The Temple of Dawn (Yukio Mishima) 10/31/2012 04:43:00 PM

----The Sea of Fertility #1: Spring Snow----
----The Sea of Fertility #2: Runaway Horses----

SUMMARY
Honda became a dirty old man. The latest Kiyoaki/Isao incarnation was a Thai princess (who ended up dead, again).

WHAT HAPPENED
After Isao's death, Honda went through a transformation: from the idealistic, righteous judge into the pragmatic lawyer who only took clients that could actually afford his service. A job took him to Thailand, and it was here that he met little Princess Chantrapa (nicknamed Ying Chan), whom her family thought was crazy because she claimed to be a Japanese youth--Isao. (And she recognized Honda, too.)

Next, Honda went to India on a paid trip courtesy of his current employer. Watching a funeral party and a cow by the Ganges, he achieved some sort of clarity about life.

A couple of years after World War II, Honda had developed a habit of secretly watching illicit coupling in public parks. It was also around this time that he met Ying Chan again, now a young woman who remembered nothing about her past life. He became obsessed with her, wanting to see her naked to establish her identity (both Kiyoaki and Isao had three moles in the exact same place).

KEY POINTS (or HOW HONDA SAW THINGS, maybe)
The ultimate personification of beauty = Ying Chan
The ultimate observer = A voyeur
The ultimate, godlike act in life = Sexual act

Quoting Albert Camus' Exile and the Kingdom 8/16/2012 11:39:00 PM

"[T]ell me: has your good Jesus always answered you?"

"Always . . . no, Captain!"

"Well, then?"

The cook burst out with a gay, childlike laugh.

"Well," he said, "he's free, isn't he?"

Albert Camus, "The Growing Stone", Exile and the Kingdom

Back Edition 7/03/2012 12:21:00 PM

Reading my previous posts from a couple of years back in this blog, I wanted to cry. Did I really write those things? God, how pompous! How pretentious! (Not to mention so many typos, grammatical errors and curious choice of words.) Well, I guess I'm still pompous and pretentious, even now. Just a little bit more self-conscious, though. I hope it means I'm acquiring wisdom. Or is it just a sign that I'm getting old?

Runaway Horses (Yukio Mishima) 6/26/2012 11:24:00 AM

----The Sea of Fertility #1: Spring Snow----


SETTING
Japan, early Showa Era (1932-1933)


CAST OF CHARACTERS
Isao Iinuma: A spirited young man seeking to cleanse Japan from degeneration by shedding his own blood and those he perceived as the personification of evil (e.g. financiers, westernized upper class). Isao was highly respected by his peers and elders, thanks to his strength of character and accomplishment in kendo. To fight for the cause, he founded the secret organization the League of the Divine Wind.

Shigekuni Honda: Presently a respectable thirty-eight year old judge, his unshakeable belief in logic and rationality began to crumble when he met Isao, suspecting the possibility that Isao was Kiyoaki Matsugae's reincarnation.

Shigeyuki Iinuma: Isao's father, headmaster of the Academy of Patriotism, former tutor/manservant of Kiyoaki Matsugae's. He's an intense person, but the type who had no trouble in living with himself despite glaring discrepancy between his conviction and action.


NOTABLE QUOTES (according to me anyway)
"Before the sun . . . at the top of a cliff at sunrise, while paying reverence to the sun . . . while looking down upon the sparkling sea, beneath a tall, noble pine . . . to kill myself." --Isao

When Honda reflected upon his own character, he had no choice but to conclude that he was a man possessed of a will. [H]owever, he could not avoid misgivings as to the ability of that will to change anything or to accomplish anything, even in contemporary society, let alone in the course of future history.

"Naturally, having a large number of unemployed is unpleasant. However to equate this immediately with an unsound economy is fallacious. Common sense tells us that the contrary is true. The welfare of Japan is not bound up with there being good cheer in everybody's kitchen." --Kurahara, the capitalist

Not feared nor, much less, hated, only loved, [Isao] found himself in a situation that wounded his pride.

". . . Purity can't be toned down a little . . . . [I]f our ideas can't be watered down, and if they're threat to the nation . . . our ideas are just as dangerous as those of the Reds . . . ." --Isao


FINAL THOUGHTS

• I imagine contemporary suicide bombers are not so different from Isao, in their zealousness and intensity.
• I think I understand why Isao thought it necessary for him to die in order to be of service to the Emperor and his country, and I know it takes great courage to stare death in the face. However, I do wonder if there's an element of cowardice there. I mean, isn't it easier to end your life than to keep on living while staying true to your principles and fighting for them?
• Are fascism and communism two sides of the same coin? (Backdrop: The richer getting richer while the poor getting poorer; cheap imported goods abound, leaving local producers--e.g. farmers--in a pinch; increased activism from the Right and Left, sometimes taken to extremes, e.g. murder, bombings.)

----The Sea of Fertility #3: The Temple of Dawn----

Useless Tool 6/22/2012 07:18:00 PM

Are you serious? I don't need blog traffic statistic thingy to know that nobody visits my blog! Sheesh!

Spring Snow (Yukio Mishima) 6/18/2012 01:51:00 AM

A particular book would conjure certain images. Take Yukio Mishima's Spring Snow (the first book in the Sea of Fertility Tetralogy), for example. It evokes images of tranquil Japanese garden, flowy silk kimono, picturesque view from a summer villa overlooking the sea, palanquin crossing snow-covered roads. Mishima portrayed his setting in great detail that you can see everything vividly in your head. No wonder many Goodreads reviewers use the word "beauty" or "beautiful" in describing the book. The emotional effect it produces, however, is something else.

Maybe it's just me. But not far off through chapter 1, one encounters this: "Kiyoaki was . . . so sensitive, so prone to melancholy. One would have been hard pressed to find, in that rambling house . . . anyone who in any way shared his sensibilities." Reading those sentences, I felt a sense of foreboding. That feeling would stay with me right through the end.

Mishima's chief protagonist is Kiyoaki Matsugae, a young man so beautiful everyone took it for granted that he should have the sensibilities of a courtier despite his samurai extraction. (Yes, the class system had been abolished in the Meiji Era, while the story takes place in the early Taisho Era--1912 AD--but as far as I can tell, even today, Japanese are still referring to one's samurai origin, especially when they're talking about politicians, capitalists, etc.) Capricious and given to brooding, this was a guy whose consideration of the agreeable-distasteful took precedence over that of good-bad or right-wrong.

When we first met Kiyoaki, we found someone who languidly led an innocuous existence: going to school, moping around like your typical teenager and talking about life in general with his schoolmate, the sober Shigekuni Honda (the Nick Carraway of this story, sort of). But it is through his interaction with childhood friend (and later, lover) Satoko Ayakura that we got to understand Kiyoaki's "true self". It's obvious he was attracted to Satoko, but he seemed to be ignorant of (or chose to ignore) the fact, too busy nursing his wounded pride, because he suspected that she secretly laughed at his immaturity. Not until their situation became impossible--for Satoko was betrothed to another, an imperial prince to boot--that Kiyoaki sought to pursue a relationship with her. This, despite previous subtle prodding from multiple fronts--his parents, Satoko herself--to admit his feelings for her.

There's more to it than just the desire to hurt a person who loved him dearly, though. (And yes, he was being deliberately cruel.) Rather, it is Kiyoaki's fascination with the aesthetic aspect of things that drove him into action. Put it this way: when there's no impediment to his being together with Satoko, he did nothing; and yet, the prospect of engaging in a secret affair--which would be difficult to maintain--didn't deter him whatsoever. Why is that? Because for him, there's nothing more beautiful than forbidden romance between two young people who loved each other.

In the end, my apprehension--the oh-shit-something-bad-is-surely-going-to-happen feeling--was vindicated. But heck, Mishima wasn't aiming for it to be good or happy; it's supposed to be beautiful instead. And it is. Beautiful, but disturbing.

----The Sea of Fertility #2: Runaway Horses----
----The Sea of Fertility #3: The Temple of Dawn----

hollow 6/14/2012 11:53:00 PM

trivialities that drown
signal-to-noise lower than one

big words, lofty ideals
dispense at leisure, 'cause you never suffer

trudging through life
waiting to die

clinging to meaning
where there is nothing

Recipe for a Contented Life 4/04/2012 08:03:00 AM

1. Be grateful for everything
2. Do not watch TV news report
3. Stop feeling as if you need to justify yourself and your actions to others

Consuming Life (Zygmunt Bauman) 3/22/2012 07:50:00 AM

Not a summary or a review, but my personal note, having read Consuming Life. A couple of aspects of postmodern/post-industrial/consuming life according to Bauman, as I understand them:

We're all commodities
Preoccupation with images, because if you're not white enough (it's an Asian thing), thin enough, hip enough (the Nikes, the Jimmy Choos, etc), you're out of the game. (What game? Social relationship, I think.) You are your image.

Pointilist nature of time
Emphasize on the here and now. Past and future hardly matter. (Modern people buy precious metals and houses, postmodern people buy designer stuff and refurbish their kitchen with stainless steel countertops even when they never cook.) Boredom is a vice. (Imagine office types who'd gladly get stuck in a traffic jam in order to go to some vacation spot, rather than spending time with their family to just talk and enjoy each other's company.) You consume to alleviate your boredom.

Quoting A Wild Sheep Chase 3/16/2012 03:37:00 PM

"I was twenty-nine years old. In six months my twenties would be over... One big blank. Not one thing of value had I gotten out of it, not one meaningful thing had I done. Boredom was all there was."

- Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase -