Friday, August 01, 2003
(10:39 AM) | Anonymous:
Haru no Yuki
A few words on Yukio Mishima. Tha man was one of history's great lunatics, a skinny, sensitive poet fellow who around age 30 decided it was time to start lifting weights like a madman, commissioning photo spreads of himself, and generally transform into a right-wing extremist goofball. Oh yeah, and he killed himself in a lavish public spectacle at age 45. He was also the best Japanese author of the 20th century (apologies to all the loathsome Kenzaburo Oe and Yasunari Kawabata partisans out there--you know who you are)
And his best book, far and away, is Spring Snow. It's the first installment in a tetralogy called the Sea of Fertility (Hojo no Umi), but it's sadly the only one that works. Runaway Horses lacks the exciting characters, Temple of Dawn is just weird (though it makes a fine travel guide to Thailand), and he just throws the whole structure away with Decay of the Angel (though maybe we should give him points for that--he was pretty unbalanced by the time he wrote that one). Back to Spring Snow. It works on every level--as a meditation on friendship and loyalty, as a paean to youth and beauty (and death, it is Yukio Mishima we're dealing with here), as a snapshot of Taisho-era Japan, hell, even as an exploration of the vastly differing legal traditions at play in the West and in Asia. Dear God, it's good. I've already read the thing three times and i'm sure i'll read it again before the year is out.
The only criticism I have concerns the characters--they're wonderful, fully-developed individuals, but it feels a tad ridiculous to hear 19-year olds, even ones as self aware as Kiyoaki and Honda, spouting off about the philosophical implications of early death, and so on. But I would ask readers to at least attempt to suspend their disbelief here--Mishima had an awful lot to say, much of it compelling, and if he has to stretch reality a bit to get his points across, i can live with it. And we can only guess the Mishima actually -was- that self-aware at age 19--I suspect he didn't have all that many friends.
But there's just so much that does work here; the scene with Kiyoaki and Satoko in the tatami room is just, fantastic, Mishima has this incredible knack for capturing relationships between men and women, at least in this novel. The fact that he was an enthusiastic gay man in real life speaks either to a certian universality of human emotions, or to the fact that he was just really, really good, probably both. Does he spend too much time lovingly describing both characters' bodies? yeah, but they're both really, really attractive, so it's an indulgence i can live with. And i could go on like this. It's description where the man shines--there's a scene on the beach with the two Thai princes in the rain that's just wonderful, it's like being out there in a warm summer rain with them, and it's the kind of scene you could read seven times.
The man had a gift, and it's all there to see in this book. it's just so good. His prose can be incredibly fussy and ornate in his other works, his characters so bizarre as to be unbelievable, but he avoids all that here. It's great. We all would like to be Kiyoaki, but we all end up being a bit a bit like Honda, wanting to be swept away, wanting to be at the center of something, but never quite getting there. And Mishima's description of being 19 is right there, dead on. The whole world really can seem to be crashing down in an instant, but in Kiyoaki we have a character who takes it as far as things can possibly go. Sleep with a girl betrothed to a relative of the emperor? no problem. Get her pregnant? done and done. Slowly waste away from the agony of irretreivably lost love? right away.
it's a decent book all around. A story, a philosophical work, and a historical document all at once. And it's not all creepy like Thirst for Love or The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea, though those were great too. Read all his works; they all offer something--but read this one 4 times first.
so i'll be posting again from now on.
-Mike
