Confessions of a Mask

I'd put off my acquaintance with Yukio Mishima until assaying his tetrology, The Sea of Fertility in its first volume, Spring Snow, as translated into English by Michael Gallagher, who also translated the 2nd part of the tetrology, Runaway Horses. Hooked as I instantly was, I thought to proceed chronolgoically through Mishima's work. The earliest to arrive was Forbidden Colours as translated by Alfred H. Marks. I was astonished at the rawness of the prose compared to the opulence-in-verite I found in Spring Snow. I thought perhaps there'd been an evolution of style, perhaps beginning in a brash way and growing into a mature, more redolent and rapturous romance.Having just finished reading Meredith Weatherby's rendering into English of Yukio Mishima's first novel, Confessions of a Mask, I realize Marks was just a miserable translator.Where Forbidden Colours displayed, in Mark's translation, a more overt misogyny, a more cynically abrupt, pre-punk Spartan asceticism, Confessions of a Mask is infused with the most compelling invocations of young love in literature since Vladimir Nabokov's Ada, similarly narrated from an Empyrean seat of reason and resolution, of serenity and sagacity, insight.Even as our narrator internally confesses his 'inversion', his exclusively homoerotic and sometimes floridly sado-masochistic inner fantasy life, he is nonetheless completely open to revelatory intimacy of a non-gender-specific inception:"The pain I was feeling was crystal clear, but of such a unique and incomprehensible nature that I could not have explained it even if I had tried....I could only say that it was a pain like that of a person who waits one bright midday for the roar of the noon-gun and, when the time for the gun's sounding has passed in silence, tries to discover the waiting emptiness somewhere in the blue sky. His is the rending impatience of waiting for a longed-for thing that is overdue, the horrible doubt that it may never come after all."And, even though our introspective and utterly disclosive narrator shares with us his five-times-daily indulgence in his 'bad habit', still, the most disarmingly honest ejaculation is this one:"Sonoko lifted her grave eyes as though unconsciously asking someone for help. In the pupils of her eyes I discovered a beauty I had never seen before. They were deep, unblinking, fatalistic pupils, like fountains constantly singing with an outpouring of emotions. I was at a loss for words, as was always the case with she turned those eyes on me. Suddenly I reached to the ashtray across the table and ground out my half-smoked cigarette. As I did so the slender vase in the center of the table upset, soaking the table with water."Such an indelible, gender-neutral moment.Thirst For Love is next in the Mishima ouevre, but it's translated by the hapless Alfred H. Marks. I'm meanwhile being geek-shamed by famous writers and readers to continue on the Three-Body Problem trilogy. I say, life is too short. I'm sure Cixin Liu will ultimately be worth my time, but for now, my Mishima binge, especially as Meredith Weatherby's translation of The Sound Of Waves seems to be next in the Mishima queue, feels to me of more essential and immediate moment.Such moments of breathtaking insight and beauty as this premiere novel are rare.

On the surface, this is a simple story about a young man in 1930s-1940s Japan coming to terms with his homosexuality. However, a quick formal analysis reveals something odd; a story that's all about sex doesn't actually use the word. It's the dirty secret that everyone knows, so a man and woman can talk about "it" without ever saying "it." Like the bits of dirt and grass poking out from his first crush's footprints in the snow, the words of each paragraph (the paragraphs even have spaces between them, like footprints across the pages) can only hint at what's hidden between the lines. For a novel that spans the years of the Pacific War, the war is never explicitly mentioned; it's treated like the dirty secret that everyone knows. How can anyone come out and admit to finding beauty in war when the rest of society feels disgusted by it?

"For many years I claimed I could remember things from the time of my birth. Whenever I said so, the grownups would laugh at first, but then, wondering if they were not being tricked, they would look distastefully at the pallid face of that unchildlike child.""For over a year now I had been suffering the anguish of a child provided with a curious toy. This toy increased in size at every opportunity and hinted that if rightly used it would be quite a delightful thing. But directions for it's use were nowhere written, and so when the toy took the initiative of wanting to play with me, my bewilderment was inevitable."Everyone says that life is a stage. But most people do not become obsessed with the idea, at any rate not as early as I did. By the end of childhood I was firmly convinced that it was so, and that I was to play my part on the stage without ever revealing my true self.""Contrary to my expectations, that everyday life which I feared showed not the slightest sign of beginning. Instead it felt as though the country was engaged in a sort of civil war, and people were giving even less thought to tomorrow than they had during the real war."*********Yukio Mishima was drafted in 1944 and narrowly missed fighting in the Phillipines due to a failed medical exam. He wrote this novel shortly after he graduated law school in 1947. After a year he quit his job at the Ministry of Finance and became a full time writer. He was already published in high school, receiving recognition, but his father opposed writing as a career. 'Confessions Of A Mask' released in 1949 became a bestseller. It was translated to English in 1958.Although written as a novel this book is a barely fictionalized autobiography of Mishima's life from birth in 1925 to age 24. An imagined life and affinity for myth make it anything but a literal account. Kochan, a form of the author's given name, recalls his postnatal bath and naming ceremony at one week old. Picture books of Joan of Arc, movies of Cleopatra, fairy tales of Andersen, kabuki and magicians fill his dreams. He begins to dress up like the feminine characters he has seen.Kochan's family life matches Mishima's. He sleeps in the sick room of his aristocratic grandmother, his grandfather a failed businessman. His father is a bureaucrat always away, mother busy with his siblings. From his gate he watches the soldiers march by. Smelling their sweat, he has fantasies of death and blood. Slayers of dragons endure torture ordeals, awakening masochistic yearnings. Frail in health, forbidden to play with boys, he spends his days with nurses and maids.As he gets older he is expected to display a more masculine side, an imposition he sees as a masquerade. In games with girls of make believe war he pretends to die in the battle. At twelve he begins to notice the half naked bodies of men at processions and seashores, of samurai warriors and sumo wrestlers. Moving back to his parents home he discovers the art of Greece and Rome, and ultimately the martyrdom of St. Sebastian, as his grandmother grieves for her loss of the boy.In middle school Kochan falls in love with his classmate, a more mature but delinquent boy, but jealousy overcomes his infatuation. Instead he attempts to conceal from himself the nature of his desires. War begins as he enters high school, military drills de rigueur; smoking, drinking, dirty jokes and adolescent urges to kiss his friend's elder sister. Near the end of the war his father insists he attend college, a futile pursuit as he expects to die in battle, his family in air raids.Kochan convinces himself he can fall in love with a woman without feeling passion, a concept of platonic love in conflict with his basic instincts. Instead of a glorious end he is sent to work building zero planes in an industrial cult of suicide. He lies about his health in an army examination and is filled with shame. In the bombing of Tokyo buildings are knocked down to control the flames. The sister of a friend leaving for the war is led on by him, and he becomes anxious to escape.This breakthrough novel is brilliant and disturbing. In a letter to his publisher Mishima had vowed to be 'as precise as possible' and to make himself 'both the executioner and executed'. In this he delivered as promised, in painful and searching detail. It is a document of his suffering and self discovery, of one that had also hurt others along the way. Many growing up may have experienced similar struggles, although perhaps not as dramatically as told in this account.Mishima's later life is even more startling than the story of his earlier one; worldwide celebrity, shots at the Nobel, fame as actor/model, and for a plot to overthrow the government that ended in ritual suicide at the headquarters of the army. His literary career encompassed 35 novels, 50 plays, 25 short story collections and 35 books of essays, before his death in 1970 at age 45. As a modernist writer in postwar Japan, he delves unsparingly into the psychology of his fictional self.

What an incredible book, unlike anything I have read before. It took me awhile to read, as almost every paragraph carries the weight of a poem. This is a story of a young Japanese man discovering he is gay, set against the U.S. air war in the mid 40's. It speaks to the split that occurs in one's psyche for those who do not meet the social norms. It tears the soul in two at so many different levels. The entire book focuses on the author's inner life. All his thoughts, feelings, fantasies, and hungers are laid bare for the reader to digest. His later introduction to a woman he cannot forget seems to represent some sort of purity, yet even this is fraught with contradictions. One cannot change the core of who they are, and a hidden life often brings torment. The raw honesty and stark reality of this book will not soon be forgotten.