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Authors: Yukio Mishima

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His age enabled him to use the laws taught him by experience as measurements, and he could foretell the outcome of most situations. Actually, except for natural calamities, historical events occurred, no matter how unexpected they might seem, only after long maturation. History is as hesitant as a young maiden before a romantic proposal. For Honda there was always a hint of the artificial in any event that corresponded precisely to his own wishes and that approached at a pleasing speed. Therefore, if he wanted to entrust his actions to the laws of history it was always best for him to adopt a reserved attitude toward everything. He had seen too many instances where one could get nothing one wanted and where determination had ultimately been quite futile. Even things which one should have been able to obtain if one had not craved them managed to slip away simply because they had been coveted too much. Suicide seemed so completely dependent on one’s own desire and resolve, yet Isao had had to spend a whole year in prison in order to carry it out successfully.
However, on reflection, Isao’s act of assassination and his suicide seemed like brilliant evening stars, harbingers, in a night filled with glittering constellations, that led the way to the February Twenty-Sixth Incident. To be sure, the assassins had hoped for dawn, but what materialized was night. And now, be the times what they may, that night was almost spent, and an uneasy, stifling morning had settled in, one that none of those activists would have imagined.
The treaty drawn up by Japan, Germany, and Italy had angered a segment of the nationalists and those who were pro-French and pro-English; but the great majority of those who liked Europe and the West and even the old-fashioned proponents of a pan-Asia were pleased about it. Japan was to be married, not to Hitler, but to the German forests; not to Mussolini, but to the Roman pantheon. It was a pact joining German, Roman, and Japanese mythology: a friendship among the beautiful, masculine, pagan gods of East and West.
Honda, of course, had never submitted to such romantic prejudice, but he sensed that the times were somehow tremulously ripening and it was clear that some dream was forming. And now that he was here, away from Tokyo, the sudden rest and leisure resulted curiously in fatigue, and he could do nothing to prevent this plunge into reminiscing about things past.
He had not abandoned his idea, the one he had stressed long, long ago when talking with the nineteen-year-old Kiyoaki: the will to engage oneself in history is the essence of human purpose. Yet the instinctive fear that a nineteen-year-old boy has about his own character turns out, at times, to be extremely prophetic. While proclaiming such a concept, Honda at the time was in reality expressing despair in his own makeup. This despondency increased as he grew older and finally became a chronic ailment. But his personality had never changed in the slightest. He recalled a most terrifying passage from the chapter on the Three Recompenses
 
∗
in the
Treatise on the Establishment of Reality
, which was among the two or three Buddhist texts recommended by the Abbess of the Gesshu Temple:
That one takes pleasure in doing evil
Is because that evil is not ripe.
Thus, Honda took a listless, tropical pleasure in the gracious reception he had met in Bangkok, in what he heard and saw, and even in what he ate and drank. But that was not really proof that he had been guiltless of evil acts in the nearly fifty years of his life. His evil was surely not yet so ripe as the fragrant fruit ready to fall of itself from the branch.
In Thai Theravada Buddhism with the artless concept of causality found in the Southern Buddhist Canon, Honda recognized the causality of the Laws of Manu that had impressed him so deeply in his youth. Throughout, Hindu deities show their grotesque faces. The sacred
naga
-serpent, the mythical
garuda
, half giant, half eagle with golden body, white face, and red wings, which adorn the eaves of the temples, still recount the stories of the
Nagananda
, the seventh-century Indian epic, and the filial piety of
garuda
is acclaimed by the Hindu Vishnu.
Since coming to this land, Honda’s former intellectual curiosity had been piqued, and he was eager to discover how Theravada Buddhism explained the mystery of transmigration. It was this concept that provided him the opportunity of casting aside half a lifetime of rationality.
According to scholars, Indian religious philosophy is divided into six periods:
1. The period of the
Rig Veda
.
2. The period of the
Brahmanas
.
3. The period of the
Upanishads
, which extends from the eighth to the fifth centuries
B.C.
, an era of self-conscious philosophy, establishing as its ideal the unity of Brahma, the ultimate ground of all being, and atman, “self.” The idea of a cycle of births and deaths—samsara—appeared clearly for the first time in this period, and when linked to the concept that acts (karma) bring inevitable consequences the law of causality came into being. By coupling that with the idea of atman, a philosophical system emerged.
4. A period of schism among various schools of thought.
5. The period of perfection of Theravada Buddhism, occurring between the third and first centuries
B.C.
6. The ensuing five hundred years which saw the rise of Mahayana Buddhism.
The problem is the fifth period, in which the Laws of Manu were compiled. Honda had been surprised when in his youth he had discovered that the concept of samsara was applied even to law codes. The idea of karma as it appears later in Buddhism was distinctly different from that in the
Upanishads:
the difference lay in Buddhism’s denial of atman, for such denial is the essence of this religion.
One of the three characteristics which differentiate Buddhism from other religions is that of the selflessness of all the dharmas. Buddhism advocated selflessness and denied atman, which had been considered to be the main constituent of life. It followed that Buddhism rejected the idea of “soul,” which is the extension of atman into the hereafter. Buddhism does not recognize the soul as such. If there is no core substance called soul in beings, there is, of course, none in inorganic matter. Indeed, quite like a jellyfish devoid of bone, there is no innate essence in all of creation.
But then the troublesome question arises: if good acts produce a good subsequent existence and evil acts a bad one, and if, indeed, everything returns to nothingness following death, what then is the transmigrating substance? If we assume there is no self, what is the basis of the birth-and-death cycle to start with?
The three hundred years of Theravada Buddhism constitute a period of dispute and conflict among many schools which resulted in no satisfactory logical conclusion for any given one. All were embarrassed by the contradictions and inconsistencies that existed between the atman, that Buddhism denied, and karma, which it inherited.
For a credible philosophical answer to this question, mankind had to await the Mahayana school called Yuishiki, or “consciousness only.” But when the Theravada Sautrantika school evolved, the concept of “seed perfuming” was established, according to which the effect of a good or bad deed remains in one’s consciousness, permeating it as the fragrance of perfume permeates clothes, and thus forms character. This power of forming was the origin of the causal theory. The doctrine was the precursor of later Yuishiki ideas.
And now Honda realized what was behind the constant smile and the melancholy eyes of the two Siamese princes. It was a feeling of heavy, golden listlessness, of lulling breezes beneath the trees—the constant evasion of any organized logical system; oppressed and languid in the sun, the people of this land of sumptuous temples and flowers and fruits faithfully worshipped the Buddha and believed implicitly in reincarnation.
Prince Kridsada aside, the intelligent Prince Pattanadid had had, surprisingly, the sharp mind of a philosopher. Yet the violence of his emotions swept away any dispassionate intellectualism. Honda still remembered most vividly, more than any words the Prince had spoken, the sight of him fainting that end of summer on the lawn chair at Kiyoaki’s southern villa on hearing the news of Chantrapa’s death. His tanned arm dangled limply from the white armrest. Honda could not see if the Prince’s face, resting against his shoulder, had turned pale, but his brilliant white teeth were visible between slightly parted lips.
His long, elegant brown fingers, meant for the subtle caresses of love, hung loosely, almost touching the green summer grass, as though all five had momentarily followed in death the deceased object of his desire.
However, Honda feared that the princes’ recollection of Japan might not be very pleasant, though the passage of time could well have made them miss it even more. Their isolation, their language difficulties, the different customs, Prince Pattanadid’s loss of his emerald ring, and the death of Princess Chantrapa had made their stay in Japan something less than enjoyable. But what had ultimately turned away their understanding was the intimidating Swordsmen’s Team spirit at the Peers School. This had alienated not only the princes but also ordinary students like Honda and Kiyoaki and the liberal and humanistic young men of the White Birch literary society. Unfortunately, the real Japan was not easily found among the friends of the princes, but was much more present among their enemies; the princes themselves were probably vaguely aware of this. An uncompromising Japan, as proud as a young warrior in scarlet silk, and yet as sensitive as a young boy challenging to battle before he is taunted and charging to his death before accepting insult. Isao was different from Kiyoaki, for he lived in the center of this radical world and believed in the existence of the soul.
Approaching fifty, Honda now possessed one advantage: he was probably free of prejudice. Of authority too, for he himself had once been authority; and even of reason, since he had once been the personification of cerebration.
Even the spirit of the Swordsmen’s Team in the second decade of the century was one of youth in uniform; it pervaded the entire era. And Honda too, who had never been a part of it, now that he was older did not hesitate to identify in his memory those youthful days with an aggressive spirit.
This temper, further distilled and purified, formed Isao’s world, one Honda had not shared with him in his younger days, one he had observed only as an outsider. Noting how Isao’s youthful Japanese mind, struggling in absolute isolation, had destroyed itself, Honda could not but realize that what had permitted him to live the way he had was the strength of Western thought, imported from the outside. Unfertilized thinking brings death.
If one wished to live, one must not cling to purity, as Isao had done. One must not cut oneself off from all channels of retreat; one must not reject everything.
Nothing had ever forced Honda to probe the question of an unadulterated Japan more deeply than had Isao’s death. Was there any way to live honestly with Japan other than by rejecting everything, than by rejecting present-day Japan and the Japanese people? Was there no other way of living than this most difficult one, in which ultimately one murdered and then committed suicide? Everyone was afraid to say, but had not Isao given proof by his acts?
On reflection, in the purest of tribes there was the smell of blood and the taint of savagery. Unlike the Spaniards, who preserved their national sport of bullfighting despite the accusations of animal lovers throughout the world, the Japanese, when the nation had embraced a new culture and ethic at the end of the last century, turned their efforts to eliminating the barbaric customs of preceding generations. As a result, the genuine, unadulterated national spirit was subordinated, its energy erupting from time to time in explosions of violence which repelled and alienated the people even more.
However, whatever frightening mask it might assume, the national spirit in its original state was of pristine whiteness. Traveling through a country like Thailand, Honda realized more clearly than ever the simplicity and purity of things Japanese, like transparent stream water through which one could glimpse pebbles below, or the probity of Shinto rites. Honda’s life was not imbued with such spirit. Like the majority of Japanese he ignored it, behaving as though it did not exist and surviving by escaping from it. All his life he had dodged things fundamental and artless: white silk, clear cold water, the zigzag white paper of the exorciser’s staff fluttering in the breeze, the sacred precinct marked by a torii, the gods’ dwelling in the sea, the mountains, the vast ocean, the Japanese sword with its glistening blade so pure and sharp. Not only Honda, but the vast majority of Westernized Japanese, could no longer stand such intensely native elements.
But if Isao, who believed in the soul, had indeed gone to heaven—and this was an example of a good cause producing a good effect—if he had entered the cycle of births and deaths and been reborn as a human, what could the process be?
Now that he thought about it, Honda wondered if Isao, when he had determined to die, had not indeed secretly held some premonition of another life. There seemed to have been some indication of this. When a man strove to live his life in so pure and extreme a fashion, was he not naturally led to the supposition of another existence?

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