Pain might well prove to be the sole proof of the
persistence of consciousness within the flesh,
the sole physical expression of consciousness. As my body acquired muscle, and in turn strength,
there was gradually born within me a tendency towards the positive acceptance of pain,
and my interest in physical suffering deepened.
the sole physical expression of consciousness. As my body acquired muscle, and in turn strength,
there was gradually born within me a tendency towards the positive acceptance of pain,
and my interest in physical suffering deepened.
Still daydreaming as I am about the bodies of Japanese men, thoughts naturally turn to Yukio Mishima - an author with whose work I am shamefully unfamiliar. Fortunately, in Tim Pendry I have a friend who is far better read than I and who has written excellent reviews of two early novels by Mishima: Confessions of a Mask (1949) and Forbidden Colours (1951).
Tim has kindly agreed that I might re-publish these reviews - which originally appeared on the Amazon-owned website Goodreads - here on Torpedo the Ark, beginning with a very recent review of the earlier text and continuing in part two of this post with a review written in 2011 of Forbidden Colours.
Tim has kindly agreed that I might re-publish these reviews - which originally appeared on the Amazon-owned website Goodreads - here on Torpedo the Ark, beginning with a very recent review of the earlier text and continuing in part two of this post with a review written in 2011 of Forbidden Colours.
Yukio Mishima: Confessions of a Mask - Reviewed by Tim Pendry
This is a book written by a man in his mid-twenties looking back on adolescence. To read it as an adolescent without experience (as I did first) is very different from reading it as an experienced adult nearly two decades older than the age at the author's death (as I have just done).
At the age of 19, it had a powerful effect on me for its apparent sexual honesty - a high art Japanese Portnoy's Complaint perhaps. Today, the claim of honesty looks less secure. Is it a fictionalised memoir or a fiction deluding us into thinking it is a memoir?
Mishima refers in passing to Augustine and the comparison with the author of the fourth century Confessions is deliberate. He is writing as a Japanese but paradoxically so since it is equally clear that the Japan of his youth had already been highly Westernised.
His girlfriend is Christian and refers to Jesus. Western clothes, even if militarised, are general. A young German boy rides by on a bicycle without it being anything other than normal. The literary references are essentially Western at every turn, notably to Saint Sebastian.
Although there are references to traditional attitudes, the girlfriend Sonoko and her family may be conservative but they are quite Westernised too. One enlightening aspect of this is that MacArthur's occupation was perhaps not such a break with the recent past as we might believe.
Unlike Germany in the last months of its war, the ordinary Japanese in 1945 were already mentally preparing for defeat while also preparing for sudden death at any time. Even Hiroshima seems less of a shock after the Tokyo fire bombings which are part of the background of the central section.
Whereas Germany in 1945 seems to have been imbued with an atmosphere of terror, Japan in the same period seems to have inclined to fatalism. Whereas the German State brutalised its people, the Japanese State appeared to be giving up the ghost long before it surrendered.
The book starts in the 1930s and moves into the immediate occupation period but the central section is very much that of a teenager not yet old enough to fight and yet too old not to be militarised and be integrated into the war effort albeit in a desultory way.
The book gives us a picture of a country which was suffering shortages and death from the sky but which was also conducting itself (as far as most people were concerned) with an air of normality without the full-on totalitarian systems of the West. The edge had gone off Japanese militarism.
The death instinct of Mishima (if the book is reliable as to his own mentality) preceded the war and cannot be assigned to it but his young hero has a dialectic in relation to war that reconciles the constant possibility of radical loss with a very human desire to keep death theoretical and romantic.
Mishima in 1948/9 is a highly educated young man conscious that he is writing literature, referential literature, and not history and his confessions must be seen in that light - as an ambiguous account of Mishima's own sexual ambiguity in which history is just the back drop.
The core of the book plays out the young man's true nature as a sado-masochistic homosexual in terms of desire for gratification and his undoubted capability, despite his doubts, for the sort of non-sexual love for a girl that most heterosexual men of any sensitivity would recognise.
His true nature is clearly both aspects but the first is not permitted in society (at least overtly) and the second is defined by cultural expectations. The book is the working out of the balance between the two, the acceptance of the first as fact and the containment of the second as secondary.
Mishima's young hero (alter-Mishima) allows himself to become what he is in terms of his sexuality in stages, another dialectical process, so that the final scene, a rather sad scene in many ways, provides a form of resolution where the two sides of him are permitted a shared reality.
His homosexuality is actually not central to the argument - this is not a gay coming out story - and the fact that it is hidden sexuality rather than a specific sexuality would have been the appeal to this reader in his earlier 19-year old incarnation.
This is a book about any sexuality that is not spoken of or made available in polite society set against conventional sexuality as it appears to the young male of a certain type who wants both to be free without feelings and to feel without being obliged to follow through as society expects.
In that struggle, in this book, the social (while being respected as reality) loses out in the scaling of values. What happens next to Mishima is clearer in his third novel, Forbidden Colours, which we have reviewed elsewhere: click here.
One might think that a later fetishisation of Japanese traditionalism (a little odd in relation to his debt to Western culture) is an attempt to try to contain the local social in order to limit its emotional claims on him where quasi-Western mores might be intrusive on his true nature.
Male Samurai mysticism might also later have given him cover for the expression of that true nature. If so, he is involved in a lifelong appropriation of his own culture (often to the puzzlement of other Japanese) to meet personal goals that owe far more to Western decadence than Japan.
The genius of the book lies in his clever use of apparent honesty to cover up what may lie beneath. The social environment is not romanticised but played straight. It is an ordinary life and he does not even try to be extraordinary either in his behaviour or even in his assessment of himself.
It is his hero's desires that are extraordinary. The mask of the title is a mask of being ordinary because, well, he is actually very ordinary other than his psycho-sexual torment and periodic or incipient unrecognised depression and fully recognised alienation.
As to the book itself, remembering the young age of the writer, it is an odd mix of extremely evocative realist writing based on locale and incident interspersed with quasi-philosophical bouts of self-reflective torment.
The first is remarkable, undoubted descriptive genius. There is no flummery. What happens is described so precisely that the incident is pictured with exquisite clarity - most famously in his first masturbation experience over a Renaissance picture of St. Sebastian.
The second is more problematic. He is struggling to get across feelings and complexities that are not easy to describe. I suspect that translators struggle to deal with the connotative aspects of Japanese when dealing with local emotional colour.
As a result, there are lines and passages that are close to incomprehensible and sometimes contradictory in a way that does not look as if it was intended. This aspect of the book is less successful - the attempt to make feeling literary and not always succeeding.
All in all, a classic first novel by a genius who is never to be analysed simply. His dishonest authorial voice still shows someone whose most central attribute is a refusal to lie about himself or his motivations and yet to try to push shame aside in order to become what he is.
This shame aspect is also interesting because we see no Western guilt but only an awareness of being driven to inappropriate shameful action or feelings without intending harm. Even his vicious fantasies are fantastic, works of imagination, and not the actual intent of the sadistic killer.
It is as if he simply wants another reality where all reality can be concentrated into a moment of death that wipes out the pain of living and where sexual excitation is a fantastic outgrowth of that sentiment.
There is no torturing of animals or deliberate cruelty to persons, just a fear of emotional engagement and a psychology of detachment which becomes more evident in the psychological cruelties of Forbidden Colours. The young hero is depressed far more than he shows anxiety.
At the age of 19, it had a powerful effect on me for its apparent sexual honesty - a high art Japanese Portnoy's Complaint perhaps. Today, the claim of honesty looks less secure. Is it a fictionalised memoir or a fiction deluding us into thinking it is a memoir?
Mishima refers in passing to Augustine and the comparison with the author of the fourth century Confessions is deliberate. He is writing as a Japanese but paradoxically so since it is equally clear that the Japan of his youth had already been highly Westernised.
His girlfriend is Christian and refers to Jesus. Western clothes, even if militarised, are general. A young German boy rides by on a bicycle without it being anything other than normal. The literary references are essentially Western at every turn, notably to Saint Sebastian.
Although there are references to traditional attitudes, the girlfriend Sonoko and her family may be conservative but they are quite Westernised too. One enlightening aspect of this is that MacArthur's occupation was perhaps not such a break with the recent past as we might believe.
Unlike Germany in the last months of its war, the ordinary Japanese in 1945 were already mentally preparing for defeat while also preparing for sudden death at any time. Even Hiroshima seems less of a shock after the Tokyo fire bombings which are part of the background of the central section.
Whereas Germany in 1945 seems to have been imbued with an atmosphere of terror, Japan in the same period seems to have inclined to fatalism. Whereas the German State brutalised its people, the Japanese State appeared to be giving up the ghost long before it surrendered.
The book starts in the 1930s and moves into the immediate occupation period but the central section is very much that of a teenager not yet old enough to fight and yet too old not to be militarised and be integrated into the war effort albeit in a desultory way.
The book gives us a picture of a country which was suffering shortages and death from the sky but which was also conducting itself (as far as most people were concerned) with an air of normality without the full-on totalitarian systems of the West. The edge had gone off Japanese militarism.
The death instinct of Mishima (if the book is reliable as to his own mentality) preceded the war and cannot be assigned to it but his young hero has a dialectic in relation to war that reconciles the constant possibility of radical loss with a very human desire to keep death theoretical and romantic.
Mishima in 1948/9 is a highly educated young man conscious that he is writing literature, referential literature, and not history and his confessions must be seen in that light - as an ambiguous account of Mishima's own sexual ambiguity in which history is just the back drop.
The core of the book plays out the young man's true nature as a sado-masochistic homosexual in terms of desire for gratification and his undoubted capability, despite his doubts, for the sort of non-sexual love for a girl that most heterosexual men of any sensitivity would recognise.
His true nature is clearly both aspects but the first is not permitted in society (at least overtly) and the second is defined by cultural expectations. The book is the working out of the balance between the two, the acceptance of the first as fact and the containment of the second as secondary.
Mishima's young hero (alter-Mishima) allows himself to become what he is in terms of his sexuality in stages, another dialectical process, so that the final scene, a rather sad scene in many ways, provides a form of resolution where the two sides of him are permitted a shared reality.
His homosexuality is actually not central to the argument - this is not a gay coming out story - and the fact that it is hidden sexuality rather than a specific sexuality would have been the appeal to this reader in his earlier 19-year old incarnation.
This is a book about any sexuality that is not spoken of or made available in polite society set against conventional sexuality as it appears to the young male of a certain type who wants both to be free without feelings and to feel without being obliged to follow through as society expects.
In that struggle, in this book, the social (while being respected as reality) loses out in the scaling of values. What happens next to Mishima is clearer in his third novel, Forbidden Colours, which we have reviewed elsewhere: click here.
One might think that a later fetishisation of Japanese traditionalism (a little odd in relation to his debt to Western culture) is an attempt to try to contain the local social in order to limit its emotional claims on him where quasi-Western mores might be intrusive on his true nature.
Male Samurai mysticism might also later have given him cover for the expression of that true nature. If so, he is involved in a lifelong appropriation of his own culture (often to the puzzlement of other Japanese) to meet personal goals that owe far more to Western decadence than Japan.
The genius of the book lies in his clever use of apparent honesty to cover up what may lie beneath. The social environment is not romanticised but played straight. It is an ordinary life and he does not even try to be extraordinary either in his behaviour or even in his assessment of himself.
It is his hero's desires that are extraordinary. The mask of the title is a mask of being ordinary because, well, he is actually very ordinary other than his psycho-sexual torment and periodic or incipient unrecognised depression and fully recognised alienation.
As to the book itself, remembering the young age of the writer, it is an odd mix of extremely evocative realist writing based on locale and incident interspersed with quasi-philosophical bouts of self-reflective torment.
The first is remarkable, undoubted descriptive genius. There is no flummery. What happens is described so precisely that the incident is pictured with exquisite clarity - most famously in his first masturbation experience over a Renaissance picture of St. Sebastian.
The second is more problematic. He is struggling to get across feelings and complexities that are not easy to describe. I suspect that translators struggle to deal with the connotative aspects of Japanese when dealing with local emotional colour.
As a result, there are lines and passages that are close to incomprehensible and sometimes contradictory in a way that does not look as if it was intended. This aspect of the book is less successful - the attempt to make feeling literary and not always succeeding.
All in all, a classic first novel by a genius who is never to be analysed simply. His dishonest authorial voice still shows someone whose most central attribute is a refusal to lie about himself or his motivations and yet to try to push shame aside in order to become what he is.
This shame aspect is also interesting because we see no Western guilt but only an awareness of being driven to inappropriate shameful action or feelings without intending harm. Even his vicious fantasies are fantastic, works of imagination, and not the actual intent of the sadistic killer.
It is as if he simply wants another reality where all reality can be concentrated into a moment of death that wipes out the pain of living and where sexual excitation is a fantastic outgrowth of that sentiment.
There is no torturing of animals or deliberate cruelty to persons, just a fear of emotional engagement and a psychology of detachment which becomes more evident in the psychological cruelties of Forbidden Colours. The young hero is depressed far more than he shows anxiety.
Note: this review by Tim Pendry originally appeared on Goodreads (June 16, 2019): click here. It is reproduced with the author's kind permission. To visit Tim Pendry's user page on Goodreads, click here.
See: Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask, (Penguin Books, 2017).
