Adam Kridler
Yukio Mishima Biography
Known perhaps as much for his political antics and tragic ending as his prolific writing,
Yukio Mishima was one of Japan’s most important and renowned authors of the past century. He
was highly decorated in his native country, and was nominated three times for the Nobel Prize in
Literature (EGS).
Mishima was born near Tokyo in 1925. An avid reader throughout his childhood, he did
not strictly adhere to the typically steadfast gender roles deeply ingrained in Japanese society at
the time, and many believe him to have been homosexual (NYTimes). When he published his
first writings his teachers helped him come up with a pen name (Yukio Mishima was not his
given name) in order to avoid being teased or shamed by his peers (EGS). Under that name he
went on to write scores of celebrated novels, plays, and short stories (NYTimes).
A man who sought spiritual beauty and revered his country for its purity and proud
history, Mishima was distraught at the turn Japan took following World War two. He felt his
country had become vacuous and abandoned what had made it beautiful (NYTimes). His passion
turned from writing to politics, and in what many believe to be an elaborate ritual he and three
other members of his radical right-wing political group attempted a coup at a Japanese military
base. After failing to persuade the soldiers to join forces with him he committed seppuku, an
ancient samurai form of ritual suicide, ending his life at 45 years old (EGS).
Mishima Summaries
The Priest of Shiga Temple and His Love is a mythic tale of a Great Priest’s final trial
before attaining enlightenment. The story begins with a two-page description of the setting—a
fantastic world steeped in Buddhist imagery—before delivering tale of how the Priest is
unimaginably struck by the beauty of the Great Imperial Concubine one day, and how his
newfound love for her challenges his path to enlightenment. The Concubine initially thinks
nothing of him, but grows to long for him. The story ends with an encounter between the two of
him that leaves her disappointed and him fully enlightened.
In The Seven Bridges, four geishas attempt to complete a set of ritual prayers involving
the silent passage over seven bridges one calm evening, which they believe will result in their
wishes being granted. One by one the confident, hopeful, jaded women must abandon the course
for various reasons, leaving only the youngest and most timid, awkward, and scorned girl
successful in the end.
Patriotism is a calm, bloody, poignant account of a young army officer and his wife’s
ritual suicide one night after the man has received orders that he feels would require the sacrifice
of his honor to complete. The couple shares one last, lovely evening together before fearlessly
and determinedly killing themselves.
Death in Midsummer Analysis
Yukio Mishima’s collection Death in Midsummer and Other Stories offers an array of
material that reflects some of the best of what Mishima has to offer. The Japanese author’s style
is unmistakable and the translators who have adapted his stories (assuming they have not
embellished anything) allow the bright light of Mishima’s prose to shine through in English with
its same tenacity and character. While it is certain that a thrice-nominated Nobel Prize author has
excellent command of all elements of storytelling, three in particular stand out in this collection:
language, sense of place, and intimate characterization. Three stories in the collection which
exhibit these elements proudly are The Priest of Shiga Temple and His Love, The Seven Bridges,
and Patriotism.
The Priest of Shiga Temple and His Love (from here on referred to as The Priest and His
Love) is a story heavily based in its setting. Mishima spends two pages at the beginning of the
story meticulously describing the fantastic world in which the story occurs, detailing “towers
wrought of gold, silver, lapis lazuli, crystal, coral, agate, and pearls” and air “filled with the
songs of cranes, geese, mandarin ducks, peacocks, parrots, and sweet-voiced Kalavinkas.” Much
of the description is filled with Buddhist references and imagery, and the story is indeed one of
Buddhist enlightenment. At the end of the introduction the narrator refers to “our story,” and
while the narrator is timidly self-aware, overall the entire piece comes across as a rich Buddhist
tradition being regaled to the reader.
The eponymous Priest is an old “man of the most eminent virtue” who is one step away
from enlightenment, which is given a location in the “Pure Land.” The Priest is a frail figure who
has discarded all physical, corporeal needs, including—so he believed—love. His heart belongs
in the Pure Land and he waits for his complete ascension to that realm: “In his dreams he lived
nightly in the Pure Land, and when he awoke he knew that to subsist in the present world was to
be tied to a sad and evanescent dream.” The entire story contains this manner of elevated diction,
which in any other story might come across as pompous, but its richness and texture blends
seamlessly into the billowy, radiant backdrop against which the story is set. Not all of Mishima’s
stories are told at this level, which is a reflection of his ability to tailor the tone and diction of
each story to its subject matter. A place this beautiful deserves better than simple language, and
Mishima’s sentences are for the most part elongated and complex.
The Priest’s final trial is in overcoming his sudden love for the Great Imperial
Concubine, the only other character in the story. Owing to the mythic nature of the story, these
are not fully detailed characters—the reader does not know, for example, what their favorite
foods are or how their parents raised them—but rather ones with a few brilliantly manicured
traits. The Priest is wise, aloof, and determined, and the Concubine is outwardly perfect, selfaware, and one who craves love. Not any love, though, but one whose “passion lay on the
boundary of the impossible.” The stakes are tremendously high in this story, and each character
has such an eminently clear desire—a common theme throughout all of the stories—which
drives the action.
Mishima wastes no time with dialogue in The Priest and His Love, and indeed the
narrator mentions several times that spoken words could not begin to communicate the form of
love felt between the two characters.
Indeed, aside from the short play included in the collection, Mishima’s stories are not
dialogue-driven. He prefers instead to spend the pages exploring each character’s mind, or
detailing the setting, or offering explanations to sensations and events. Many of his stories, such
as The Seven Bridges, are punctuated with important silences.
The Seven Bridges follows four geishas as they take a silent evening prayer walk,
crossing seven bridges in order to have their wishes granted. Again, the strong desires of the
women propel the action and create tension as the story progresses. One of them wants a patron
to support her more than anything, her friend other lusts after an actor. The oldest of the women
has grown out of childish wishes like those, yet since at this point she is helplessly confined to
her role in life she has nothing to wish for but to merely complete the ritual for its own sake. The
fourth girl, younger than the rest, fat, awkward-looking and scorned by the two other younger
geishas, does not reveal her wish, which creates a palpable sense of intrigue for both the reader
and one of the other geishas.
Mishima goes to great lengths to describe the women’s attire—as he does in all of his
stories. Emphasis is placed on one of the women’s decision to wear a clover kimono, which
evokes fertility superstition, and the other wear “a white kimono patterned with black leaves,” a
“crepe kimono dyed dark-blue whirls on white,” and “a one-piece dress made up of strange bits
and patches of kimono material.” This is the quiet girl, and extra attention is given to her
frumpiness:
“Her hair was set in a rumpled permanent, and her extraordinarily brawny
arms showing through her sleeves rivaled her face in duskiness. Her heavy
features were crushed under the swollen mass of her cheeks, and her eyes were
like slits. No matter which was she chose to shut her mouth, one of another of her
irregular teeth protruded. It was difficult to uncover any expression in that face.”
Mishima’s descriptions all have this blunt, nuanced quality to them. He is honest in his
appraisal of appearances and he has a way of picking details that stand out and give life to a
person or a place. When describing the calm evening settling outside, he writes “…the street
itself was fast asleep, and the roar of passing motorcycles sounded lonely and isolated without
the accompaniment of the usual street noises.” This language places the women in an isolated
setting that serves not to heighten any element of danger, but to reinforce the isolation of the
women, both professionally and spiritually that night. In the context of a city putting itself to
sleep, four colorful geishas walking slowly and silently makes for an odd sight.
Mishima has a habit of either robbing his characters of their desires or giving it to them in
unexpected ways. In The Seven Bridges the narration comes to focus on the two geishas with the
fiercest wishes: the one hopelessly in love and the silent and awkward but underestimated
youngest one. Tension builds to a fever pitch in the last few pages when only the two of them
remain on the walk and the older one becomes obsessed with knowing what the other girl’s wish
is. He writes,
“Masako could not help being bothered, despite herself, by the riddle of
what this girl from the backwoods could possibly be praying for. It was
disagreeable to have this stolid woman with her unfathomable prayers treading in
her footsteps. No, it was not so much unpleasant as disquieting, and Masako’s
uneasiness gradually mounted until it was close to terror. Masako had never
realized how upsetting it was not to know what another person wanted.”
The third person narration, though it jumps in between the three older women, wisely
never strays into the head of the youngest, which allows the reader to sympathize with Masako’s
curiosity. Third person close is the rule of thumb for every story in the collection, and Mishima
reveals only what he wants about each character, being careful not to dig too deeply in order to
make the reader an intimate but not all-knowing observer. He seems to enjoy exploring the
caverns and crevices of his characters’ minds, and it is the rich, full-bodied impressions of the
characters, not any intricate, convoluted plots or flashiness or sleight-of hand that serves as the
centerpieces of these stories. At their heart these are simple stories about human emotions.
This is most clear in Patriotism, a straightforward account of the tender final night spent
by a young couple before they kill themselves. Their death is not a surprise; it is explained in the
opening sentence and referred to sporadically throughout the story. The story is an exploration of
the relationship between a young soldier and his wife, and the climax of its closing moments.
Theirs is a very traditional relationship, which is to say one of unwavering obedience and
loyalty on behalf of the wife, and protection and care from the husband. Troubling as this may
seem to a modern, progressive audience, there is unquestionable beauty in the way the two
behave together and love, and their happiness is extraordinary. The gender roles are heavily
enforced. The wife’s body is “white and pure” and she is perhaps the paragon of a dutiful
soldier’s wife. Throughout the story the husband references the lessons on loyalty, duty, and love
he had taught his wife, and her unwavering position by his side nearly moves him to tears.
The couple must kill themselves because the husband has received orders during a civil
conflict which, as an honorable soldier, he knows he is unable to carry out. The account of his
initial departure from home is particularly illustrative of his wife’s life and resolution:
“In the lieutenant’s face, as he hurried silently out into the snowy morning,
Reiko had read the determination to die. If her husband did not return, her own
decision was made: she too would die. Quietly she attended to the disposition of
her personal possessions. She chose her sets of visiting kimonos as keepsakes for
friends of her schooldays, and she wrote a name and address on the stiff paper
wrapping in which each was folded. Constantly admonished by her husband never
to think of the morrow, Reiko had not even kept a diary and was now denied the
pleasure of assiduously rereading her record of the happiness of the past few
months and consigning each page to the fire as she did so.”
The entirety of the story takes place within the couple’s modest home, and its description
is limited to basic important details, such as the amount of people which can sit in each room
comfortably, so that it may serve as a sparse, tranquil vessel for the love and fire of the couple.
Dialogue is limited but it drives home the idea that the couple treats the evening with
ceremonious familiarity and comfort. Immediately after they resolve to die together the
conversation follows as such:
“‘The water is hot. Will you take your bath now?’
‘Ah yes, of course.’
‘And supper…?’
The words were delivered in such level, domestic tones that the lieutenant came near to
thinking, for the fraction of a second, that everything had been a hallucination.
‘I don’t think we’ll need supper. But perhaps you could warm some sake?’
‘As you wish.’”
The 25-page story stretches out the evening, doting on every detail so as to paint as vivid
a picture as possible of the couple that the reader may truly drown in their love and death. The
only time Mishima holds back is in his description of the couple’s love-making, in which he
explains “What ecstasies they experiences after these tender exchanges may well be imagined.”
The lieutenant’s suicide, covering nearly five pages of spilled entrails, missed thrusts, agony, and
stoic perseverance by both husband and wife is the climax, and the wife soon follows him to end
the story.
Given Mishima’s personal history of admonition for Japanese values, including the
samurai code, and his death—also by seppuku, the ritual suicide performed here—it is
fascinating to imagine how deeply intimate this story must have been to him. Indeed intimacy is
at the core of these stories. Each of them dilates time so that the reader can be deeply acquainted
with the rich flavors of the worlds and characters Mishima presents. A fervent lover of beauty,
Misima seems to seek to transpose his aesthetic appreciation for life and the world around him
onto the reader, and he does so with tender honesty and sorrowful personal journeys.
Bibliography
Clurman, Harold. "The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima." Review. New York Times 29 Dec.
1974: n. pag. Web. 15 Mar. 2014.
<http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/25/specials/mishima-bios.html>.
"Yukio Mishima - Biography." The European Graduate School. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Mar. 2014.
<http://www.egs.edu/library/yukio-mishima/biography/>.