Before completing his last work, The Decay of the Angel, the coda to his tetralogy The Sea of Fertility, Mishima had organized a retrospective of his life and work at the Tobu department store in Ikebukuro, in which he divided the exhibition space into four contiguous sections: The River of Writing, Theatre, Body, and finally The River of Action. To the astonishment of visitors, the hall was draped in black curtains similar to maku, the hanging textiles used in Japanese funerals to delineate boundaries. In pride of place and impossible to ignore was the sword that Mishima’s companion in death, student Morita Masakatsu, would use to decapitate the writer the following month.
Invited to Stokes’ home for dinner just two months before what the media would term “The Mishima Incident”, the usually voluble author turned solemn: “I made the steaks for us and underdid them,” Stokes notes: “Put off by something in Yukio. Steaks had to go into the pan again, bloody red. After dinner he struck his pessimistic note again... used an odd image: said that Japan was under the curse of a ‘green snake’.”
“I thought you were warriors,” Mishima berated members of the SelfDefence Forces gathered below the general’s office: “If so, why are you safeguarding the Constitution that denies your existence? Why are you so obsequious?” If Mishima wished to put the steel back into Japan, it was because, as Marguerite Yourcenar wrote, he was “a writer revolted by the flabbiness of his times.”
Another Mishima biographer, John Nathan, argues convincingly that the writer’s life might be seen as a paradigm of the struggle experienced by the nation itself in the years since the arrival of Perry’s black ships, “to find an authentic self by reconciling two disparate and often irreconcilable cultures - one native, inherent and grounded in tradition, the other foreign and intractable.” Right up to the moment of his suicide, Mishima conducted his search for that “authentic self “ on a public stage. The public were by turns transfixed and appalled by this very un-Japanese exhibitionism and baring of the soul.
In Streams and Rivers, the poet Iijima Koichi reflects on the meaning of Mishima’s sacrifice and his efforts to somehow align himself with the irretrievable past:
He did live in a gorgeous western-style house,
But that was imitation West;
Even his military uniform was fake.
He was always feeling inferior
To the absolutely genuine elitism
Of the Meiji poet Ogai.
That uniform was on display at an exhibition I attended some years ago at Kanagawa Museum of Modern Literature in Yokohama. Mishima’s physical form, the way he wished to be perceived, dominated the exhibition. Almost the first exhibit was one of the author’s well-cut, pinstriped suits. Measurements never lie, but like the diminutive samurai armour displayed in museums and castles, the squat outline and pinched shoulders of Mishima’s suit belied the real stature of the figure that once filled it.
It was an exhibition rich in imagery. Mishima was never camera shy, posing for the lens whenever the occasion presented itself, believing perhaps that if enough moments in time could be frozen, they might assure his immortality. I can think of few Japanese authors who have courted quite so much attention. Mixed in with the family, publishers and news images were more carefully staged shots, among them the famous re-enactment of St. Sebastian’s martyrdom: Mishima in loincloth, hands bound, an oiled chest bristling with arrows, all done in a Tokyo studio. Some of the most remarkable prints were from Hosoe Eikoh’s photo homage, Ordeal by Roses.
Mishima’s physique had grown powerful by the time these later images were taken, the author having subjected himself to a punishing bodybuilding regime at a Tokyo gym, one that would, quite literally, turn stringy arms and a concave chest into iron-clad plating. In this transformation there was no doubt something of the samurai notion that one should always be ready for death, that the warrior should not only be mentally prepared but physically presentable. A well-known eighteenth-century Japanese document advised followers of Bushido, The Way of the Samurai, to always “carry rouge and powder,” especially when going to battle as they should look beautiful in death. It was common practice when respectfully displaying the heads of illustrious enemies for the victors to have the faces beautified with rouge.
The latter part of the exhibition featured a statue of the author cast in bronze. Mishima, one remembers, was inordinately fond of the ancient classical world and its muscular statuary. A photo of the house in the Tokyo district of Magome, which Mishima built in 1959, shows a prominent replica of Apollo Belvedere in the garden. The most striking feature about the Mishima statue was the author’s physique, notably his height, which appeared to have grown by a good head. In the end it was Mishima’s tailor who carried the most authority. The author’s cleanly pressed uniform, undeniably life-size, stood near the exit, draped over the shoulders of a headless mannequin. Mishima’s real stature as both a writer and major figure of our times has never been in question.
As a novelist, playwright and essayist, Mishima was, however, aware of the limits of even his prolific output, something that may have tempted him back to the once complementary traditions in Japan of literature and the martial arts. In Mishima the two disciplines would combine, achieve critical mass and then self-destruct. A militarist in the imperialist mode, he stood for everything that Japan was trying to forget. It was as if the emperor, the Voice of the Crane, having declared himself human, Mishima would make himself superhuman. He ended up instead as an acute embarrassment to the Japanese public, a people who saw themselves engaged in a different kind of heroic endeavour: the transformation of a discredited nation into an industrial giant and pacifist model. Where the majority of Japanese viewed the post-war period as an opportunity for moral cleansing and regeneration, Mishima saw only torpor and decay, a poisoning of the very ground water that had nourished the national spirit. He believed perhaps that only an act of calculated violence could forestall the corruption, force stagnation and inaction back into a strong, mainstream current.
It was already too late. Mishima, whose punishing training schedules had driven his body to its intended physical peak, had no intention of growing old gracefully. His ritual disembowelment, besides its nationalist symbolism, was also the destruction of Narcissus, the sword crashing into the mirror of beauty before it could transmit back an image of decay.
Before it was all over, Mishima sought one final, quintessentially Japanese touch to the beautification of the body. A little over a week before his carefully conceived death Mishima, seized by the idea of having the illustration of a lion-dog and peony engraved on his back, contacted the tattoo master Owada Mitsuaki, better known by his professional name Horikin. As a final flourish to Mishima’s stage-managed suicide, in keeping with his obsession with Japanese culture, it was a very Edo-period touch. If Mishima had known a little more about tattoos, however, he would have realized that such works of art cannot be undertaken at such short notice, accomplished in just a few days.
Traces of Edo
On close inspection the headless body, floating like a swollen flower against the embankments of the Sumida river, appeared to have no fingertips, leaving the Tokyo police with no obvious clues to identity. Except one. Covering the back of the naked torso was the upper section of a full-body tattoo, its main feature a lion-dog and peony.
Indelible proof of an underworld connection, the vivid, recently completed design, described at length by the Tokyo newspapers, was of such fine quality that it could only have been executed by one of the few surviving masters of the art. It was only a question of time before the victim’s identity and gangland affiliation were established.
Strongly associated in the general public’s mind with members of Japan’s criminal underworld, those who display tattoos, however discreetly, run the risk of incurring social exclusion and ostracism. In Japan, where affiliation still counts for a great deal, it is only natural in highly organized, semi-secret groups like the yakuza, where rigid codes, ceremonies, initiation rituals and s
pecial rites of passage are integral to its traditions, that tattoos have been important membership credentials.
Especially among the working-class people of the shitamachi, however, tattoos have not been simply the exclusive reserve of gangsters. They were popular with quasi-feudal groups and guilds like carpenters, fairground hucksters and sushi chefs. Even now, as John E. Thayer has written, “there is still the young dump truck driver who, like his Edo artisan forebear, spends all his free time and salary having a genuine work of art engraved upon his back.”
Tattooing became closely connected with the Japanese woodblock print in its design, colouring and techniques, and the popularity of artists like Kunisada and Utamaro, who all vigorously depicted the figures of tattooed actors, courtesans and gods, and whose work had enormous appeal at all social levels, coincided with the blossoming of tattoo art among the masses.
The firemen of Edo, colourful characters who might almost have stepped out of fiction themselves, may have been the first to sport the fullbody tattoo, a work that covered everything bar the hands, feet and head. Fire-fighting groups displayed different preferences in their designs, but all of them wore a protective water symbol of some kind, usually a carp or water dragon. Although tattoos were still regarded with suspicion by the authorities and condemned as “deleterious to public morals”, a newly affluent middle class, enthusiastic patrons in all fields of art, was showing a lively appreciation of the practice.
In the search for symbols that embody strength and sagacity, various Buddhist sub-deities have been inducted into the repertoire of popular tattooing. The two best-known figures are probably Fudo, the Guardian of Hell, an awesome deity clutching a burning sword and a length of rope, and Kannon, the sensual, consoling Goddess of Mercy. Figures from popular folklore with whom wearers of tattoos generally like to identify include the angel Hagoramo, who appears in a popular Noh play, the voluptuous female Shinto deity Benten, the bare-breasted Tamatori-hime, a diving girl who is on good terms with submerged dragons and, among the male figures, Kintaro, a boy who is strongly identified with the virtuous, ever popular carp. The gentleman thief Benten Kozo and Benkei, the Japanese Hercules, are also popular figures.
A man with traditional tattoos at the Sanja Festival in Asakusa
Love and religion seem to have been the main inspirations for early Japanese tattoos. Lovers, courtesans and lowly prostitutes often had the name of a loved one written in Chinese ideograms along the inner portion of the arm. Tattoos to deify an amorous experience or affair were rarer by the twentieth century. A notable exception comes to mind: that great chronicler of the Tokyo demi-monde, Kafu, who is said to have had a tattoo drawn in the likeness of a geisha named Tomimatsu, with whom he was infatuated for a short time until he lost her to a wealthier patron. Whether in a spirit of romanticism or because of the stubbornness of the inks used in the process, he seemingly carried the image to his grave.
In Tanizaki’s exquisitely written 1910 story, The Tattooist, the story of a woman strangely empowered by the work of a master tattoo artist, Edo is transformed into a heightened realm of the senses, a world of striking brilliance and illumination:
People did all they could to beautify themselves, some even having pigments injected into their precious skins. Gaudy patterns of line and colour danced over men’s bodies. Visitors to the pleasure quarters of Edo preferred to hire palanquin bearers who were splendidly tattooed; courtesans of the Yoshiwara and the Tatsumi quarter fell in love with tattooed men. Among those so adorned were not only gamblers, firemen, and the like, but members of the merchant class and even samurai.
Tattoos worn by women, apart from functioning as badges of affiliation with institutions like the old licensed pleasure quarters or specific yakuza organizations, have also been worn as amulets to impair malevolent spirits and as symbols of inner strength and parity with men. In Japanese literature, tattoos have even been used as devices to demonize women, the tools of the tattooist’s trade serving as surgical instruments in an operation to transform not only the woman’s body but her personality. Tanizaki’s story concerns a tattoo artist who is searching for the perfect woman to double as a canvass for his art. Once he has found the ideal subject, a young, rather inexperienced geisha, he drugs her in his studio and sets to work. When she regains consciousness she finds that her back is covered with the figure of a giant, black spider, whose legs “with each shuddering breath... stirred as if they were alive.” With such an image, the tattooist tells her, no man will be able to resist becoming her victim.
With the opening of the country during the Meiji Restoration, fresh efforts were made to suppress the practice. Increasingly marginalized, displays of tattooing grew rarer, occasionally surfacing in the form of bizarre displays, faintly risqué sideshows for the delectation of tourists and those with a taste for the eccentric. James Kirkup, in his 1970 book Japan Behind the Fan, describes attending a “special show” in the working-class Sanya district of Tokyo, featuring a tattooed sailor whose body was covered in a frondescence of leaves, grasses and ferns supporting a sumptuous visual menagerie including lizards, spiders, fox cubs and snakes. The centrepiece, a beautifully composed figure of Kannon in a tiara and swirling robes, “stood with lissom feet upon a sevenfold lotus flower.” By flexing his back muscles, this iconographic mass came to life, “the drapery of the Kannon seeming to stir gently in a breeze from Nirvana.”
Although official disapproval of tattooing was discontinued in the postwar years, many of the old masters had already retired, passed on their skills to less gifted practitioners, or simply given up the ghost. Though tattoos continue to remain living documents, transmitting and codifying for us colourful elements from the popular culture of the past, the fact remains that one would be more welcome in a public bathhouse wearing a necklace of shrunken skulls than a tattoo.
Sumida Fire Flowers
Before it became a great event on the city’s cultural calendar, the kawabiraki (“river opening”) was conducted in the hope that it would repel malign spirits responsible for the outbreak and spread of cholera. The first official fireworks display was held in 1733, the year that famine and plague killed almost a million people nationwide. The shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune lit the fuse on the first hanabi (literally “flower fires”). Following another exorcism tradition, the shogun released dozens of mukaebi (floating lights), believed to guide souls back to earth during the summer Obon festival. The scouring of the riverbanks seems to have worked, and the fireworks were so popular they remained.
Fireworks were red at this time. By the time Clara Whitney observed the display, chemical flaming agents had been added. Noting in her early Meiji-period diary the inseparable association of summer with watermelons, sake and fireworks, she described the river during the night of the display, a setting “alive with lanterns of every colour and shape, and musical with the notes of the samisen.” Besides standard Roman candles and rockets were fireworks depicting “a Fuji, a lady, umbrellas, dogs, men, some characters, and other things, which I could not make out.”
The extravagance of burning things for pleasure might seem antithetical to an older Japanese ascetic of frugality, but there were other considerations involved in the display. Mishima Yukio’s 1953 short story, Fireworks, a tale of power, politics and the underworld, is set in a high-class geisha restaurant in Yanagibashi, one of the most coveted spots in those days for watching the summer display along the river:
Boats already moved about on the Sumida River, and a number fitted with fireworks racks sat in midstream. On shore, people with chairs and stools brought from home began to gather, and on every building rooftop, at each window, heads jostled with one another for space. There were policemen assigned to crowd control, tents erected here and there by the neighbourhood associations, the incredible confusion of people coming and going, and above it all, the relentless booming of fireworks, invisible in the light of day, rending the lowering sky that once again began to let fall a spattering rain.
The fireworks in Mishima’s story have names like Pentachromic Necklace, Five Flowers of the Ascending Dragon and The Dance of the BlossomVying Geisha, which the narrator finds “absurdly gaudy and abstract”.
Angela Carter was an English writer who lived in Tokyo in the 1970s. The setting for one of the stories in her collection, Fireworks, is less ostentatious. The main character rides “the train out of Shinjuku for an hour to watch one of the public displays which are held over rivers so that the dark water multiplies the reflections.” On the banks of an unnamed river that bears a strong resemblance to the Edogawa in the eastern reaches of Tokyo, the writer gives us a touching description of the scene, one that has changed little:
... mothers had scrubbed and dressed up the smallest children to celebrate the treat. The little girls were especially immaculate in pink and white cotton kimonos tied with fluffy sashes like swatches of candyfloss. Their hair had been most beautifully brushed, arranged in sleek, twin bunches and decorated with twists of gold and silver thread. These children were all on their best behaviour because they were staying up late and held their parents’ hands with a charming propriety. We followed the family parties until we came to some fields by the river and saw, high in the air, fireworks already opening out like variegated parasols.
Today’s revived river pageant, with pleasure boats floating around Ryogoku bridge as vendors along the banks sell watermelon and beer to an impossible crush of spectators, crackles with a vitality the townspeople of Edo would surely recognize.
Tokyo: A Cultural and Literary History (Cities of the Imagination Book 34) Page 28