburō, Seiteki ningen (Shinchōsha, 1989), 233.
13 Muramatsu, Mishima Yukio no sekai, 358. He quotes Mishima’s brother Chiyuki denying ever telling Nathan that the Shimanaka Incident and other rightwing actions led to “Mishima’s ‘swing to the right’ to his determination to overcome the ‘profound fear of the Right.’” See Nathan, Mishima, 187.
14 Yamamoto Kiyokatsu, Yūmon no sokoku bōei fu (Nihon Bungei Sha, 1980), 89–90.
15 Letters to Keene, March 16 and April 4, 1961. Zenshū 38, 366–72.
16 “America-jin no Nihon shinwa,” Zenshū 31, 631–32.
17 “Japanese Youth,” Zenshū 31, 641–49. The text is in English.
18 “Holiday shi ni manekarete,” Zenshū 31, 650–53.
19 Faubion Bowers, “A Memory of Mishima,” Village Voice, December 3, 1970 (online; accessed July 11, 2012).
20 “Recommending Mr. Yasunari Kawabata for the 1961 Nobel Prize for Literature,” Zenshū 31, 572–73, and Kawabata Yasunari, Mishima Yukio, Ōfuku shokan, 149–51, 238–39. Zenshū 31 says Mishima’s original Japanese does not remain. That suggests the Japanese version in Ōfuku shokan is a translation of Saeki’s translation.
21 Muramatsu, Mishima Yukio no sekai, 370.
22 “Shūmatsukan to bungaku,” Zenshū 32, 19–22.
23 Okuno Takeo, “Kaisetsu,” Utsukushii Hoshi (Shinchōsha, 1967), 365.
24 “‘Soratobu enban’ no kansoku ni shippai shite,” Zenshū 32, 649.
25 Kawabata Yasunari, Suishō gensō, Kinjū (Kōdansha, 2005), 201–2.
26 “Kawabata Yasunari best three,” Zenshū 28, 459.
27 “Kaisetsu,” Zenshū 34, 601–2.
28 “Kawabata Yasunari-shi ni kiku,” Zenshū 39, 379–80 and 389–90.
29 Kawabata Yasunari, “Atogaki,” Koto (Shinchōsha, 2008), 242–43.
30 “Saikin no Kawabata-san,” Zenshū 32, 108.
31 Itasaka, Kyokusetsu: Mishima Yukio, 254–60. The practice of ghostwriting (daisaku) among literary writers since Meiji had to do with the apprenticeship system and “the literary guild” but the matter appears largely unexplored. See Sone Hiroyoshi, “Daisaku no kowasa” (Kaien, September 1968), 166–67. A glimpse of Itō Sei ghostwriting for Kawabata may be gained in Itō’s letters to Kawabata, Kawabata Yasunari zenshū hokan 2, 121–36. Prof. Ōta Reiko, of Shōwa Joshi Daigaku, helped corroborate this information through private correspondence.
32 About this title Marguerite Yourcenar wondered if it may come from D’Annunzio’s play about Saint Sebastian where “the Emperor suggests smothering Sebastian under a mound of roses.” Mishima: A Vision of the Void, 129.
33 Hosoe Eikō, “Shashinshū Bara-kei ni matsuwaru ni san no episodes,” geppō to Zenshū 38.
34 “Hosoe Eikō josetsu,” Zenshū 32, 417–23.
35 Kawabata’s letter to Mishima, April 7, 1961, Ōfuku shokan, 152.
36 When Kawabata was hospitalized in the fall of 1958 and asked Mishima what he might take to the hospital, Mishima provided an astonishingly detailed list of nearly eighty items. Letter to Kawabata, October 31, 1958, Zenshū 38, 283–87.
37 “Saikin no Kawabata-san,” Zenshū 32, 108–10.
38 “Kawabata Yasunari tokuhon josetsu,” Zenshū 32, 144.
39 “Yume to jinsei,” Zenshū 33, 46-–48.
40 In this battle, from March to June 1944, 78,000 of the 90,000 Japanese soldiers became casualties. Mutaguchi Ren’ya, who planned the operation and forced its execution despite fierce opposition, is counted among the worst generals Japan produced during the Second World War.
41 Konishi, Nihon bungei-shi, 770–76.
42 Katō, Nihon bungakushi josetsu, 458–59.
Chapter Eighteen: Contretemps
1 Yomota, Ōoka Shōhei, 68.
2 Kitami Harukazu, Kaisō no Bungaku-za (Chūō Kōron, 1987), 210.
3 Murayama Tomoyoshi, Shinobi no mono, vol. 2 (Iwanami Shoten, 2003), 541.
4 Murayama, Shinobi no mono, vol. 3, 398–99. Hiroaki Sato, “China Wasn’t Always So Critical of Japan,” Japan Times, May 30, 2005 (online; accessed July 11, 2012).
5 Kitami, Kaisō no Bungaku-za, 190, 214.
6 “Shiawasena kakumei,” Zenshū 32, 414.
7 “Kaidai,” Zenshū 32, 705–6.
8 “Tosca ni tsuite,” Zenshū 32, 435.
9 Kitami, Kaisō no Bungaku-za, 11.
10 “C’est le genre Hugo au complet, du fort et du sublime selon certains, plus de grossier et de violent que jamais; un certificat d’incurable, magnifiquement historié, et avec de grosses majuscules rouges.” The English translation is by Michael O’Brien.
11 “Romantic engeki no fukkō,” Zenshū 32, 466. Hiroaki Sato, “Same Hot Buttons a Hundred Years Later,” Japan Times, January 29, 2007 (online; accessed July 11, 2012).
12 “‘Engeki no yorokobi’ no fukkatsu,” Zenshū 32, 428–30.
13 “Kaidai,” Zenshū 24, 714–15.
14 “Aber rein Saitenspiel leiht jeder Stunde die Töne, / Und erfreuet vielleicht Himmlische, welche sich nahn. . . . / Sorgen, wie diese, muß, gern oder nicht, in der Seele / Tragen ein Sänger und oft, aber die anderen nicht.” Michael Hamburger, trans., Friedrich Hölderlin: Poems and Fragments (a bilingual edition; Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 261. A literal translation Guido Keller prepared for this book: “But a string play lends every hour the notes / and delights perhaps Heavenlies which
approach. . . . / Sorrows like such must, gladly or not, in the soul / carry a singer and often, but the others not.”
15 “Bungaku-za shokun e no ‘Kōkaijō,’” Zenshū 32, 618–20.
16 Kitami, Kaisō no Bungaku-za, 228.
17 To be exact, the translation should be “Marquise de Sade.” But when Donald Keene translated the play into English, he called it Madame de Sade, explaining, Mishima noted in the play’s deluxe edition, that the difference between the male and female forms of the peerage title in English, “marquis” and “marquise,” would be too slight and confusing to English readers, besides the fact that Grove Press, which published his translation, was known at the time for issuing Marquis de Sade’s writings in translation, which might have compounded the problem. “Gōkaban no tame no hobatsu,” Zenshū 34, 437–38.
18 Muramatsu, Mishima Yukio no sekai, 419.
19 “Kaidai,” Zenshū 24, 714–15.
20 Date Munekatsu, Saiban kiroku: “Mishima Yukio jiken” (Kōdansha, 1972), 211.
21 Muramatsu, Mishima Yukio no sekai, 420.
22 “Waga sōsaku hōhō,” Zenshū 32, 607–14.
23 “Ken sōsaku notes,” Zenshū 20, 765.
24 Mishima’s notes, along with Kawasaki’s essay and Matsumoto’s report, are in Zenshū 9, 621–85, 680–95.
25 Nathan, Mishima, 190.
26 Zenshū 23, 678. The literary critic Matsumoto Tōru found the book Mishima read: an expensive volume published in 1934, with Mishima’s inscription in Roman alphabet: “Allabian /night / May 20th 1935 /K. Hiraoka.” It is a Japanese translation of Edward Lane’s translation, Stories from Thousand and One Nights, revised by Stanley Lane-Poole, edited by Charles W. Eliot for The Harvard Classics. Geppō to Zenshū 36, 2. Only the episode of the 11th Night, “The Story of the First Royal Mendicant,” has to do with brother-sister love. The episode of the 12th Night also occurs in an underground setting.
27 In his preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray (London: Penguin Classics, 2000), which is a collection of aphorisms, Oscar Wilde says: “The nineteenth century dislike of Realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass” and “The nineteenth century dislike of Romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.”
28 Hokan, 160. Mishima’s original title for the essay was “Waga America no kage,” with the English reflection given the reading of kage, “shadow.”
29 Onna-tachi no Genzai o Tou Kai, ed., 55-nen taisei seiritsu to onna-tachi (Impact Shuppankai, 1987), 94–104.
30 Yamamoto Shigemi, Aa Nomugi Tōge: aru seishikōjo aishi (Kadokawa Shoten, 1987), 360–65.
31 “Chosha to ichijikan.” Zenshū 33, 213–14. As to the lack of clarity of the novel, see Tanaka, Mishima Yukio: Kami no kagebōshi, 189. “Jushōsha no aisatsu.” Zenshū 33, 251. Okuno, Mishima Yukio densetsu, 398.
32 “Kūkan no kabe-nuke otoko,” Zenshū 33, 184–85.
33 Arthur Koestler, “For Better or Worse: Her Course Is Set,” Life, September 11, 1964. The article is largely unpaged. Michael Scammell’s biography, Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic (New York: Random House, 2009), does not mention Koestler’s visit to Japan that year.
34 “Kanraku hatete. . . .” in “Shūtō zuihitsu,” Zenshū 33, 134–35.
35 As Ōe himself noted. Ōe Kenzaburō, Kojinteki-na taiken (Shinchōsha, 1995), 256–57. Ōe also noted that Grove Press, the publisher of its English translation, suggested the ending be dropped, but he refused.
36 Ōhashi Kenzaburō’s afterword to Kojima Nobuo, Hōyō kazoku (Kōdansha, 1988), 273–74.
37 John Nathan’s translation in Mishima, 206–7. Mishima’s original letter, October 18, 1965, Zenshū, Hokan, 227–29.
38 Nathan, Mishima, 203–9.
39 The polls are cited in the 1964 section of Tokuhon.
40 “Japan’s Dynamo of Letters,” Life, September 2, 1966, 25–31. Nathan’s essay, 28–31, comes with the title or caption, “I am a garish man with garish tastes” (online; accessed July 11, 2012).
41 In his biography Nathan quotes from his Life essay as saying that reading Mishima’s novels was like “attending an exhibition of the world’s most ornate picture frames,” but no such words appear in the essay.
Chapter Nineteen: The Nobel Prize
1 In “Serving on Literary Prize Jury,” the 38th installment in his “Chronicles of My Life in the 20th Century” for the Yomiuri Shinbun, Donald Keene gives the year as 1965. The chronicle has been translated into Japanese by Kakuchi Yukio as Watashi to 20-seiki no chronicle (Chūō Kōron Sha, 2007).
2 Melvin J. Lasky, “A Letter from Salzburg: Baroque and Roll,” Transition: A Journal of the Arts, Culture and Society, vol. 4, nos. 14–19. 21–22.
3 “Mishima bungaku to kokusaisei,” Zenshū 39, 478–86.
4 “London tsūshin,” published March 25, 1965, and “London kikō,” published April 9 and 10, 1965. Zenshū 33, 435–38, 449–55.
5 Mishima kept a diary while in London. Hokan, 631–41. In it Mishima gave the name of the hostess of the occasion as “Lady Johns.”
6 “The Hemisphere: Another Payoff,” Time, June 19, 1964.
7 “Seisaku ito oyobi keika,” Zenshū 34, 35–64. The booklet accompanying the DVD of the film, Zenshū 41, 44–45.
8 Christopher Ross, Mishima’s Sword: Travels in Search of a Samurai Legend (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2006), 200.
9 Doris G. Bargen, Suicidal Honor: General Nogi and the Writings of Mori Ōgai and Natsume Sōseki (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2006), 146–47.
10 The February 2, 1966 Variety article, with Mishima’s translation of it, is reproduced in the booklet that is part of Zenshū 41, 46.
11 Fujii Hiroaki, “Eiga Yūkoku no ayunda michi,” Bekkan, 10–11.
12 Ross, Mishima’s Sword, 193, 200.
13 Hokan, 41–54.
14 Fujii, “Eiga Yūkoku no ayunda michi,” 11–13.
15 The Asahi Shinbun published Kaikō’s dispatches in its weekly and (in the case of the disastrous operation) on the front page of its daily newspaper. The publisher then put them out in book form, in March 1965, under the title Betonamu senki and abundantly illustrated with Akimoto Keiichi’s photographs. For Vietnamese intellectuals’ hope, see Betonamu senki (Asahi Shinbunsha, 1990), 288–89. The book is included in the twelve-volume collection Kaikō Takeshi zen-sakuhin, Essays 2 (Shinchōsha, 1974). The Fort Ben Cat operation is described, 194–212. For Kaikō raising 2.4 million yen to take an ad in the New York Times and declining to accept the Ministry of Education literary prize, see his chronology in Zen-sakuhin, Essays 3, 262–63.
16 Giovanni Gullace, “The French Writings of Gabriele d’Annunzio, Comparative Literature, vol. 12, no. 3 (Summer 1960), 207, 213–14.
17 Kurosawa Akira’s film Akahige (Red Beard; 1970) has a scene where the girl rescued from a house of prostitution flips through one of these Dutch books as she dozes and becomes startled as she comes to a page showing the human anatomy.
18 “Honzukuri no tanoshimi,” Zenshū 34, 238–39.
19 Here Mishima refers to George Kaftal’s monograph, Iconography of the Saints in Tuscan Painting.
20 “Ils sont loin, ils sont déjà loin! / On n’aperçoit plus les chevaux / de la turme. Une croupe blanche / disparaît au détour, derrière / les Tombeaux: le décurion. / Il n’a jamais tourné la tête. / Seigneur, nous allons maintenant / te délier.” Mishima quotes this in the original.
21 “On a dépouillé le Martyr pour l’attacher au tronc d’un grand laurier avec des cordes de sparte. Debout, les pieds nus sur les racines noueuses, il repose sur la tige svelte de sa jambe doite le poids de son corps lisse comme l’ivoire; et, les poignets liés au-dessus de sa tête, il ressemble au beau diadumène qui se ceint du bandeau./ C’est aux Sagittaires d’Emèse que l’Auguste a ordonné de venger par les flèches le Soleil seigneur de l’Empire. Ils son éperdus d’amour et de crainte. Sanaé, l’archer aux yeux vairons, et parmi eux. Il épie la
plaine.”
22 So called in The Golden Legend, translated and adapted from the Latin by Granger Ryan and Helmut Ripperger (Arno Press, 1969; originally 1941), 104–10.
23 “Je vous le dis, je vous le dis: / celui qui plus profondément / me blesse, plus profondément / m’aime. ”
24 “Atogaki (Sei Sebastian no junkyō),” Zenshū 34, 187–94.
25 Araki Nobuyoshi’s Satchin (Shinchōsha, 1994) vividly captures how children appeared in the early 1960s. He took the photos assembled in the album while a student at Chiba University.
26 “Atogaki,” Zenshū 33, 472–73. Also Zenshū 20, 803–4.
27 Orikuchi Shinobu, “Shintō ni arawareta minzoku ronri,” Kodai Kenkyū II: Norito no hassei (Chūō Kōron Sha, 2003), 96.
28 “Orikuchi Shinobu,” Zenshū 28, 208–9.
29 Saeki, Hyōden, 14.
30 Oscar Wilde, Picture of Dorian Gray, 6.
31 Letters to Shibusawa, June 5 and September 10, 1956; December 26, 1959; January 1, 1960. Zenshū 38, 515–16, 522–23.
32 Letter to Shibusawa, September 22, 1964, Zenshū 38, 530.
33 “Batsu,” Zenshū 33, 585.
34 “Taidan: Ningen to bungaku,” Zenshū 40, 87, 94.
35 Letter to Shibusawa, May 16, 1960, Zenshū 38, 524.
36 “‘Sado Kōshaku Fujin’ ni tsuite,” Zenshū 33, 587–89.
37 George Cœdès, Angkor: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), fn. 93: “The so-called ‘Leper King’ was probably a god of death, who once held a staff in his right hand. This popular appellation is due solely to his lichen-covered body which gives the appearance of leprosy. Jayavarman VII may have suffered from leprosy, but his statue is not a representation of him.”
38 “Raiō no terasu kōgai,” Zenshū 35, 466.
39 Donald Keene, 5 Modern Japanese Novelists (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 25.
40 Takahashi Mutsuo, Tomodachi no tsukurikata (Magazine House, 1993), 142.
41 “Batsu,” Zenshū 33, 459–62.
42 Takahashi, Tomodachi no tsukurikata, 11.
Chapter Twenty: Shinpūren, Men of the Divine Wind