Runaway Horses

by Yukio Mishima

  “No,” Isao retorted, his body trembling all over. “If we made them a little more flexible, it wouldn’t be the same. That ‘little’ is the point. Purity can’t be toned down a little. If you make it a bit flexible, just a bit, it becomes a totally different idea, not the kind we hold. So if our ideas can’t be watered down, and if they’re a threat to the nation the way they are, that means our ideas are just as dangerous as those of the Reds. So go ahead and torture me. You have no reason not to.”

  “You’re quite a debater, aren’t you? Now, don’t get so excited. I’ll tell you just one thing that would be good for you to know. There’s not a man among those Reds that asked to be tortured, as you’re doing. They take it if they have to. They’re not like you, they don’t respond to us even if we torture them.”

  35

  MAKIKO’S LETTERS, though she naturally avoided straightforward expressions, were filled with assurances that her feelings toward Isao were just as before, and she always took care to include two or three poems that her father had revised for her. The censor’s cherry blossom seal affixed in red to the letter was no different, but when Isao considered how easily her letters alone came through, without any significant deletions, he suspected some help from General Kito. Still, there was hardly any sign that his own replies had reached their destination.

  Never questioning nor responding to questions, neither alluding to present circumstances nor ignoring them, neither conveying information nor withholding it, Makiko wrote of this and that, of beautiful or entertaining things, or things altogether innocent, in keeping with the changing seasons. Thus she wrote of a pheasant from the Botanical Gardens flying into their yard, as one had the previous spring; of the records she had bought recently; of often going for a walk in Hakusan Park with thoughts of a particular night in mind; of seeing there one night the soiled petals of rain-scattered cherry blossoms clinging to the children’s log swing as it moved gently back and forth beneath the faint light of a lamp post, as though an adult couple had been sitting on it just before; of the deep darkness around the Shinto pavilion, brightened once, however, by a running white cat; of the early-blooming peach blossoms that she used in practicing her flower arranging; of freesia; of finding some starworts on a visit to Gokoku Temple and plucking them until her sleeves were heavily laden. . . . Since poems accompanied all this, Isao often felt as though he had been there to share her mood.

  Makiko had in abundance the talent that his mother lacked, and she seemed to have easily learned a style of writing that enabled her to slip by the stern guard of the censor. Be that as it might, the Makiko that appeared here had all too little resemblance to Ikiko Abé, who, together with her mother-in-law, leapt with joy as she saw the fires of insurrection spring up in the distance, the work of her husband and his comrades of the League of the Divine Wind. He read Makiko’s letters again and again. She never touched upon politics. Then, while he was striving earnestly to decipher certain passages that seemed to him to have double meanings or to hint at passion, he suddenly felt the need to resist the sensual attraction that these letters had for him. He was bent on finding something other than tender regard and goodwill. But how could Makiko have written to him with hostility? Even if there had been something like that hidden here, he was sure that it was not intentional.

  Her smooth, vivacious style was clearly a kind of tightrope walking. How could he blame in her the exultation that an increasingly skillful tightrope walker found in the very act of risking danger? But, to go one step further, Isao could not but think that Makiko had an almost indecent zest for tightrope walking, and, under the pretext of fear of the authorities, was indulging a passion for emotional mischief.

  Nowhere in her letters was there a phrase of this sort. But there was a certain scent. A playful feeling. At times Makiko seemed to be enjoying his being in prison. Cruel separation guarded the purity of emotion. The pangs of being apart were transformed into quiet joy. Danger aroused the sensual. Uncertainty fostered dreams.

  Makiko conveyed in artless phrases the pleasure she felt at knowing how his heart trembled, as if from the seductive breeze blowing in through his cell window. This relationship between the two of them, though it verged on cruelty, was for Makiko the fulfillment of a cherished dream. Once Isao thought in such terms, he could see proof everywhere in her letters. Apparently Makiko had discovered in this kind of situation a kingdom of her own.

  His senses, sharpened by prison life, told him this was true, and Isao suddenly became furious. He wanted to tear the letters to shreds.

  In order to turn his mind in another direction and to strengthen his will, he asked that his parents be allowed to send him The League of the Divine Wind, but he was, of course, refused. Prisoners could purchase some magazines, but these was limited to such as Science for Children, Today, Eloquence, Kodan Club, King, and Diamond.

  Whether a prison book or not, only one book a week was allowed, and none of those made available by the authorities were the sort to set his heart afire. When, therefore, he was allowed to receive a book that he had asked for some time ago from his father, Dr. Tetsujiro Inoué’s The Philosophy of the Japanese Wang Yang-ming School, Isao was indescribably happy. He had been looking forward to reading about Chusai Oshio in it. Heihachiro (known as Chusai) resigned his position as a police official in 1830, at the age of thirty-seven, and devoted himself to writing and lecturing. He became famous as a scholar of the Wang Yang-ming school, and he was also an expert in the use of the spear. During the great famine from 1833 to 1836, no statesman or wealthy merchant came forward to aid the starving people; moreover, when Chusai sold all of his prized books to alleviate distress, it was viewed as an act to curry public favor, and his foster son, Kakunosuké, was subjected to reprimand. Finally, on February 19, 1837, he raised an armed force and, with this body of a few hundred men, burned down the storehouses of rich merchants and distributed gold and grain to the people. More than a fourth of Osaka was ravaged by fire, but Chusai’s men were at last defeated, and he himself died by blowing himself up with an explosive charge. He was forty-four years old.

  Chusai Oshio realized in his own person the Wang Yang-ming concept of unity of thought and action, embodying the dictum: “To know and not to act is not to know.” What appealed to Isao, however, even more than Chusai’s Wang Yang-ming fusion of thought and action, spirit and reason, was his concept of life and death.

  Dr. Inoué explained that: “With regard to death, Chusai’s view was quite similar to the Buddhist nirvana.”

  The “Great Void,” according to Chusai’s teaching, was not a negative condition in which all the workings of the human spirit were obliterated. He taught, rather, that here the light of intuition was able to shine in all its brilliance, simply by means of the elimination of personal appetite. To become a part of the Great Void, Chusai said, to give oneself over wholly to the ever-present and ever-lasting Great Void, was to enter the sphere of eternity.

  “Once the spirit is given over to the Great Void,” Inoué wrote, “even though the body perish, there remains something that does not. Thus there is no fearing the death of the body but only the death of the spirit. Knowing that the essential spirit will not die, one need fear nothing in the world. This, then, is the basis for one’s resolution. And no matter what arises, it has no power to shake this resolution. Thus it might be said that this is to recognize the will of heaven.”

  In the course of his discussion, Dr. Inoué drew many quotations from An Account of the Purification of the Heart. One of these particularly struck Isao: “There is no fearing the death of the body, but only the death of the spirit.” To Isao, in his present condition, these were words like hammer blows.

  On May twentieth the preliminary hearing was concluded and a decision handed down, the main part of which read: “This case is to be brought to trial before the Tokyo District Court.” Honda’s hopes for a dismissal at the preliminary hearing were dashed.

  The trial would most likely begin at the end
of June. The prohibition against visitors remained in force during the period preceding this, but a present came from Makiko, which Isao opened in a state of high excitement. It was a wild lily from the Saigusa Festival.

  Since it had been subjected to the guards’ handling at the end of its long journey, the lily was a little withered and drooping. Still, it had a freshness and luster far greater than those that Isao and his comrades had intended to conceal on their persons on the morning of their attack. This lily still seemed to have a trace of the morning dew that fell upon the open place before the shrine of the gods.

  Makiko must have made a special trip to Nara in order to give this one lily to him. And, from all the lilies that she brought back, she must have chosen this one for its superb whiteness and beauty.

  Isao reflected. The previous year at about this same time, he had been filled with a sense of freedom and strength. Beneath Sanko Falls on the holy mountain of the gods, he had snuffed out the fire still smoldering from the victorious kendo combat before the shrine. And with a purified heart, he had then given himself over to his act of worship, gathering the mass of lilies that were to be offered to the gods. Sweat had covered his forehead wrapped with a white hachimaki as he pulled the laden cart along the road to Nara. The village of Sakurai had been bright in the summer sun. Isao’s youthfulness and the green of the mountainside had been in harmony.

  Lilies were like a crest marking that memory. And afterwards they had become the symbol of his resolution. Since that day, lilies had been at the center of everything—his fervor, his vows, his anxiety, his dreams, his readiness for death, his yearning for glory. The pillar that supported his dark plan, the soaring pillar of his resolution—always shining in the gloom at its top were the ornamental lilies that concealed the bolts holding it fast.

  He gazed at the lily he held in his hand. He rolled the bent stem between his palms, feeling the leaves rubbing against his skin as the drooping lily revolved. Then it abruptly fell away from him, scattering a bit of dull golden dust. The sunlight at his window had become stronger. Isao felt that the lilies of last year had been reborn.

  36

  WHEN THE RULING of the preliminary hearing was delivered to Isao, he saw Sawa’s name among the defendants, and he felt ashamed of the suspicions that he had been entertaining for so long. He had only to think of Sawa’s face, of his name, for that shameful, unpleasant feeling to surge up irresistibly. Sometimes in this mood he felt that he had to have someone to play the role of informer. If not Sawa, who then? His suspicions, since they could not be dismissed, required an object. Otherwise, how could he sustain himself?

  What was most frightening, however, was what came next if Sawa, by far the most likely, was no longer to be considered. Isao was fearful of transferring the suspicion he had felt toward Sawa to some other person. At the time of his capture, ten others were with him: Miyahara, Kimura, Izutsu, Fujita, Miyaké, Takasé, Inoué, Sagara, Serikawa, and Hasegawa. Of these, the absence of the names of Serikawa and Sagara from the list of defendants was but to be expected because, being under eighteen, they would be tried as juveniles. Isao thought about Sagara and Serikawa: the one always so close at hand as if he were Isao’s shadow—small, alert, bespectacled Sagara; the other the boyish son of a Shinto priest in the Tohoku region—Serikawa, who had burst out in tearful protest before the shrine: “I can’t go back!” Under no circumstances could Isao think of those two as betraying him. Someone on the outside then? Isao feared pursuing this further. For he felt that something lay hidden, the same sort of feeling that checked one from searching through a clump of grass in which one fears to discover white bones.

  Those who had fallen away knew, of course, that December third was the date set. But the last man to desert them knew nothing more than what they had had in mind three weeks before that day. Since the plan had thereafter been drastically altered, there was no reason why the date set could not have been either postponed or moved up or simply canceled. Even if one of the deserters had informed on them, Isao still could not fathom why the police had refrained from intervening until two days before they were to strike. Should not the simplification of the plan have made it likely that they would strike at an earlier date?

  Isao kept struggling not to think about these things. But even as he did, just as the moth drawn to the flame must turn its eyes back upon it, no matter how it tries to look away, his mind returned to the foreboding thoughts he wanted most to avoid.

  The day of the opening of the trial, June twenty-fifth, was fair. The heat was intense.

  The patrol wagon carrying the defendants passed by the moat surrounding the Imperial Palace, its waters glittering in the sunlight, and entered the confines of the red brick Courthouse through the rear gate. The Tokyo District Court was on the first floor. Isao came into the courtroom wearing a white splashed-pattern kimono and hakama, which had been brought to the prison for him. The amber luster of the judges’ bench struck his eyes. When the guard removed his handcuffs at the door, he made Isao turn, out of kindness, so that he had a momentary look in the direction of the spectators. There sat his father and mother, whom he had not seen for half a year. When his eyes met his mother’s, she covered her mouth with a handkerchief. She seemed to be choking back sobs. Makiko was nowhere to be seen.

  The defendants formed a single line, their backs to the spectators. Thus arrayed with his comrades, Isao felt his courage mounting. Izutsu was right beside him. Though they could neither exchange words nor look at each other, Isao sensed that Izutsu’s body was trembling. He knew this was not due to his friend’s standing before the bench. The excitement of seeing Isao after so long was conveyed by every tremor of his friend’s hot, sweaty body.

  Right before Isao and the others was the defendants’ box. Beyond it was the dazzling light mahogany of the judges’ bench, the grain visible in the wood of its panels. It was majestically proportioned, and to its rear stood a doorway of the same light mahogany, a gable in the baroque manner crowning its solemnity. The three judges, the Chief Judge in the center, sat upon chairs, each of which had a corolla carved upon its back. The court stenographer sat to the right of the defendants, and over on the left was the prosecutor. The purple arabesque embroidered upon the front and spreading to the shoulders of the judges’ black robes glinted dully. And there was also purple piping upon the haughty black judges’ caps. Obviously this was like no other place in the world.

  When he was somewhat more composed, Isao glanced to the right, where the defense counsel sat, and saw Honda staring full at him.

  The Chief Judge asked his name and age. Since his arrest, Isao had become accustomed to being addressed authoritatively from above, but this was his first experience of being summoned by a voice from such an eminence, a voice that seemed to embody the rationale of the entire nation and to fall like distant lightning from a sky filled with brilliant mist.

  “Isao Iinuma, Your Honor. Twenty,” he answered.

  37

  THE SECOND SESSION of the trial was held on July nineteenth. The weather was fair, but an occasional breeze through the courtroom fluttered the legal papers, and so the attendants shut the windows halfway. Again and again Isao had to resist the temptation to scratch a bedbug bite on his side, which was aggravating his sweaty discomfort.

  As soon as the session began, the Chief Judge rejected one of the witnesses that the prosecutor had requested at the first session. Delighted, Honda rolled a red pencil quietly across the papers that covered his desk. This was an idiosyncracy that he had somehow acquired around the time he became a judge in 1929, and one he had been making an effort to suppress ever since. Now, four years later, it had reasserted itself. It was a bad habit for a judge, because of its disturbing effect upon defendants, but in his present position Honda could indulge it to his heart’s content.

  The rejected witness was Lieutenant Hori. Here indeed was a witness that would have presented problems.

  Honda noted the sudden look of disappointment that darke
ned the prosecutor’s face, as though a gust of wind had ruffled the surface of a pond. Hori’s name appeared any number of times in the minutes of the preliminary examinations and hearings, as well as in the hearings to which the deserters had been summoned to give information. Isao alone had never mentioned the name. To be sure, Hori’s function in the plan was extremely vague, and his name did not appear on the final list seized by the police. This was in the form of a chart upon which each of the names of the twelve major financiers was joined by a line to the name of one of the twelve defendants. The police had found it at the hideaway in Yotsuya. Still, there was nothing in it that clearly indicated assassination.

  Most of the twelve defendants said that Lieutenant Hori had been an inspiration to them, but only one of the twelve testified that he had exercised any leadership. Among the deserters, many testified that they had never met Hori nor even heard his name mentioned. Essentially, then, aside from the confused testimony of the defendants, the prosecutor had no evidence whatsoever to back up his suspicion of a large-scale plot prior to the massive defections.

  As to the leaflets falsely proclaiming that imperial authority had been granted to Prince Toin, the dangerous evidence that the Prosecutor’s Office had set eyes upon, darkness had swallowed them up. Once the prosecutor had seen the disproportion between the ambitious proclamation and the scanty resources of the would-be assassins, it was obvious how vital a witness the Lieutenant had become for him. Honda perceived Sawa’s hand at work in this turn of events which so irritated the prosecutor. Iinuma had hinted as much.

  “That Sawa’s a good fellow,” Iinuma had said. “He wanted to join his fate with Isao’s, whatever the consequences. He was going to help Isao carry out his plan, without a word to me, and then follow him in suicide. So perhaps the one that was hurt the most by my informing was Sawa. But he’s a mature man, after all, and must have made careful preparations in case of failure. Since deserters are the greatest source of danger in this kind of activity, I’m sure he sprung into action as soon as they dropped out. He must have gone around to give each one a thorough talking-to. Maybe he said: ‘If this affair is nipped in the bud, you’re going to be called to give testimony. It takes hardly anything to change a witness like you into an accomplice. Just in case you don’t want this to happen, you’d better say that the military influenced you only in spirit. Otherwise this is going to turn into a big affair, you’ll all be implicated, and you’ll be sticking your neck into the noose.’