Runaway
Horses (1969)
Yukio Mishima
We
can only rely on our swords, and on bombs made from our flesh.
For the second installment of the Sea of Fertility tetralogy Mishima moves
the calendar forward almost two decades, to 1932. Shigekuni Honda, the earnest
and intelligent school friend of Kiyoaki Matsugae, is now a respected judge in
Kansai, which I gather is sort of out in the sticks, far from civilization. He
is sagacious and sturdy and known for his legal wisdom. One day while attending
a kendo tournament at a shrine he
encounters a young man whom he believes is the reincarnation of Kiyoaki: they
share a similar set of birthmarks, and the circumstances of their meeting
mirror the final words spoken by Kiyoaki while he lay wracked by a feverish
delirium. The young man, Isao Iinuma, is the son of Kiyoaki’s childhood tutor,
who was expelled from the Matsugae household for impregnating a maid. In the
intervening years the elder Iinuma has founded a school, the so-called “Academy
of Patriotism”, a far-right enclave where his son is a star student and captain
of the kendo team.
Honda only shows up at the beginning
and the end and for most of the book we follow Isao, who couldn’t possibly be
less like Kiyoaki. Kiyoaki was all emotions and no will. Isao is the opposite;
his is a ruthless, disciplined willpower. Isao embodies the concept of “purity”
but it’s wholly alien to a Western conception. For Isao (and Mishima) purity
involves making a statement to the Emperor and then committing an artistic
suicide while facing the rising sun. In order to facilitate his grand gesture
he has enlisted several of his school comrades in a plot to up end the social
order by murdering several wealthy capitalists and then committing seppuku on a
cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. They try to involve an army Lieutenant and
Prince Harunori, the same Prince who was betrothed to Satoko Ayakura. Someone
rats them out and they are arrested and tried. The group is broken apart but
after his trial Isao escapes his father’s house and murders the industrialist
Kurahara and then disembowels himself.
Isao and his group of fanatics draw
their inspiration from a pamphlet concerning the Shinpuren Rebellion, a 19th
Century revolt of dissatisfied samurai and Shinto fundamentalists. They called
themselves the League of the Divine Wind, which you might better recognize as
the kamikaze. The rebellion failed
and most of its members disemboweled themselves, which to Isao and his
compatriots just about the best thing a human being could do. I guess it’s sort
of admirable in a way, if you’re a pervert or an ultranationalist or someone
impressed by ostentatious displays of obedience. Something like 4,000 kamikaze pilots gave their lives during
the Second World War, which seems to me to be a gratuitous loss of life that
stands out in even against a tapestry of senseless violence, genocide, grisly
meat-grinders and black holes of human suffering. It’s not as if they were
destroyed by bombs or famine or other things over which they had no control.
They were convinced to sacrifice themselves meaninglessly for the sake of an
Emperor who presided over some of the most horrific crimes in the history of
mankind and was never once held accountable. Hirohito lived until 1989!
Personally I could never imagine being suicidally devoted to a cause or an
idea, and especially not a feudalistic anachronism like the Emperor of Japan.
Of all the Mishima novels I’ve read
this is the one that I have enjoyed the least. Mishima writes beautifully but
there is one flaw that towers above everything: perfect characters are boring.
Isao is perfect. Everyone he encounters is entranced by the intensity of his
gaze, at his clarity, drive, and the purity of his obsession. He is
intelligent, healthy, and untarnished. There is no conflict, no doubt. It’s an
intriguing idea but it doesn’t come off the way I think Mishima wanted it to. I
would think that a writer of Mishima’s caliber would know that. That was kind
of disappointing. Otherwise it was more of the usual Mishima: very sensual,
emotionally rich, and luxurious. Very surreal and internal and full of vivid
beauty. And like other Mishima novels it is homoerotic as all heck! It made Spring Snow look like Big Tit Blondes #3. Isao is a champion
in kendo, a form of fencing fought
using very stiff, erect wooden staves that smash and crack together while hot
sunlight reflects off sweaty, gleaming musculature. Young men, with their
muscles coiled like vipers, pant in the hot darkness. And so on.
One thing that I always appreciate
about a Mishima book is that he is all about defeating hypocrisy and destroying
the parent-world. As the product of two wildly hypocritical people that
sentiment appeals to me.
In
fact, it is Isao’s father who informs on him to the police, because his father
is ultimately envious of the purity of youth. Much of the book concerns the
contrast between purity and corruption. The old men, capitalists and
landowners, are trapped in their weak, corrupt flesh while the pure, like Isao,
die young and leave beautiful corpses. Mishima was somewhat obsessed with
flesh, muscle, and skin. He was a bodybuilder, after all, which takes no small
amount of hatred towards your material form.
I
guess that’s all I have to say about that. I don’t want to run out things to
write about before I finish The Sea of
Fertility. Just started The Temple of
Dawn. That book, and the next, are both shorter than Runaway Horses, so I should be done with this cycle pretty quickly.
I’m not used to reading novels in a series one after the other and part of me wants to
set it aside and move on to something else, but I’m going to power through
them. I think Mishima’s dedication to beauty and his completely unique worldview
make such a task very worthwhile.
Also,
I should note that the 80s biopic, Mishima:
A Life in Four Chapters, is very, very good. Highly recommend that.
Excellent Phillip Glass soundtrack, insane set design. A worthwhile viewing!
