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\u00a9 Penguin Books<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Anyone familiar with my wokey, lefty, liberal politics might be surprised to hear that I\u2019m an admirer of the Japanese author Yukio Mishima.\u00a0 Indeed, I\u2019d probably include his Sea<\/em> of<\/em> Fertility<\/em> tetralogy \u2013 or at least, its first two entries, Spring<\/em> Snow<\/em> and Runaway<\/em> Horses<\/em> (both 1969) \u2013 among my top two-dozen novels of all time.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Yes, that\u2019s Yukio Mishima, the ultra-right-wing Japanese nationalist who rejected democracy, formed his own militia, and in 1970 attempted to take over a military base in Tokyo while calling on the members of Japan\u2019s Self-Defence Force to stage a coup and restore the Japanese Emperor to his former glory. And who, when it became clear that the attempted coup was a flop, committed seppuku<\/em>, i.e., ritually disembowelled himself.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When I lived in Japan in the 1990s, I remember Japanese acquaintances who leaned leftwards in their politics wincing in horror when I said I liked Mishima\u2019s books. One guy who was in his forties, and had been a \u2018New Left<\/a>\u2019 student in the late 1960s, told me he\u2019d been terrified when he first heard the news that Mishima was attempting a coup d\u2019\u00e9tat.\u00a0 For a moment, he genuinely feared that Japan was going to end up under the heel of a right-wing, militaristic, Emperor-worshipping regime like the one that\u2019d dominated the country in the 1930s and led it to disaster in the 1940s.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And I seem to remember reading an interview with the Japanese composer and occasional actor Ryuichi Sakamoto \u2013 now, alas, the late<\/a> Ryuichi Sakamoto \u2013 in which he stated bluntly that he\u2019d hated Mishima and was glad when he heard that he\u2019d done himself in.\u00a0 This was despite Sakamoto supposedly basing his performance in the 1983 movie Merry<\/em> Christmas<\/em>, Mr<\/em> Lawrence<\/em> on the author, and despite him titling the music he composed for the film Forbidden<\/em> Colours<\/em>, after Mishima\u2019s 1951 novel of the same name.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I won\u2019t deny that I find Mishima\u2019s extreme politics as objectionable and doolally as the next person.\u00a0 (At least, the next sane<\/em> person.\u00a0 In 1990s Japan, there were plenty of Uyoku<\/em> dantai<\/em> around, i.e., fascistic dingbats who prowled the streets in flag-emblazoned black vans, ranting and blasting patriotic music out of loudspeakers and generally making tits of themselves, and no doubt they thought Mishima\u2019s ideas were wonderful.)\u00a0 But I can forgive him for his politics because I find his writing exquisite.\u00a0 That\u2019s with a couple of exceptions.\u00a0 Forbidden<\/em> Colours<\/em>, a book I just could never get my head around, is one.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a9 Penguin Books<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n A friend and former colleague called Eiji Suenaga told me back then about the afore-mentioned Sea<\/em> of<\/em> Fertility<\/em> novels and gave me some interesting advice about how to read them.\u00a0 Don\u2019t, he said, try to read them until you\u2019ve reached middle-age.\u00a0 Only at that stage in your life can you grasp their full significance and really appreciate them.\u00a0 Thus, I didn\u2019t read them until I was in my forties.\u00a0 As I said, the first two in the series absolutely blew me away.\u00a0 However, the third novel, 1970\u2019s The Temple<\/em> of<\/em> Dawn<\/em>, gets rather bogged down with its copious musings on Buddhism, while the fourth and final one, the same year\u2019s Decay<\/em> of<\/em> the<\/em> Angel<\/em>, feels slightly rushed and sketchy in comparison to its predecessors.\u00a0 Though to be fair to Mishima, he had rather a lot on his mind by then.\u00a0 It\u2019s said that he penned Angel<\/em>\u2019s final lines on the morning of his suicide.\u00a0 (You can\u2019t accuse Mishima of being a writer who talked the talk but didn\u2019t walk the walk.\u00a0 I mean, he polished off his last novel in between attempting to overthrow his country\u2019s government and ritually gutting himself\u2026\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t imagine Martin Amis doing that.)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n One thing that makes Mishima an acquired taste is his bleak intensity.\u00a0 You don\u2019t read his work if you\u2019re looking for some laughs.\u00a0 Thus, in Confessions of a Mask (<\/em>1949), you get a coming-of-age novel, an obviously autobiographical one, involving suppressed homosexuality and graphic, at times violent and macabre, sexual fantasies.\u00a0 In The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea<\/em> (1963), you get a sect of young boys who quietly go Lord of the Flies<\/em>, convince themselves they don\u2019t have to abide by the rules of common morality, and start mutilating kittens \u2013 with the implication that soon they\u2019ll be doing similar things to human beings.\u00a0 In The Temple of the Golden Pavilion<\/em> (1956), you get a mentally-ill Buddhist acolyte setting fire to the titular temple, the Kinkaku-ji<\/em>, in Kyoto \u2013 an act of arson that\u2019d actually befallen that temple in real life in 1950.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Admittedly, Mishima\u2019s 1954 novel The Sound of Waves<\/em> is a nice, happy love story.\u00a0 During my Japan days, I noticed how popular it was among certain Westerners living there.\u00a0 I suspect they liked Waves<\/em> because it allowed them to boast they\u2019d read a book by one of their host-country\u2019s most important 20th<\/sup>-century novelists \u2013 but it spared them having to grapple with that novelist\u2019s normal, angsty, messed-up stuff.\u00a0 However, Mishima himself didn\u2019t rate Waves<\/em> highly. He once brutally dismissed it as \u2018that great joke on the public<\/a>\u2019.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Well, I recently read Mishima\u2019s 1968 novel Life for Sale<\/em> and I now wonder if I should revise my ideas about him and the sort of literature he specialised in.\u00a0 It\u2019s unlike anything I\u2019ve read by him before.\u00a0 Unashamedly pulpy in content, wildly episodic in nature, quite outrageous in its plot-twists, the book often feels like Mishima wrote it with his tongue so far into his cheek that it\u2019s a surprise the cheek didn\u2019t burst. \u00a0At times, it seems a million miles away from the gloom and seriousness of his other work.\u00a0 That\u2019s \u2018at times\u2019, though.\u00a0 There are moments when the sombre, highbrow Mishima of old does resurface\u2026 But never for long.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It kicks off in the conventional Mishima style I\u2019m familiar with.\u00a0 Page one has the hero, Hanio, attempting to commit suicide.\u00a0 He consumes \u201ca large amount of sedative in the last overground train that evening.\u00a0 To be precise, he gulped it down at a drinking fountain in the station before boarding the train.\u00a0 And no sooner had he stretched out on the empty seats than everything went blank.\u201d\u00a0 Mishima-esque too is the fact that Hanio is driven to this attempt on his own life by nothing of great significance: \u201cSuicide was not something he had put much thought into.\u00a0 He considered it likely that his sudden urge to die arose that evening while he was reading the newspaper\u2026 he could only conclude that he had attempted to end It all on a complete whim.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Hanio survives, however.\u00a0 With a rather more nihilistic mindset than before, he abandons his nine-to-five job and puts an advert in a newspaper: \u201cLife for Sale.\u00a0 Use me as you wish.\u00a0 I am a twenty-seven-year-old male.\u00a0 Discretion guaranteed.\u00a0 Will cause no bother at all.\u201d\u00a0 And that\u2019s when the fun starts.\u00a0 The advert\u2019s first reply comes from an embittered old man with a much younger and voluptuous wife.\u00a0 The wife is currently cuckolding him with a mobster.\u00a0 The old man hires Hanio \u2013 who now considers his life both meaningless and expendable \u2013 to seduce his wife and make sure that her mobster boyfriend finds them both \u2018at it\u2019: \u201cWhen he claps eyes on you, you\u2019re sure to be killed, and she\u2019ll probably be dead meat too.\u201d\u00a0 Hanio does as he\u2019s told, but things don\u2019t go according to plan.\u00a0 Someone gets killed, but not him.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n He then proceeds to his next case.\u00a0 A librarian, \u201can utterly nondescript middle-aged woman\u2026 more like an elderly spinster, perhaps someone who taught English literature at a girls\u2019 college of higher education,\u201d involves him in a plot with some criminals, a rare book about Japanese beetles that\u2019s housed in her library, and a particular type of beetle that supposedly can be ground down and made into a deadly poison.\u00a0 Hanio, with zero interest in remaining alive, is asked to act as a guinea pig for the newly-manufactured poison.\u00a0 He agrees, but again the unexpected happens, and again he survives while someone else gets killed.\u00a0 Meanwhile, in both episodes so far, mention is made of a mysterious, secret crime syndicate called the ACS, the \u2018Asia Confidential Service\u2019.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n From wikipedia.org<\/a> \/ \u00a9 Ken Domon<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Things become yet more outlandish.\u00a0 Hanio is hired next by a schoolboy who wants him to look after his mother: \u201cShe\u2019s ill, but she\u2019ll recover right away with care from you.\u201d\u00a0 What makes this life-threatening is the fact that the boy\u2019s mother is a vampire.\u00a0 Hanio soon finds himself living with the pair, having his blood gradually and gently siphoned away by the vampirical mum, but he\u2019s languidly happy as his death seems to draw near: \u201che truly enjoyed lounging around at home, basking in the family atmosphere.\u201d\u00a0 This is the most baroque part of the book, but it actually works well.\u00a0 (Thinking about it, I\u2019m not surprised that Mishima and vampires \u2013 at least, those of the brooding, aristocratic sort \u2013 are a good match.)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The next episode \u2013 following another death, again not Hanio\u2019s \u2013 is less effective.\u00a0 He becomes embroiled in an espionage saga involving two foreign powers, \u2018Country A\u2019 and \u2018Country B\u2019, a stolen necklace, an all-important cipher key, and several dead secret agents.\u00a0 It all feels a bit tired, despite Mishima throwing into the plot some mysterious carrots as a whacky extra ingredient.\u00a0 The \u2018Country A\u2019 and \u2018Country B\u2019 stuff reminds me of old 1960s TV shows like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea <\/em>(1964-68), where the villains were often foreigners, but ones acting on behalf of \u2018unnamed hostile powers\u2019, to avoid the show offending anybody.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n After that, Hanio ends up living in a new, lavish apartment \u2013 his \u2018Life for Sale\u2019 business has earned him a fair amount of yen by this point \u2013 which he rents off a rich, drug-addled hippy-chick called Reiko.\u00a0 (Reiko\u2019s dotty old mum explains to him that her daughter takes \u201cthat drug beginning with L\u2026\u201d)\u00a0 This enables Mishima, through the character of Hanio, to express his opinion of hippies, which as you might expect is not high.\u00a0 \u201cThey were seekers after \u2018meaninglessness\u2019, all right, but he could not imagine them having the guts to confront the real thing when it inevitably came calling.\u201d\u00a0 Hanio gets romantically involved with the unhinged Reiko who, for all her wild talk, has a worryingly conventional vision of what married life with him will be like: \u201cDaddy comes home every day at six-fifteen, so I have to start cooking.\u00a0 When everything\u2019s bubbling away nicely, I\u2019ll hurry up and put on my make-up in time for when Daddy turns up\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Hanio eventually flees from Reiko.\u00a0 In the book\u2019s closing pages, becoming increasingly paranoid, he believes that it\u2019s not just her who\u2019s pursuing him.\u00a0 He might also have the ACS \u2013 the Asia Confidential Service mentioned by characters in the novel\u2019s earlier sections \u2013 chasing him too.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Thus, Life<\/em> for<\/em> Sale<\/em> is a mish-mash of crime, spy, horror, romance and comedy themes, leavened with a little of Mishima\u2019s characteristic angst.\u00a0 If not every episode is successful, that\u2019s not a great problem \u2013 a few pages later, another episode arrives, which the reader may enjoy better.\u00a0 Meanwhile, it suggests the books by Mishima that have long been available in translated form may have given English-language readers a blinkered view of him, i.e., that he was a humourless, cerebral misery-guts who specialised in Literature with a capital \u2018L\u2019.\u00a0 But Life<\/em> for<\/em> Sale<\/em>, whose English-language translation didn\u2019t appear until 2019, gives a rather different impression, that he was less of a literary snob, enjoyed genre fiction and had a playful side.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And I hear that last year saw the first English translation of another Mishima novel, a 1962 one called Beautiful<\/em> Star<\/em>.\u00a0 Its translator was Stephen Dodd, who also rendered Life<\/em> for<\/em> Sale<\/em> into English.\u00a0 Beautiful<\/em> Star<\/em> sees Mishima having a go at science fiction.\u00a0 It\u2019s about \u201ca Japanese family who wake up one day convinced that they are each aliens from a different planet inhabiting human bodies<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Mishima and aliens?\u00a0 I can\u2019t wait to read that one.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a9 Penguin Books<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a9 Penguin Books Anyone familiar with my wokey, lefty, liberal politics might be surprised to hear that I\u2019m an admirer of the Japanese author Yukio Mishima.\u00a0 Indeed, I\u2019d probably include his Sea of Fertility tetralogy \u2013 or at least, its first two entries, Spring Snow and Runaway Horses (both 1969) \u2013 among my … <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bloodandporridge.co.uk\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/FCs-by-YM.jpeg\")
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