The end of last year marked the 50th anniversary of the death of Japanese writer Yukio Mishima. As his work officially entered the public press this year, a large number of newly published and reprinted books and biographies have provided a new perspective on the puzzles he has left for literary history. Yukio Mishima's literary image is often oversimplified in the Chinese world, and it is necessary to re-understand the inner world of this Japanese writer who has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature many times but ended up committing suicide.
Yukio Mishima (1925-1970), a Japanese writer and a representative of Japanese postwar literature, established himself in 1949 with his autobiographical novel Confessions in Masquerade. A high-profile suicide in 1970 shocked the world. Representative works include "Kinkaku-ji Temple", "Sea of Fertility", "Deer Mingguan", "Marquise of Sade" and so on.
Beautiful and dangerous passion
"I just had a dream. What else you'll see, you'll see, is just below the waterfall. ”
This is what Kiyohito Matsueda said when he said goodbye to Hondo. They appear in the narrative context of Spring Snow in the tetralogy of Yukio Mishima's Sea of Plenty. In the train car bound for Tokyo, Kiyohito, who was seriously ill, was transported to Tokyo in a sleeper car. Bento sat on the lower bunk opposite Kiyohito guarding Kiyohito, and the vast darkness surrounded the train, and the rumbling sound was not the sound of the train, but the roar of darkness. At this time, Qing Xian groaned in pain, his chest ached like a knife, and the pain was so painful that his twisted face was still handsome, with bronze-like strict edges and corners. Two days after returning to Tokyo, Kiyohide Matsueda died at the age of twenty. The plot of life and death appears in the final chapter of "Spring Snow". Death is not the end, it is the beginning of the cycle of life, in the second part of "The Sea of Plenty", "Galloping Horse", Matsueda Kiyohito was reborn as Iinoma Xun, the hoon of this life, from childhood to practice swordsmanship, intoxicated with kendo, he took "Kamikaze LianShishi" as the ideal of life, snared his peers, secretly organized the Showa Kamikaze Company, and planned to assassinate the financial giants. Xun, who fled to the sea after the assassination failed, took off his clothes and half-naked pulled out a knife to cut his abdomen. At this point in the novel, the novel describes in the following details: "Xun took a deep breath, stroked his abdomen with his left hand, closed his eyes, put the blade in his right hand against his stomach, fixed the tip of his left finger, and stabbed his right hand with strength. The moment the blade plunged into the abdomen, the red sun rose in the eyelids. ”
The "Sea of Plenty" tetralogy is a huge work written by Yukio Mishima (hereinafter referred to as Mishima) with his life's efforts, and in 1950, at the age of 25, Mishima began to create the idea of creating this novel for 10 years. Yukio Mishima once concluded: "The first volume of The Sea of Plenty is a dynastic romance novel, that is, writing the so-called 'weak and slender' or 'peaceful soul'; the second volume of 'Galloping Horse' is a radical action novel, that is, writing the so-called 'mighty and strong' or 'martial soul'; the third volume of 'Xiaosi' is an exotic psychological novel, that is, writing the so-called 'strange soul'; the fourth volume, "Heaven and Man Without Decay", is a tracking novel based on the passage of time and leads to the so-called 'lucky soul'. "Yukio Mishima has fictionalized a mysterious story of rebirth and reincarnation, in which the protagonists have experienced life in different generations in different identities, and Mishima is like a wise man who understands the mystery of life and death, writing the mystery of life reincarnation and the romance of reincarnation. Mishima, however, is complex, narrating the mournfulness of impermanent life, the distortion of love and the paranoia and rigidity of human nature, and the cruelty of bloodshed and death pervades the narrative mystery of language.
As Mishima said in Galloping Horses, "The danger of danger is more vividly reflected in one's mind than the danger of beauty." ”
When I face the vast text of "The Sea of Plenty" with a vast text and exquisite narrative, I also know that I am facing the abundance of an outstanding writer and his amazing talent. A writer who writes such an outstanding text must have a tenacious will and a keen sensibility. Reading Yukio Mishima was a special experience that stirred up mixed emotional feelings such as respect and regret, admiration and sorrow.
There is no doubt that Mishima is a man who understands the mysteries of life and death, but his description of death and the narrative of life and death are like rumors foreshadowing his own destiny. Wisdom is more beneficial to all beings than attachment. The writer is an intellectual, and the civilization in which the writer is present and transmits is more important. In the history of literature, there are many writers who I admire, who are full of wisdom in their attitudes towards life and their views on world affairs. For example, Socrates and Plato, such as Borges, they are full of enlightenment in life. Taking this as a criterion and dimension, observing Yukio Mishima cannot but make us regret. Examining it in the way of the end of life is not so much the lack of Yukio Mishima's intellectual structure as it is the defect of modern Japanese culture.
In Yukio Mishima's novels, there are many expressive manifestations of suicide, where personality is generated, and more importantly, culture is shaped. During Mishima's death, Sam James, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, visited and wanted to know the origin of the Japanese suicide ritual of cutting the abdomen. Mishima replied, "We believe that sin lurks inside our bodies, so if it is necessary to reveal our own evil, we must cut open our stomachs and pull out the visible evil." This is also the symbol of the samurai's will. As we all know, suicide by cutting the abdomen is the most painful way to die. Their willingness to die in such a tragic and cruel way is the best proof of the courage of the samurai. This method of suicide is unique to Japan, and no foreigner can imitate it. ”
Dangerous passion. This is what Yasunari Kawabata discovered in Yukio Mishima. As early as reading "Spring Snow" and "Running Horse", Yasunari Kawabata commented: "I was touched and surprised by the impact of miracles. This is a masterpiece that blends ancient and modern times, an unparalleled masterpiece. This work is connected with the blood of Western classical, but it is not in Japan in the past, but it is a real Japanese work, and the beauty and diversity of the Japanese language is also the ultimate, in this work, The brilliant talent of Jun Mishima is purely sublimated into dangerous passion. The Japanese critic Takehiko Noguchi was also aware of the dangers of Mishima's art, writing in his review of The Sea of Plenty: "Perhaps the dangerous charm of Mishima's art lies in metaphysical deception, the secret of which is to use incantations to awaken what is sleeping in this bloodshed." And this deception, in turn, masquerades as a way of permanent regression by presenting an end-time that leads directly to the destruction of the world.
On November 25, 1970, Yukio Mishima woke up in the early morning, bathed and shaved, changed his shield uniform, and put a dark brown suitcase into the Wachana (a short knife used in The Japanese Belly Cutting Ceremony). He left an envelope on the table in the foyer of his room containing the final draft of his novel The Sea of Plenty. The envelope bears the name of Chiba Kojima, the editor of his publisher, Shinchosha, and she will send someone to pick up the manuscript at noon according to the agreed time.
On this day, Yukio Mishima committed suicide by caesarean section like Yuki Imanuma in "Galloping Horses".
"Sea of Plenty" quadrilogy, by Yukio Mishima, translated by Chen Dewen, version: Yazhong Culture | Beijing United Publishing Company, January 2021
A winding literary road
"The body is a vase filled with vacuum." This is Yukio Mishima's awareness of the human body. Among the modern Writers of Japan, Yukio Mishima was the first to be exposed to, but the last to accept. Yasunari Kawabata, who is also a writer who committed suicide, still makes me close, while Yukio Mishima has a sense of emotional repulsion. Of course, it was because of his fierce temperament and his method of committing suicide by caesarean section. These circumstances allowed me to maintain a sense of alienation from Yukio Mishima after I met him as a teenager. Looking at this alienation now, it actually stems from our inner fears. We are afraid of the intense way of death that we actively choose, and we are afraid of the state of life that burns like a flame.
However, as a professional writer, Yukio Mishima can be an example of my admiration.
In September 1944, Yukio Mishima graduated from the Faculty of Liberal Arts of gakuin and joined the Faculty of Law of Tokyo Imperial University in October. At that time, it was the end of the war, and Tokyo was frequently attacked by air raids and supplies were scarce. Yukio Mishima often runs through the streets of Tokyo, where air raids are likely to occur at any time. At that time, it was very difficult to publish, the authorities exercised strict control over the publication of books and periodicals, and the procedures for applying for the publication of books were complicated. In order to pass the review, Yukio Mishima filled out the application for publication "in order to protect and inherit the literary tradition of the imperial kingdom", and finally obtained approval for publication on paper and handed it over to the publishing agency for publication. During this period, Mishima feared that Tokyo would be hit by serious air raids, so he prayed every day that the printing plant would not be bombed during this period and that the book would be published safely.
On November 25, 1944, Yukio Mishima's debut novel, The Forest of Flowers, was officially published, with a print run of 4,000 copies, and sold out on the first anniversary in the era of book famine. Because it was in wartime, it did not cause repercussions in the literary world. But Mishima understood "how unusual it was to publish such books in the circumstances of the time" and "felt that he could die at any time without regrets." The publication was published by his father secretly, accompanied by his mother, at the publication commemorative meeting held in Ueno. In January of the following year, Yukio Mishima received his first remuneration, and he ran to Kanda Shoten Street and bought a kiyori and Kabuki script with all the remuneration.
Yukio Mishima's literary journey is quite tortuous. His father firmly opposed him to taking the path of literature, but under the influence of his mother, he began to love literature from an early age, writing poetry and composition, and published the novel "The Forest when the Flowers Are Blooming" and a large number of poems at the age of 16, showing his literary talent. After receiving his diploma in the Higher Education Department of the Gakushuin in September 1944, he was faced with his first choice: What major to choose for university? According to his interests, he naturally chose to major in Chinese literature. But the father objected. Mishima's grandparents all graduated from Tokyo Imperial University or its predecessor law faculty and embarked on a career path, so his father still hoped that Mishima would inherit their career and study law. At that time, Mishima also felt that at the end of the war, he would soon be conscripted into the army, and he would choose the same department, and he listened to his father's arrangement. With excellent high school graduation results, according to the "internal application system" at that time, he did not have to go through the entrance examination, and was recommended by the Higher Education Department of the Gakushuin To enter the Law Department of Tokyo Imperial University directly.
He attended the faculty of law at Tokyo Imperial University, losing both literature the most and gaining it the most.
Mishima divided his university life in two, half studying law and half immersed himself in literature. When he was in a class on criminal procedure law, he always tried to sit in the front row of the classroom and listen carefully to the lectures; when he took the civil procedure law class, he put the novels he loved to read next to the open notebook and read them. Yukio Mishima refers to this post-war dual lifestyle as "life in a monk's temple." During his studies at Tokyo Imperial University, mishima never participated in extracurricular activities, did not touch sports, dancing, cafes, bars, and never reviewed his homework when he returned home, but buried his head in writing, or read his favorite literary books, and immersed himself in the literary world he liked.
Kinkaku-ji Temple, author: [Japanese] Yukio Mishima, Translator: Chen Dewen, Publisher: Ichibofolio | Liaoning People's Publishing House, February 2021
Yasunari Kawabata and Yukio Mishima
The relationship between Yukio Mishima and Yasunari Kawabata became a good story in the history of Japanese literature.
When I traveled from Kyoto to Tokyo, I wanted to look for the remains of Yasunari Kawabata and Yukio Mishima. Take the subway to Asakusa Station to the hotel where you are staying, the late-night Tokyo subway is no different from Beijing, it is as crowded, and there are people sticking to you and behind you. What's different is that the people here are strangers. Not only faces are strange, language and thought are strange. What reassures me is that the line map marked above the subway door is in Chinese characters, which is recognizable. Asakusa. I somehow like this word. When I walked out of the subway at midnight to look for a hotel on The Streets of Asakusa, I saw the traffic sign erected on the side of the road that read "Kawabata Pass", and I felt that I should feel at ease. Asakusa was paraded by Yasunari Kawabata in that year. In Tokyo, not only in Asakusa, Tokyo Imperial University (now the University of Tokyo) was also the scene of the literary activities of Yasunari Kawabata and Yukio Mishima.
In 1941, dark clouds were thick over Japan and a storm was coming. In April of that year, Yasunari Kawabata was invited to attend the Go Tournament in northeast China with the famous Go player Wu Qingyuan. On a trip to the Northeast, I heard the news of the outbreak of the Pacific War. During the war from 1935 to 1945, Yasunari Kawabata moved from Tokyo to Kamakura and lived in seclusion. At this time, his important work "Snow Country" was completed, which appeared during the war and failed to attract attention at the time, but with the passage of time, it gradually had a major impact on the Japanese literary world, and "Snow Country" and the post-war completion of "Ancient Capital" and "Chizuru" became the representative works of Yasunari Kawabata, "with keen feelings and superb narrative skills, showing the inner essence of the Japanese." In 1968, Yasunari Kawabata won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
In January 1946, Yukio Mishima traveled from Tokyo to Kamakura to visit Yasunari Kawabata, the head of the Kamakura Bunko and founder of the magazine "Human". There was no bus at the time, so he walked away from Kamakura Station. When I arrived at the Kamakura Bunko, I entered the reception room and saw that the room was full of writers, editors, and publishers. In the past, he only knew simple student life and family life, but this was the first time he came into contact with the boiling vitality of the post-war literary world. Mishima handed over the original manuscripts of the novel "Middle Ages" and "Cigarettes" that he had brought with him to Yasunari Kawabata in person. His "Cigarette" was praised by Yasunari Kawabata. Soon after, at Kawabata's recommendation, "Cigarettes" was retained in the magazine "Human" sponsored by Kamakura Bunko. Mishima was overjoyed and rushed to kamakura Bunko to thank Yasunari Kawabata in person, whom he regarded as a mentor and friend. After that, he had nothing to do after school, and on his way home from school, he often took a detour to visit Yasunari Kawabata by Kawabata Bunku. In the Editorial Office of the Kamakura Bunko, Mishima was also able to see writers coming in and out and observe the post-war literary situation. Under Mishima's long-awaited, "Cigarettes" was published in the July issue of "Human World".
For the first time, Mishima's works were officially launched by "Human World" and entered the mainstream Japanese literary circle. Unexpected joy followed. "Human" also decided to publish his "Middle Ages". In order to revise the original manuscript, he personally went to the Kamakura Bunko to find Yasunari Kawabata. After the publication of "Middle Ages", Yukio Mishima's desire to create became even stronger. He went on to write "Preparation for the Night", which was introduced by Yasunari Kawabata and submitted to the editor-in-chief of the magazine "Human". Mishima's only title at the time was: "Mishima who wrote novels in The Human Magazine." In November 1947, Yukio Mishima graduated from the Faculty of Law at the University of Tokyo, passed the higher civil service examination, and entered the Ministry of Finance the following month, successively serving as a clerk in the National Savings Division of the Banking Bureau and an editor of the Finance Department, the organ newspaper of the Ministry of Finance, but he was "in the heart of Cao Ying in Han." In 1948, Yukio Mishima resigned from the Ministry of Finance to specialize in writing, and on November 25 of the same year, he began writing the novel "Confession of the Mask", and began his professional writing career.
As early as 1948, Yasuari Kawabata wrote a preface to Yukio Mishima's The Thief, commenting: "I was so stunned by Jun Mishima's talent that I was dazzled. At the same time, he was disturbed by his words. His novelty is hard to understand. Some people may draw a verdict from this novel: Mishima is invulnerable. Others can see all his deep wounds. ”
Yukio Mishima entered the literary world for twenty years, writing literary works represented by "Kinkaku-ji Temple", "Hunger and Thirst of Love", "Haisao", "Afternoon Voyage", "Spring Snow", "Galloping Horse", "Xiao temple", "Five Declines of Heavenly Man", "Cup of Apollo", "Sorrowful Country", "Sun and Iron", and the Shinchosha family alone published his complete collection of 36 volumes. His collection of operas, Modern Noh (1956), was well received in a number of countries, and he was twice nominated as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature during his lifetime.
Yasunari Kawabata once gave Mishima a high praise, and in a 1970 interview with a New York Times reporter, Kawabata said: "Yukio Mishima has an extraordinary talent, not in Japan, but in the world it is difficult to find such a genius." A genius like him had never met one in three hundred years. Yasunari Kawabata regarded Mishima as a unique mentor and friend of his juniors, as his ideal successor in literature, but Mishima's death was a heavy blow to Yasunari Kawabata. Yasunari Kawabata's act of suicide by caesarean section against Mishima was also silent. On January 14, 1971, Yukio Mishima was buried at the Hiraoka family cemetery in Tama Lingyuan, and at the funeral rites Yasunari Kawabata, as chairman of the funeral committee, said in his eulogy: "Leaving and transcending thoughts and right and wrong, and quietly praying and praying silently is the spiritual tradition of Japanese beauty." ”
On April 16, 1972, Yasunari Kawabata also died suddenly.
He committed suicide in his apartment with gas in his mouth, and he did not say a word on his deathbed.
Yukio Mishima
Heresy created by individuality and culture
Scorching magma after volcanic eruptions. This image was given by Yukio Mishima. Having read Yukio Mishima's novels, it became my instinct to keep my distance from flames and lava. As a reading agent, I intellectually appreciate his creative energy. However, he was resistant to values. It was not because he committed suicide that he resisted, but because the creed he pursued made him resist, and the cruel way of suicide made me resist.
In 1952, Yukio Mishima visited New York. American playwright William Tennessee hosted a party to welcome Yukio Mishima. They called together all the geisha in New York and San Francisco. Tennessee dressed another hundred men and women as geisha. Tennessee himself dressed up as a fancy old geisha. Recalling the gathering, Truman Capoti described it: "It was the greatest party I've ever seen in my life. "They drank champagne, walked through the park, and drove all night until dawn." This is Yukio Mishima's first taste of life in the Western world. He said, I never want to go back to Japan. ”
This is what I saw in Truman Capoti's collection of essays, Portraits and Observations. Remembering Tennessee was written in 1983, just one year after Capodi's death on August 25, 1984. According to Yukio Mishima's chronicle, in 1970, the American magazine Gentleman included him as the only artist selected from Japan in the special issue of "100 People of the World". The New York Times published a special issue of Yukio Mishima on August 2. The 1972 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica had an entry for Yukio Mishima, equal to James Joyce and Proust.
Mishima's literary acquaintances are also found in France. In 1980, Galima Publishing House published Margaret Youssenaar's Yukio Mishima, or the Illusion of emptiness, which was the first work of a leading European writer to explore the mystery of Yukio Mishima from a frontal perspective. At the age of eighty, Eusenal was elected to the Académie française and became the first female academician. Commenting on Mishima, she wrote:
"There are two kinds of people: those who exclude death from their minds in order to live better and freer, and those who, on the contrary, who peer into death in every signal sent by their physical sensations or by chance events in the external world, so that they can feel alive more calmly and intensely."
However Yukio Mishima is heterogeneous. His personality and cultural genes created his heretics. Although his figure is not large, the impression he has left on the world is strong. This strength and fierceness are also double-edged swords, and in the end he is destroyed by this strong and fierce personality.
In the history of art and literature in the world, there are many writers and artists who commit suicide. Far away, in the 20th century alone, the causes of suicide are many different, such as Hemingway is desperate, Benjamin is a fugitive, Zweig is a desperate situation, Kawabata Yasunari is beautiful, Dazaiji is decadent, and only Yukio Mishima committed suicide with a strong obsession with militarism. This is a frightening way of suicide, and if suicide is a culture in Japan, I would say that from the history of human civilization, this culture is harmful.
Yukio Mishima was victimized by this harmful culture.
"The motives for such an incident in Mishima are thought-provoking. His death is a pity, and it is regretted that death has taken away this genius writer who is unparalleled in the world. The American scholar Donald King wrote of Mishima's cutting of his abdomen: "Mishima died when his physical strength was at its peak. He perhaps expressed a gesture of trying to awaken Japan to change the social inadequacy of material prosperity, and this method of self-indulgence was not commensurate with his illustrious death. He may still have a little hope of succeeding in changing Japan's political policy, but just as he hoped, he died, wearing a mask he had worn years ago. ”
In contrast, the French writer Eusenault, who understands Mishima more closely, replied in a 1988 interview with the Paris Review whether "a young, energetic person like you has ever thought about death": "I have always thought about death... I tried to see everything the way Hondo did, in Mishima's last book, the one he was still writing on the day he committed suicide. The main character in the book, Hondo, realizes that he is so lucky that he once loved four people, all of whom are the same person, but in different forms, you can also see them as continuous reincarnations. The fifth time, he made a mistake that hurt himself deeply. He realized that the souls of these people would be somewhere in the universe, ten thousand years or more later, and he might meet them again one day. They were no longer what they were, and he wouldn't even recognize them. ”
The author | Xia Yu
Editor| Li Yongbo zhang jin
Proofreading | Xue Jingning