Runaway Horses

by Yukio Mishima

  Seated cross-legged, Isao nervously picked up a peanut and cracked it as the others were gathering around him. The shell gave way, squeaking beneath the pressure of his fingertips, and split into two parts, a peanut in each.

  “Lieutenant Hori has been transferred to Manchuria. Not only does he refuse to give us any further help, but he insists that we drop everything. As for our airplane, Lieutenant Shiga too has abandoned us. So we have no link with the military. I think it’s time to consider what we should do.”

  Isao delivered all this in a single burst. The impression reflected in the faces around him was like that of brimming water abruptly receding. He sought out each one, compelled by the feeling that he had to make visual contact with them all. Now was the moment when purity was stripped naked. And no one but Isao embodied it.

  Izutsu showed his lovely recklessness. He spoke out gallantly, his face flushed and glowing, as though Isao’s news had been the best possible.

  “I say: rework our plan, well and good. But there’s no need to put off the date. Spirit is what counts—determination! These soldier boys! When it comes right down to it, all they’re concerned about is their careers.”

  Isao strained his ears to catch any adverse reaction to this, but he heard nothing. The silence was like that of a number of small animals, each holding its breath within the shelter of its own thicket. Not unnaturally, Isao was tempted to be a little ruthless. He felt that he had no choice but to act with arbitrary force.

  “It is just as Izutsu says. We strike on the day set. Aside from the problem of leadership, all that we’ve lost is the chance to drop our leaflets by airplane and to get our hands on some light machine guns. We’ll print the declaration, at any rate, and then we can decide how to distribute it. Have we already bought a mimeograph machine?”

  “We’ll do it tomorrow,” answered Sagara.

  “Good. We have our swords. And so it has turned out that for the Showa League of the Divine Wind, too, the ultimate reliance will be upon the Japanese sword. Nothing could be more fitting. Let’s reduce the scope of our attack, but double its intensity. We have all made our vows, and I know every man here will be loyal to the end.”

  His words were indeed greeted with loud shouts of approval, but the blaze did not leap up as high as Isao had expected. If this sort of flame falls only a trifle short of what one had hoped for, then one’s heart cannot help but sense a proportionate measure of coldness.

  Serikawa alone showed high excitement.

  “We’ll do it! We’ll do it,” he shouted, kicking about and scattering the shells that littered the floor. He gripped Isao’s hand firmly and shook it. As usual, he was on the verge of tears. This young man affected Isao like a match girl who uses blatant emotional appeal to force a sale. It was a manifestation he had little need for at the moment.

  That night all stayed until late discussing the means of cutting back on their plans. Two factions formed, one in favor of giving up the assault on the Bank of Japan, the other, of following through on it. Since no agreement was reached, another meeting was set for the following night, and they adjourned.

  As everyone was leaving, three boys, Seyama, Tsujimura, and Ui, told Isao that they had something further to discuss with him. Sagara and Izutsu were going to stay too, but Isao sent them home, also dismissing Yoneda and Sakakibara, who were supposed to have been on night watch at the house.

  The four returned to the room, which had no touch of fire to warm it. Though he was yet to hear their story, Isao well knew what they were going to say to him.

  The high school student, Seyama, began to do all the talking. With a pair of fire tongs, he chipped at the crusted ash in the cold hibachi, and the scars of pimples showed on his cheeks, as, head down, he spoke in a numbed voice.

  “As for what I’ve got to say, please understand that it’s out of friendship. Anyway, I think we should postpone the attack for a while. I didn’t bring it up in front of everybody because I thought it might give the wrong idea, as if I were throwing cold water on the discussion of the attack itself. Now as far as that goes, we made our vows too at the shrine in the presence of the gods. But a vow—a vow with the condition that there won’t be any big change in the circumstances—isn’t that made in the same spirit as a promise?”

  “A vow and a promise are different!”

  It was Tsujimura who broke in indignantly. The effect of his words was to anticipate the response expected from Isao and seem to act as his spokesman, a device that hinted of a subtle sycophancy toward Seyama. And the way Seyama took this as a cue irritated Isao still more.

  “Oh, they’re different? I shouldn’t have confused them like that. Please disregard my slip of the tongue. But if we have any idea of bringing about martial law, the cooperation of the military is essential. What’s really needed is not just dropping a declaration from an airplane but, as you said in the beginning, bombing the Diet. And wouldn’t whether or not we had professional help be the big factor in coordinating local attacks? Wouldn’t going ahead without it, depending only upon our spirit and our swords, be much too risky? We ought to be careful not to get carried away by spirit, I think.”

  “It would be a risk,” said Isao, speaking for the first time, his voice low. “That’s certain. The comrades of the League took a risk.” So composed was his manner, so evident the fact that he had already given up trying to persuade them, that the three fell silent and exchanged glances.

  A somber waterfall was falling within Isao’s heart. His self-esteem was being slowly worn away. But he acted as he did because the precious thing that concerned him now was not his self-esteem. As a consequence, however, the abandoned self-esteem took its revenge upon him with a pain that could not be shunted aside. And beyond that pain lay his purity, like the clear evening sky seen through rifted clouds. As though in prayerful reverie, Isao saw the faces of those plunderers of the nation who deserved to be assassinated. The more isolated and bereft of strength he became, the more oppressive grew their fleshy, opulent reality. The stench of their evil worsened every moment. Isao and his comrades were plunged into a world of ever-growing uncertainty and anxiety, a world like the reflection of the moon adrift on a night sea. It was the plunderers’ crimes that did this, their crimes that had changed his world into something so unsure, so unworthy of belief. The grotesque reality of these men who confronted Isao—there lay the source of all the world’s perfidy. When he killed them, when his untarnished blade cut cleanly into that flesh swollen with fat and ravaged by high blood pressure, only then, for the first time, could the world be put to rights again. And until then . . .

  “If you want to quit, I’m not going to stop you.”

  Isao would have had no chance to check these words, so readily did they pass his lips.

  “Just a minute,” protested Seyama, flustered and swallowing hard. “All we meant was, if our proposal wasn’t accepted we’d have no choice but to quit.”

  “Your proposal isn’t accepted.” As he answered, Isao’s voice seemed to him to be coming from a long way off.

  There was a meeting every day thereafter.

  On the first day, no one followed the three deserters. On the second, after a violent argument between the two factions, the four men of the smaller one withdrew. Then two men quit the day after that. Thus the number of the comrades, Isao included, was reduced to eleven. The day set for the rising was a bare three weeks ahead.

  Isao came thirty minutes late to the meeting of November twelfth, the sixth meeting since Lieutenant Hori’s abandonment of them on November seventh. When he climbed to the second floor, his ten comrades were already assembled. And seated there also was one uninvited guest. Isao did not see this man at first because he had settled himself in a corner, somewhat removed from the others. It was Sawa.

  Sawa had obviously taken into consideration Isao’s surprise and anger at his coming, and Isao realized that there would be no point in making a childish display that would give Sawa the advantage. The first th
ought that crossed his mind was that everything was finished now that Sawa knew their hideaway. For if one of the ten had secretly gone to Sawa for help, he could no longer trust any of them. But then he quickly ruled this out as an unworthy thought. It was much more likely that one of the deserters had gone to Sawa, hoping to soothe the pangs of conscience by asking him to take his place.

  “I thought all of you would be hungry, so I brought some Osaka sushi,” said Sawa, his squat figure like a wooden temple drum as he sat cross-legged upon the only pillow in the house. He was dressed, to his evident discomfort, in an old Western-style suit, and the man who was so scrupulous about the state of his underwear had fastened his bulging necktie around a sweat-stained collar.

  “Thank you,” said Isao, as calmly as possible.

  “Surely it’s all right, my coming here, isn’t it? After all, what am I but a backer, so to speak? Come on, help yourself to some of this. All of them were stubborn. They held out, wouldn’t take up their chopsticks until you came. They’re good comrades, I tell you. And what greater joy can a man have than having comrades who’ll stand fast for him?”

  Since he could do little else, Isao replied with a touch of false enthusiasm: “All right. Let’s go ahead.” He reached out to take the first piece.

  As he was eating, Isao tried to think how best to deal with Sawa, but chewing interfered with his calculations. Besides, the silence while they ate the sushi was a relief to him. Three more weeks. How many more times before he died, he wondered, would he experience this untidy pleasure of eating? He thought of the episode in The League of the Divine Wind of Tateo Narazaki eating and drinking heartily before he cut open his stomach. When he looked around, he saw that all the others too were eating in silence.

  “Are you going to introduce me to your comrades?” asked Sawa, beaming. “I see two or three familiar faces from the Academy.”

  “This is Izutsu. This is Sagara. And then Serikawa, Hasegawa, Miyaké, Miyahara, Kimura, Fujita, Takasé, and Inoué,” answered Isao, introducing each of them.

  Now that he thought of it, Isao realized that of the unit assigned to attack the transformer stations, only three men, Hasegawa, Sagara, and Serikawa, were still with him. As for the Bank of Japan unit, Inoué remained steadfast together with Takasé, though their assignment would be different. Not a man was missing from the assassination unit. Isao’s intention had been to assign the more daring of his comrades to these two latter units, and his judgment of character had proved unerring.

  The cheerfully rash Izutsu, the clever little Sagara with his glasses, the boyish son of a country priest Serikawa, the taciturn but often droll Hasegawa, the sincere Miyaké with his long head, Miyahara with the hard and somber expression of a dried insect, Kimura with his love of literature and his profound reverence for the Emperor, the ever-silent but passionate Fujita, Takasé whose strong, broad shoulders belied his tuberculosis, the huge but mild-looking Inoué with his second degree in judo . . . These were his true comrades, the ones who had survived every test. These youths who were left knew what confronting death meant. Here beneath a ceiling lamp whose dim light fell upon tatami mats smelling of mold, Isao saw before him the corroboration of his own burning conviction. The petals of a drooping flower decay and fall away, leaving not a single one, but the hardy stamens stand firm together, still lustrous. And these keen-tipped stamens can pierce the blue of the sky. The more hopeless their dream became, the more stubbornly he and his comrades thrust their bodies together, leaving no opening for rational argument, forming themselves into a block of chalcedony shaped for killing.

  “You’re fine young men,” said Sawa. “Those young people at the Academy of Patriotism should hang their heads.” Then, having tried a bit of the Kodan Club style on them, he went at it in earnest: “Gentlemen, this is what it’s come to: either this very night you number me among you or else you’ve got to kill me here and now. There’re no two ways about it. And watch it that you don’t let me walk away. For then you’d never know what I might spread about. I never took a single vow yet, remember. Well, then, gentlemen, either you trust me all the way or you don’t trust me a bit. You can only do one or the other. And from the standpoint of your own advantage, I think that the clever thing to do would be to trust me. Getting rid of me would only do you harm, believe me. Well, gentlemen, what do you think?”

  When Isao hesitated before answering, Sawa startled them by beginning to recite the vows in a loud voice: “Be it thus that we, emulating the purity of the League of the Divine Wind, hazard ourselves for the task of purging away all evil deities and perverse spirits. Be it thus that we, forging deep friendship among ourselves, aid one another as comrades in responding to the perils that confront the nation.”

  As he listened to Sawa’s recitation, the words “forging deep friendship” struck Isao to the heart.

  “Be it thus that we, never seeking power and giving no thought to personal advancement, go forth to certain death to become the foundation stones for the Restoration.”

  “How do you know our vows?” Isao asked accusingly, a touch of boyish grievance in his voice despite himself. With the keen instinct of the hunter, unexpected in a body so blunt and massive, Sawa seized upon Isao’s weakness at once.

  “Divine inspiration! Well, now I’ve made my vows. If you want me to seal them in blood, I’m ready.”

  Isao glanced briefly at the faces of his comrades, and then a smile formed on his lips around which there was a light trace of beard.

  “There’s no way of getting the best of you, Mr. Sawa. So . . . please join us.”

  “Thank you.”

  The joy evident in Sawa’s face was overwhelming. He radiated the innocence that marks the absolute rejection of prudence. Isao now, for the first time, noticed that Sawa’s teeth were no less white than the underwear that he washed so unremittingly.

  The meeting that evening turned out to be productive. Sawa spoke earnestly and persuaded the others to abandon such exalted hopes as the proclamation of martial law and to concentrate their full force upon the assassinations.

  The sword of justice need flash but once in the darkness. The light that shone from its blade would tell the world that the dawn was not far off. But men knew that a single glint from a Japanese sword was like the pale blue of daybreak along a mountain ridge.

  Assassins had to be lone wolves, argued Sawa. There were twelve of them in the room, and therefore they had to make the chillingly bold decision to kill twelve. The date of December third could remain unchanged, but, having ruled out the attacks on the transformer stations, they should aim for a time just before dawn, rather than at night. Dawn was when these rich men, poor sleepers because of their years, lay awake in their beds. This was when the faint light would reveal their faces and so prevent mistakes. This was when they listened, heads on their pillows, to the twittering of the first sparrows of the morning, and calculated how best that day to spray all of Japan with the poisonous breath of their rule. This was the time to aim for. Now each man had to investigate the sleeping accommodations of his victim and then carry through his task with a burning sincerity that flamed up to the heavens.

  Such was Sawa’s counsel, and its adoption resulted in the assassination plan being altered as follows, in order to wipe out the principal figures of the economic world:

  Busuké Kurahara—Sawa

  Toru Shinkawa—Iinuma

  Juemon Nagasaki—Miyahara

  Nobuhisa Masuda—Kimura

  Shonosuké Yagi—Izutsu

  Hiroshi Teramoto—Fujita

  Zembei Ota—Miyaké

  Ryuichi Kamiya—Takasé

  Minoru Gota—Inoué

  Sadataro Matsubara—Sagara

  Genjiro Takai—Serikawa

  Toshikazu Kobinata—Hasegawa

  This was a plan that struck at every great capitalist family in Japan. All the zaibatsu-controlled heavy industries, iron and steel, light metals, shipbuilding—an illustrious name from each of these sectors was on
the list. That morning of mass killing would, beyond any doubt, send a severe shock through the economic structure of the nation.

  Isao was amazed at the skill in persuasion shown by Sawa, who had set aside Kurahara for himself. Izutsu’s boldness had been aroused by the very strength of Kurahara’s guard, but Sawa easily turned him aside, saying: “The Kuraharas dismiss the police on guard at their home every night at nine and don’t let them return until eight the next morning. He’ll be the easiest one to attack, so leave it for an old man like me.”

  Sawa reached down inside his trousers and drew out the dagger in its plain wooden sheath that he had shown to Isao. “From now on, I’ll come here every day, and I’ll show you how to go about killing a man,” he said. “It would be good to make a straw dummy. The most important thing is practice. I’ll show you how it’s done. . . . All right? There’s your enemy. He’s shaking with fear. A pitiful fellow, ordinary-looking, on the old side—a Japanese just like you. Pity is taboo! The evil of these men has taken such deep root inside them that they’re not even aware of it themselves. You’ve got to keep your eye on that evil. Do you see it? Whether you see it or not will decide whether you succeed or fail. You’ve got to destroy the flesh that’s blocking your way. You’ve got to get at the evil that’s festering inside. Here, let’s try this. Look!”

  Sawa faced toward the wall and gathered his strength, his shoulders hunched.

  As Isao watched he realized that before one could attack with one’s whole being like Sawa, there were many rivers to be leaped over. And one clouded stream that never ran dry was that choked with the scum of humanism, the poison spewed out by the factory at its headwaters. There it was: its lights burning brilliantly as it worked even through the night—the factory of Western European ideals. The pollution from that factory degraded the exalted fervor to kill; it withered the green of the sakaki’s leaves.