Mishima Yukio: Life And Death With Paul McCarthy

Mishima Yukio was an iconic Japanese author who wrote on the deepest questions of beauty, life, and death. But who was he as a man?

Paul McCarthy holds a Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from Harvard, and has taught Japanese, Anglo-American, and Comparative Literature at universities in the US and Japan as well as translating many works of Japanese literature.

Paul met Mishima Yukio on a number of occasions. Paul most recently translated the title story in a new anthology of short fiction by Mishima: Voices of the Fallen Heroes & Other Stories, published this year.

Voices of the Fallen Heroes: And Other Stories by Mishima Yukio - https://www.amazon.com/Voices-Fallen-Heroes-Stories-International/dp/059380435X

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Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Now I have set before you these two things, life and blessing,
death and crisis. Therefore choose life.
That was my final word. Therefore choose life.
And that's why I would say it makes my son.
You should have chosen life. Hello, I am Cody Allingham and

(00:22):
this is the Transformation of Value, a place for asking
questions about freedom, money, and creativity.
My guest today is Paul McCarthy.He holds a PhD in East Asian
Languages and Civilizations fromHarvard and has taught Japanese,
Anglo American, and comparative literature at universities in
the US and Japan, as well as translating many works of

(00:44):
Japanese literature. Most recently, Paul translated
the title story in a new anthology of short fiction by
Japanese writer Mishima Yukio. Shall I show it?
Yes, we've got a copy here, Voices of the Fallen Heroes and
other stories published this year.
This is the American edition andthis is the British edition.
OK. I think I like the British

(01:05):
couple actually. Me too.
This is Penguin and this is vintage Paul.
Thank you so much for coming on the show and for welcoming me
into your home. My pleasure.
Now, today we're talking about Mishima Yukio, who he is perhaps
the most iconic Japanese author of the modern era, perhaps.
I would say 3 Tanizaki, Kawata and Mishima.

(01:28):
Yeah, well, three. And of course, Tanizaki, you've
also. My dissertation.
Your dissertation. So mostly I've done Tanizaki.
You stay there and then Kawata and Mishima also have this
relationship where, yeah, I livein Kamakuta and Karl Butter
lived out there in a sense. Perhaps you could you could
expand on this, but my impression was there was a

(01:50):
mentorship role or a, a sort of a sensei kind of a role that
Karl Butter had with Mishima. Definitely, Mishima had other
people play the roles of mentor when he was in junior high
school and high school. But then in in college we went
university went to to die at theright after the war.

(02:13):
I would say Kaabatayasanadi was his mentor and his introducer to
the Bundan, to the literary circles.
It's fascinating. And just as an aside, living in
Kamakura and sort of feeling that literary energy that you
get with people like Kaabatas, having spent a lot of time

(02:35):
there, the different associations and, and even cafes
that they used to hang out in, in Kamakura and, and in the
southern coast there, I, I feel an energy there that's, it's
quite profound actually, it's. A hard it's a great place to
live. I mean, I, I've always lived in
Tokyo, but I, my personal sort of mentor here in Japan,

(02:58):
academic person who was very kind to me was Nakamura Mitsuo.
He was a, he was Japanese literary critic and and also a
specialist in French literature and he taught at Meiji and he
lived in Ogigayatsu in Kamakura.So I would often when I was here
in the 70s, I would often go living in Tokyo, but I would go

(03:20):
to Kamakura and then go to Ogigayatsu and have long
delicious suppers with him and his wife and talk about things.
That's fascinating. So I guess coming back to
Mishima though, it, it seems appropriate that we start not
from the beginning, but from theend.
In 1970, Mishima took his own life by a sword in a very

(03:42):
spectacular fashion upon the balcony of the Ministry of
Defence and not far from here, actually, Ichigaya, it's.
Not far from here at all, just. Up the word.
Some would call it a coup d'etatattempt, others would call it a
poetic coda to a prolific career.
There had been focused on these great questions of beauty and

(04:02):
death and I thought perhaps maybe we could start with an
introduction to Mishima and and perhaps how you would introduce
Mishima. I thought an audience who may
doesn't may not know his work. He began to write in the late
1940s and was very active in the50s and 60s until his death in
late 1970. And he was extremely which was

(04:27):
he was precocious since he was already writing major novels in
these early 20's. The first novel is not so well
known and it's never been translated into English.
But the second novel was Kamen Lokohaku Confessions of a Mask
and that sold a lot, had very good reviews in in Japan.

(04:48):
And about 10 years later it was translated through English and
published by New Directions, which was a rather bold
publisher of the US. The problem with Confessions of
a Basque at the US in the 1950s was that in some sense it was a
homosexual novel, a homosexual novel with no sexual activity at

(05:10):
all except masturbation. It's it centres on homosexual
fantasy and the way a young man is torn between homosexual and
heterosexual inclinations or social expectations.
It was not a problem at all in Japan.
No one, no one sort of regarded as scandalous that he wrote a

(05:30):
novel on that subject. But in the United States it was
another matter. His original publisher in the US
was Knopf, a very, very good, very prestigious publisher.
And Alfred Knopf, apparently he read it and said he's a very,
very talented writer. We want him, but we're not going

(05:52):
to start him. We're not going to have him make
his debut with this gay novel. It wouldn't sit gay in those
days, this homosexual novel. So that was why there was a 10
year lapse. I don't think it was published
1948 or 49 in Japan and 1958 or 59 in in the US.
So he that was sort of his debut, but not in the US.

(06:14):
It came about 10 years later. He also wrote another the second
major novel that dealt with homosexual sort of subculture in
Tokyo. It didn't focus so much on
fantasy protagonists, homosexuality.
It was about it was about a misanthropic old man who hated

(06:39):
women. And perhaps he'd been felt that
he had been wronged by them. I didn't hear it.
He was not only misinterrupted, but misogynist old man.
And he devised a plan to find a very handsome young man who
would appeal to a variety of women and become their lover and

(07:00):
then leave them in the lurch. And he could do this because he
was himself gay, as we would nowsay.
So he was very handsome or attracted to women and supported
by this old man. He essentially made women fall
in love with him and then and jilted them.
So there's a lot of description of cafes and bars and sort of

(07:23):
places where where we would now say gay people gathered.
But that was early 1950s. Now that was also translated
about 10 years later, because again it's the American
publishing was not very receptive to that.
But that was published as the Japanese title was Kinjiki

(07:45):
forbidden colours in in English.So those two Confessions of a
mask and and forbidden colours, one homosexual fantasies, the
other homosexual subculture, butalso the theme of misogyny and
using sex as a kind of weapon against the opposite sex in this

(08:05):
case. Then he he sort of changed tack
and he wrote, for example, it's called the Japanese shield Sai,
the sound of waves. And he says it was inspired by
the Greek legend of Dafness and Chloe, a love story, a lyrical

(08:26):
love story about two innocent, aman and a woman, young young man
and young woman who fall in love.
And they're ups and downs, of course, in the relationship.
But but it it has a happy ending.
It's a beautiful story. It was very popular in Japan.
It was made into movies two or three times, has sold
tremendously well. And Konof was certainly ready to

(08:49):
publish that. That was translated, published,
and that I think was his probably his debut novel in the
West. Then he went on and did all
kinds of things. He did Lutage no Otto After the
Banquet, which is kind of a political novel.
It's how how politics in Japan is financed and how personal

(09:11):
relationships are important and how scandals are hidden.
That was also successful and wasquickly translated into English.
It did make a problem for him because he was accused of, of
invasion of privacy, the suggestion that one of the
characters was too close to an actual politician and everybody

(09:32):
could guess who it was. So I think he was taken to
court. I don't remember the outcome of
it, but he had to pay a fine or something or pay damages to at
any rate. He, he, he was challenged on
that legally because of not obscenity but or anything like
that, but invasion of privacy. And then he did a memorable

(09:59):
novel, which is probably the longest translation translated
title and the boldest translation title translated
title that I can think of. The title in Japanese is Golono
Eko, which means an afternoon's towing, towing in the afternoon.
And John Nath had catered the title and convinced Michel Masam

(10:19):
that he did something very different.
The sailor who fell from grace with the sea.
The Sailor. Who Fell from Grace with the
sea? And John thought of several
titles and read them out and apparently Nick Mishra said that
let's go with that one, The Sailor who fell from Grace with
the sea, which sort of as the the theme of the story already
embodied in that very, very longtitle that was made into a film

(10:42):
in the United States with Kris Kristofferson.
So he he had that also in the 50s, he wrote a really splendid,
one of his best works, King Kakuji Temple of the Golden
Pavilion. So Mishmi had this this string
of work quite eclectic perhaps that has become more and more

(11:06):
focused though, as he as we go through the the 60s into a theme
of death, it seems. And I wonder maybe we could talk
a little bit about how that seemed to come through, I think
in his later work a lot more than maybe the earlier.
Work yeah for example there's a lot of focus on kind of death

(11:27):
fantasies even in in Confessionsof a mass because there are
really no the young men he looksat and fantasizes about often
times and dead ritually murderedor something like however
dismembered them all blood not so much death but destruction,
is the focus of Temple of the Golden Pavilion that's it it's a

(11:50):
it's a natural it was a nationaltreasure Coco and based on a
real incident a novice monk was somehow obsessed with the golden
pavilion. He goes through various stages,
he imagines what it's like and then he sees it and he's
disappointed because it's a little bit old and dingy, having

(12:12):
been there for 400 or 500 years.That he that he becomes aware of
it, of its spiritual beauty and its importance.
And he's somehow he he's obsessed and oppressed by it.
But there is a saving grace. And this also is appears often
in Michelob. Since it's during World War 2,

(12:33):
the novice monk assumes that at some point Koto will be subject
to aerial bombardment, which thank God didn't happen, but
could have didn't happen and thetemple of the Golden Devilion
and he himself will will be destroyed.
So he he this this bishmasan. We know from his

(12:54):
autobiographical writings he thought that he would not live
beyond 20, which would he would've been 1945, just
precisely the end of the war. He, like other young men of his
generation, assumed he would probably be drafted and die
fighting, or if not, then be incinerated in incendiary bomb

(13:15):
attacks. So that theme of that, the odd
thing, odd thing in the Temple of the Golden Pavilion is that
it's a kind of consolation for Mizo Gucci, who's the name of
the principal character, that somehow he and the temple will

(13:36):
both be destroyed and somehow therefore linked together and
feels a sense of oneness. But the war ends and killed him
is not attacked and the Gold Pavilion remains and it becomes
a tourist site. And there's some other painful
accounts of American soldier whobrings his Japanese girlfriend,

(13:58):
probably 1 of one of the people,one of the girls who serviced
American soldiers at that time, and she's pregnant.
And it's really pretty shocking even now to talk about it.
But the American essentially bribes the novice monk to to

(14:19):
trample on on the woman's stomach.
And this leads to a miscarriage and so on.
That's problem solved as far as the American is concerned.
But of course, it leaves a terrible kind of sense of guilt
in Misoguche. That's fascinating, this, this
question of oneness, again, thisquestion of, of death, of

(14:41):
beauty, of all of these things, it seems to permeate through
Mishima's work. And again, this period of time
when he was a young man during the war, growing up in Imperial
Japan, seeing these visions as the high point of the propaganda
of, of the Empire, telling him about the divinity of the

(15:03):
emperor, talking about the Japanese spirit, the warrior
spirit, all these these these things that were were pushed on
people. And then to have that taken away
in a moment was the ending of the war.
And in particular, something I wanted to to talk about was when
it comes to the emperor, a themethat comes up quite a lot.

(15:25):
And voices or a key theme and voices of the fallen heroes.
And also in in some of his otherwork the the divinity of the
emperor and this this kind of God in human form, right?
That's exactly our life's still come in God in human form.
And and it's. Or a God in human form.
Let's say a God. It's, it's, it's fascinating

(15:47):
because you know, I mean, divinginto this, it simply finished
one day and it was January 1st, 1946 where the, the newspapers
ran the, the declaration that the, the humanity declaration, I
believe it was called, where basically he said like that was
a, it was a false consciousness that wasn't true.

(16:07):
I wasn't, I wasn't a God. And that sort of what what must
there have been like to have that world system just turned
off, that whole world view turned off and to be faced with
this material reality of a country that had lost the war.
Maybe you could tell me a bit more about your Well, that's.
Precisely what Mishima is dealing with in Voices of the

(16:30):
Fallen Heroes. Let me just go back for a second
just to finish finish it up to say that ultimately the Novus
monk decides that he must destroy the Temple of the Golden
Family. He will.
He will set fire to it, and he will be die along with it.
But at the last minute, he breaks out and does the the

(16:51):
temple does burn down or the pavilion burns down, but he
retreats to a hill and he says he he took out a cigarette and
lit it. Had felt that he had sort of
completed a day's work. Yes, that's the ending.
Yeah. Well.
And just sorry to, to add on to that as well.
I mean, the other thing we must look at and, and I think this
will link back throughout the conversation, but Misha himself,

(17:15):
despite these themes of of honourable death, of war, of
sacrifice, he of course didn't fight in the war even though he
was called up to be drafted. That's right.
And it's, it is very interesting.
I think that's a nice parallel with Misoguchi, who planned to
die but at the last minute decided no and had the
experience of watching the the Flames in Gulf King Kakuchi

(17:38):
while he smoked a cigarette. Yeah.
In the case of Mission Wassan, he was called up and was made to
go for a physical examination, and he had been suffering from a
very bad cold or he had a fever.He had had night sweats the
previous night, used the bad way.
But I guess his good luck was that probably the physician was

(18:01):
fairly inexperienced. And him listening to his chest,
he heard something and he thought it was something like
incipients, tuberculosis, something really serious.
And Michel Roussat of course, knew that that wasn't it, that
it was just an extremely bad chest cold.
But he didn't say anything at the time.

(18:22):
And in fact, he says in in a nonfiction memoir, which I'm
translating, he says that he andhis father, who had accompanied
him to the to the examination, they left the examination place
and ran to the nearest railway station with a feeling of
tremendous relief. He wasn't going to be drafted.

(18:42):
He wouldn't go to war or go to war.
So there is that. I think he may have felt
afterwards a certain guilt that,that he didn't go to war.
He, if he'd been completely honest, he probably could have
gone to war and been killed, buthe'd get like Mizuguchi at the
last minute. He felt, well, perhaps I don't

(19:04):
have to do this, but it must have as he, as he grew older and
as he thought about the meaning of the war and the Emperor and
Japan, Japanese tradition, it must have produced a a real
conflict within him. Yeah.
Do you know if Mishima had friends or associates that were
in the war? I think he must.
Have he must have I mean everyone was affected by.

(19:26):
It Yeah, right. He was not, I don't think any
members of his family were, but he was at Gakshuin and he and
his his classmates talked about it all the time.
What's kind of the use? The German, of course, was the
fashionable language, not English, but he was Stampin.
How do you think you're going tobe, how do you feel when you are
going to be confronted with the need, stubborn to die?

(19:50):
And so he had that conversation with someone, but I think that
person with whom he had the conversation in fact did die in
the war. Well, it's interesting.
It's just, again, I think we've talked about sort of the man and
his career somewhat and of course.
A great interest in Japan happened after the war, the
emergence of film directors suchas Ozu Yasujito and others.

(20:13):
This work started to slowly makeits way into into the Western
world and that maybe connects back to a longer history of
Japanese and the fascination of Japanese aesthetics.
But certainly Mishma was was wasan iconic figure in that moment.
But of course, throughout his work, though the actual essence

(20:35):
of it, there is these themes of,again, beauty, sacrifice, very
dark and, and quite deep cuttingquestions and and of course, the
image of the war and, and even here in Tokyo, the the utter
obliteration of this city from the face of the earth, for the
most part by fire is, is a profound image to deal with.

(20:58):
You know, it wasn't simply a case of bombing, but in an
incineration of a city that, of course, killed more people in
Hiroshima in one night, one night.
With the Tokyo bombings. Tokyo fire bombings, I think
March 11th, it was 1945. And so there's this imagery of
this kind of burning away of a city and what that must have

(21:23):
been like. And then to have here the
Emperor beg your radio address that said equivic voice.
Now we must endure the unendurable the war has been
brought to must be brought to anend.
And there are pictures of of people, disordinary Japanese

(21:45):
kneeling in on the gravel in front of the Imperial Palace.
And we pick and some people committed suicide in the sense
that their their, their life wasover, their world was ending.
And some and some very sort of innocent, pure hearted people
may have felt that they hadn't done enough to for the country

(22:07):
to win the war and for the fact that the war was lost.
So it was part their fault. Yeah, well, I mean, coming,
coming to the Zenergery, I mean,I had a look back through the
Sea of Fertility series of books, 4 books that perhaps
would be considered as magnum opus and very long books, which
I read as a as a younger man. And they left a profound impact

(22:29):
on me. And I just went back through
last night and and looking at the last line of decay of the
Angel, the last sentence of the decay of the Angel, there was no
other sound. The garden was empty.
He had come to a place that had no memories, nothing.
And I, I think about that, the sense of emptiness.
And then when we of course, lookat Mishima's death by ritual

(22:54):
suicide with, with the sword, there's this kind of performance
and there's this this emptiness.There's just AI don't quite know
how to describe it. But I, when I, when I emailed
you, I wrote about how I felt this physical sensation reading
some of it, even some of his other writings such as
patriotism, which deals with a similar story of ritual suicide.

(23:14):
And it really physically affected me.
And I has, I mean, has that beenan experience for you like?
Well, yes, especially if you seethe film Rite of Love and Death,
which is based on patriotism, which he wrote the script, he
directed it, he starred in it asthe, as the Lieutenant Tequila.
So when you, when you realize, Imean, when you see that it's

(23:35):
about half an hour, it's extremely difficult to watch.
And then of course, the knowledge that in a way it was a
kind of rehearsal for what he was to do what 5 or 6 or seven
years later, it's, it's, it's very, very gripping.
Well, that's since I knew him. I had met him, I've had coffee
with him or dinner with him several times was.

(23:55):
Can you tell me about? That for me can.
You tell me about that, the man himself, because for me, coming
in much later and only being able to have met people who met
him and only being able to follow after his words, but
actually having met the man himself.
What was your impression of Michigan?
Well, I was in awe of him because I had been reading about
Japanese literature in translation through high school.

(24:18):
Very strange Minnesota high school student, Catholic High
School. But there I was reading Mishima
Tazai Kawabatai Tamizaki in in and I was very much impressed by
Mishima. And so I, at the age of 20, I, I
started studying Japanese at 18 at the University of Minnesota.
English Lit was my major, but myforeign language was Japanese.

(24:40):
And I did second year intensive Japanese.
Boy was that intensive 1 summer at Stanford University.
So first year was freshman year of Minnesota, second year was
Stanford intensive summer. Third year again was back in
Minnesota. And at that point, it was, it
was by third year of Japanese, but I was still a sophomore.

(25:04):
And I learned that that Stanfordhad set up a program in Japan
for intensive study of Japanese language.
And I was bound and determined to, to go.
So I applied for that. And I was lucky enough to to get
to get it. I was admitted and with a
scholarship. My Japanese friends asked my,

(25:26):
my, my friends, how much money would I need to live in, in
Tokyo? And they said, of course, you
know, imagine what they would need to live in Tokyo as
students. It was grossly inadequate, but
that's what I asked for and I got it.
What you asked for you got if they wanted you as a student.
But I sewer felt that it was inadequate and they were very
kind. I went in and said I was, what

(25:49):
do I know? I was guessing, but I was wrong.
So they quickly upped it. I almost doubled it to allow me
to live comfortably, reasonably in Japan rather than like a
miserable student. So OK then so the so there,
there I was and I met, you know how everything in Japan that has

(26:09):
been good for me as you has happened through meeting people
who know people who know people.And I met somehow a German
Jewish man who had fled the Nazis came to Japan in 1937 or
38 with almost no money at all. And he spent the warriors here

(26:31):
in Japan under the sponsorship of the Swedish Embassy.
He was stateless. He was a German jewel, so
stateless. But the Japanese admitted him
and then the Swedish Embassy hadhired him to help them out with
various things. So he's the only foreigner I
knew who said who was CEOI only.I spent the whole all of the war
in Tokyo. And we would be on the bus

(26:52):
passing by Niju Abashi and everyone would stand up and do
psyche in it because the emperorwas there.
He experienced all of that as a German Jew.
So anyway, he had a friend who was very high up in Shochiku,
big cinema and and and dramatic company.

(27:15):
He, I guess he was the, he was the secretary to the head of
Shochiku at so and I met him andthey also, they, they said, you
know, they, they were, I'm 20 years old from the Midwest and
learning Japanese and very enthusiastic.
And they, they said, well, is there somebody particularly want
to meet? I said yes, Mishimayukio.

(27:37):
And they came back and said we could do that.
He's coming to the Shimbashi Embujo still exists to watch a
rehearsal of Kanjinjo famous Kabuki play.
Why don't you come that day? So I I skipped class and went
and Bishop was always there and we all watched it for about an

(27:59):
hour or so. And then I was just informally
introduced to him and we all went out and had a cup of tea or
coffee or something. And so that's How I Met him.
And I was just full of, I was saying all of him.
I mean, he was one of the writers I most admired.
And I hear I was meeting him in a social way and I think he

(28:20):
those that I get, I'm very luckyat timing today.
So you're a foreigner, you're interested in Japan, you're
learning Japanese. Well, So what?
But in 1964 or five pretty unusual.
And many Japanese were very as long as they realized that you
were sincerely interested and were making an effort.

(28:42):
They were very, very kind and cordial.
And that included Mishimasan also.
So he, I didn't have a mail sheet, but I gave him my, my
address, the telephone number, and I think he gave me a mail
sheet. Anyway, after a few weeks, he,
he got in touch with me and said, would you like to see
Kendall there? I, I do Kendall and I'm going to

(29:04):
a police Academy to do it. And I think it would be good for
you to see this aspect of Japan.So I say yes, certainly.
So he took me and we saw kendo. I, I wasn't, I wasn't interested
in kendo. And I was turned off by these or
the shouts and screams as they attack each other.
I was very much a pacifist at that point in my life.
So. But I hid that I wasn't.

(29:25):
I thanked him for showing it to me.
And so that was the beginning. And I think he took me for
dinner afterwards. We had there was a Chinese
restaurant right in front of theShinjuku Kuyaksho.
I don't know if it still exists,but I remember there was the
Kuyaksho and here was this rather good Chinese restaurant
that we ate at. And so that and and there after

(29:49):
that there were other a few other meetings like that to to
see a play or or a film or attend a cultural event.
And for me, the most important thing was I was invited to a
buffet dinner at Misha Mason's house.
I had a formal if I looked for it, I could find it.
The engraved invitation Mr. and Mrs. Yuk in English, Mr. and

(30:13):
Mrs. Yuka Misha. I invite Mr. Paul McCarthy.
McCarthy was misspelled, of course, to to a buffet dinner at
such and such a time. This probably was spring or
early summer of 1965. Misha Mason, was my impression
of him, was his dealings with me.
He was kind. He was magnanimous.

(30:36):
He had a good sense of humor. He laughed sometimes.
We talked about politics and of course we were opposite.
I was typical anti war leftist student and he was rightist and
basically supported Japan's alliance with the US in Vietnam.
But we didn't fight. I mean, I get it because I was

(30:58):
still in awe of him. I wasn't going to, you know,
blast away at him. But I did say I just don't
understand your politics. Was he the kind of man who you
would ask a question and he would respond and then throw it
back at you? Or was he more prone to
monologue in a conversation? Like how would you rate that
side of him as a not? Not monologue, not overwhelming,

(31:18):
but he would he would approach. For example, he quickly divined
that I was anti war and sort of left.
And he one thing he said to me, said Paul, you mustn't think of
the 'cause I use the word right wing.
We look, he said you mustn't think of the Japanese right wing
as like the American right wing,like these Ku Klux Klanner as

(31:39):
these, you know, obscene fat redneck summiters.
He he did say rednecks. I remember that.
So he wasn't thinking for that one.
AKA Kubi, Huh? He said.
AKA Kubi or was that? Well, whatever the IT was, he
may have used red, he may have used the English word redneck.
Yeah, 'cause he liked to speak English for the most part, For
the most part, English. He liked to speak English and

(32:02):
his English was pretty good. It's certainly better than my
Japanese. So, yeah.
So he popped his redneck and he Ku Klux Klan redneck.
It's not like that. He said that there's something
that was pure and, and, and purehearted and more noble about the
Japanese right wing. So I just listened.
Oh, really? There was that sort of thing.
He he would give me, forced me to look at things from a

(32:23):
different point of view. But what struck me then, even
and even more now, he was essentially making an aesthetic
comparison. Yeah, the the the, the American
right wing was overweight to redneck and vulgar and and
Japanese right wing work with pure hearted youths, young
samurai. So it was aesthetic, which I

(32:43):
think is important. We didn't really argue politics.
It was he was pulling me to towards his aesthetic.
And that was also the idea of Ken introducing me to Kindle so
that I can see it. And he even urged me.
He said you should take up martial arts or something like
that. He was barking up the wrong
tree. I had no interest in that.
Putting on that that thread, I mean this, this aesthetic

(33:04):
occupation, I mean, would you say he kept up with the news of
the day or was he well read in in the political side as well?
I think so. OK, I think so.
I think he was very much interested in in Japanese
politics and also relations in Japan's position in the world,
relations with the US he was. The way people saw Japan,
perhaps? And the way the way people saw

(33:28):
Japan. And so he was very open and
friendly with Scott Stokes, who was the London Times man in
Tokyo. And I'm sure there was a genuine
liking, but I'm also sure that he was aware that this was a way
of getting his point of view across to people outside Japan.
Yeah, no, this is fascinating. And as I mentioned before, I met

(33:50):
someone recently who was friendswith Henry Scott Stokes and I
believe Henry Scott Stokes was at the the rally the last
moments of Mishima, right at no.Apparently, apparently,
according to I heard the same story and apparently Scott
Stokes said that Mishima Hassan urged him to come.

(34:11):
I see. And but he couldn't.
He he tried, he couldn't get close to the Ishigaya because
both the police right could was impossible.
So we never know. We'll never know what Mishimasan
would have said if he had met Scott Stokes that last time.
But I suppose again, he was a foreign friend and he was a

(34:35):
prominent journalist and could make Mishimasan's views known.
There was none of that with me. I'm still only a graduate
student, but he didn't give me any hint or indication at all
what he was going to do. I met him a couple of times and.
Do you remember when you had coffee with him?
What? What was his coffee?
Milko Black. I really don't remember.

(34:59):
I'm not even sure it was coffee.It may have been a drink.
It may have been like a like at a bar.
It had a had a bezuati or something like that.
Yeah, understood. But I do remember the last time
I met him was the last time we we met, we did have this

(35:19):
political, sort of semi political discussion where he
contrasted the right wing of theUS and Japan sort of tried to
draw me more sympathetic. And after that he sent me.
And do I have it somewhere? He sent the only thing he ever
gave. He gave me a a copy of the
English translation of Taiyoto Tetsu.

(35:42):
Oh yes. Sun and steel.
There it is. Give me everything.
Very good. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
He said this to me with an inscription.
Oh, this is he said this to me in Mishima Yuskyo.
So, Porto Makashi. Makashi.
Summer SO. Yeah, I'm playing.

(36:02):
Please. Yeah.
So this, he said this, it must have been summer of 1970.
So, but he sent me this and you know, so I had no sense that
this was going to be the last. It was the last time I met.
No, it wasn't. It was the second to the last
second next to the last time we met.
And he sent me this and I wrote a thank you note and then we met

(36:22):
by chance in maybe September, October of 1970.
You know, Shinjiko, I was walking down Yasuku Nidori
moving toward moving. It was Issetan and the Yasuko
Nidori and Amazon ginger here. So I was moving up in this
direction and I saw Misha come right towards me and I sort of

(36:46):
bowed and he nodded and we chatted just for a couple
minutes. That was the last time I
actually counted him and he he went on and I was curious.
I wondered where is he going? And he went in to a movie
theatre, which still exists. I can even show you where, show
you where it is. He went in and I was still

(37:08):
curious, so I went to see what is he going to see you?
Cuckoo patriotism. So in the fall of that year, he
was going to see his own film ofby himself, The ritual suicide.
That has a clear memory in my mind.
Yeah, that just. Oh, but I just.
Oh, well, he's going to see a film that he made and that was

(37:32):
the last, that was the last timeI saw him.
Yeah, Bishop said To me, people,some people really disliked him
and said he was arrogant and notto me.
He was just very kind, extraordinarily kind.
And I think it's, it was partly because that was, I think I had
that side of him that he was kind to people who were young

(37:56):
and interested in, in fans of his and expressed that in a
sincere way. And then also may he maybe he
thought, thought this is a a young man who's going to go into
Japanese literature. And maybe he maybe he will
eventually translated me. I don't know, but I, I did.
You did 40 years on. Did you did you ever talk about

(38:17):
faith or religion with Mishima? No, we really didn't.
I've been thinking about that, but we really did not.
I don't think religion was very important to him personally.
I don't have a sense that he hada strong religious faith in in
anything. And in one of his essays as yet

(38:37):
untranslated, but I think it will be, he says something about
talking about his youth or his adolescence.
He said if things had been different, I might have become a
more religious person, which means he wasn't a very religious
person. Well, this is interesting to me
because I, I think my impressionfrom that is that there is an
aesthetic use of religious imagery then.

(38:59):
Sure. And yet perhaps he doesn't
believe it. It's a performance.
And again, I'm struck by voices of the fallen heroes.
This blood sacrifice, the imagery of this, you know,
there's death for the emperor that proved to be no more than
just human. This vivid imagery, profound

(39:21):
imagery of the last seconds of akamikaze attack into an aircraft
carrier. Sort of ecstasy.
Yeah, this, this, this riveting.I was just reading it again on
the train, but this riveting imagery of targeting the the the
lifts on the centre of the aircraft carrier.
Look, look, look. Just look.
Yeah. And and and then to not even see

(39:44):
the outcome of that, but to become one with this insanity in
that moment. At the moment of death, possibly
oneness with the emperor. Yeah, but so that was really
true. But I also, he also had a strong
intellectual interest in in religion.
For example, he ought to he had to go deeply into Zen in order
to be able to write King Kakuchi, the Temple of the

(40:07):
Golden Devilian. So he he gives background to
Zen, the meaning of koan and thewhole issue of Zen.
So there was that and then in inthe tetralogy, the kind of key
point, the underlying theme is the idea of reincarnation.
The transportation which is. Deeply Buddhist and in this

(40:31):
let's see. And in the second volume,
Runaway Horses, there's a lot about Shinto and Mount Miwa in
central Japan. Saigusa Shrine.
So he clearly did his research and of course the third volume,
which for me is the least interesting and least
successful, but it's full of accounts of Avyushki contrast is

(40:58):
only school, which is an extremely abstruse school with
Nara Buddhism. So he, he worked all of that up,
but does that mean that he was adevout Buddhist?
I don't think so. I think he had a strong
intellectual interest and as yousay, an aesthetic use of of of
these. Well, it's interesting.
I actually read The Sea of Fertility in the wrong order.

(41:20):
I started with the Temple of Dawn and then I did runaway and
then I did Spring Snow, and thenI did the second one, Runaway
Horse and then I finally finished with Decay I.
Think use. Use for my body.
You started with the weakest, Yeah.
And it got better and better and.
And certainly the, the, the, thestory sitting in, in Thailand

(41:41):
was the Temple of Dawn. It was quite interesting to me.
And you know. But it didn't really come alive
for me. I think he he wrote about Japan
far better than he did about either India or Thailand.
And he wrote about men far better than he wrote about
women. Interesting, I I didn't think
that Ian Chan really came alive from either way.
Kiyaki the first volume or Isao in the second volume, or what

(42:03):
was the last tournament in volume 4.
They all came alive, but Ian Chan?
Not really. Yeah, it's, it's interesting
this, this imagery though, this reincarnation, this yet trying
to do it again and yet kind of encountering the same, the same
challenges. And, and this is a very Buddhist

(42:24):
thing. And, and I think it's, it's,
it's challenging. And I've spent many years living
here and part of my own spiritual journey has been to
kind of hold that in one hand and then sort of let it go as as
I've dive deeper into my Christian faith and realising
that there's another way of doing things that's maybe much
more. I don't know how you would

(42:46):
describe it. It's been a discovery and I
think for a long time in my 20s when and especially when I first
read Sea of Fertility and his other work.
I mean, there is an appeal there.
There's like a, there's an energy to it.
Absolutely. It's intoxicating.
There's darkness and there's. Which of the four volumes did
you like the best? I think runaway horses.

(43:06):
Yeah, Metro, Metro runaway horses from where it was the
most. I was talking about his.
I mean, again, it's a common theme that the peers, the peers
school young men in this kind ofenvironment, this kind of spirit
decor, spirit decor. Right, and I think he saw
protagonists to run away. Horses has something in common

(43:28):
with the members of the Shield Society.
Young, innocent, naive, not intellectual particularly, but
passionate and pure. Spirit and pure spirit.
And this is a theme that again comes up in in your in this
recent translation you've done Voices of the Fallen Heroes,
where we talk about the 226 incident and the young officers

(43:49):
and men attempting this coup d'etat to effectively purify
what they saw as an impurification of what was
surrounding the emperor. So perhaps maybe you could talk
a little bit about that two to six incident and maybe how that
left an impression on Mishima? He was 11 years old when it
occurred and he says that it left a big impression 19. 36

(44:13):
right? Yeah, he was a grade school
student at and he said it left abig impression, impression on
him and other people of his generation.
And then so when he became an adult and a writer, he sort of
he had to focus on it. I guess in 1960, rough roughly

(44:35):
1960, he wrote Patriotism Yukoku.
And in 1966 maybe he wrote a Reno Coe.
And that in between he wrote a play which has never been
translated. So it's actually a trilogy.
He has three works, a short story, Patriotism, A novella,
Voices of the Vol Heroes at a play called Toka no Kiku, which

(44:58):
means literally 10th day chrysanthemums.
What it really means is belated chrysanthemums.
Chrysanthemums. It came too late because you're
supposed to send chrysanthemums on the 9th day of the ninth
month of the lunar year to show respect to someone.
So Tolkien or Kiku are so that'sthe problem with the literal
translation. What would 10th, 10th day

(45:20):
chrysanthemums? What does that mean?
It simply means it's come too late, which is a big no no in
Japan. You've got to be timely.
I mean, you, you know, it's likesomeone's birthday.
You can celebrate it early if you have to.
You shouldn't celebrate it late.It's just not a dumb thing.
So anyway, so it's a trilogy. That's how important it was to
him that he dealt with it at least three times.

(45:44):
And each focuses on the Nini orgy camp, but from a different
point of view, from the point ofview of someone who perhaps
would like to have participated in it but couldn't because he
was kept out of it by his friends who wanted him to, who
didn't want to spoil his recent marriage, Right.

(46:07):
His friends kept him out of it. But had he not killed himself
the following day, he would havehad to join the regular army and
attack his friends. So it's two kinds of giddy at
war with each other, towards hisfriends and towards the emperor,
the army, and the solution for that solution for that conflict

(46:30):
is, is is deaf? Even that word giddy, it's what
was it obligation or? Giddy, giddy Ninjo.
Usually it's a it'll period human feeling versus duty but it
so OK you could say it was Ninjofor his friends who we didn't
want to attack but also giddy towards Imperial army.

(46:50):
And, and of course, so this is an event that that that took
place as a handful of soldiers who who attempted this, this
well, they they were successful in a sense that they did kill
some of the figures right there and they.
Did three very prominent advisors of the Emperor and
that's why he was so angry because these were these were

(47:12):
his trusted advisers to the me respected and and for for them
to be to be killed and be assassinated in that way, he
must have infuriated him. I I did pick up just reading it
again though, before I did pick up a slight sense though, that
the the tonality of that story seemed to indicate that these
characters thought that these advisers were the ones leading

(47:32):
it on the wall path. Is that that correct?
Yeah. That's actually a fairly common
theme, and not only Japanese butChinese history as well, that a
virtuous emperor is being duped,but the people around him.
It's not the emperor who's bad, it's his advisors who are bad.
So what a what a shock for the coup plotters when they realized

(47:55):
the emperor himself had demandedthat the coup be put down, that
they'd be imprisoned, tried, andultimately many of them
executed. That was the imperial will.
What AI know that becomes out, that comes out in their
indignant, poetic utterances? How could he?
How could he have done this? How could he not have understood

(48:16):
how much we love it and how purehearted we were?
And, and I think again, there's this spiritual imagery which
perhaps Mishima is using aesthetically, deploying it
aesthetically, but there's this profound imagery of, of the
emperor and, and, and talking about this, you know, the, the
character says in this seance that they're doing this

(48:37):
divination of these spirits of these, these men who, who died
in this incident. When we die, we'll go to where
His Majesty the emperor is covered in blood.
Even in death, we're loyal to our sovereign.
And there's this kind of profound blood sacrifice that's
spoken of. And I wanted to sort of reflect
on this because with, again, with this, with this story of

(49:00):
the emperor, when he did step down from that divine post,
there was no Pentecost, there was no resurrection.
There was no great resolution tothat.
It's simply just kind of fizzledout.
And along with that, we saw thisentire country get ravaged by by
the war. And so this is a great sense of
a spiritual emptiness there thatin its own way feels very

(49:24):
Buddhist, though this kind of. Well, except the the problem is
the word emptiness. When we use the word emptiness,
it's we're using it in a very negative sense.
When Buddhists use the word emptiness, they're using it in a
very positive sense. OK.
And and that's why, for example,the ending of the 4th volume is
is which you quoted from is verysignificant.

(49:45):
He goes to a goes to a temple, meets the abbess, who is none
other than the beautiful young woman who appeared in the first
volume. And he broaches the matter to
her as she says, well, what are you talking about?
I, I don't. And he said, but Kiyaki, who Are

(50:05):
you sure that you're rememberingthings?
I have no such. And finally he says, well, but
but it had to be real otherwise otherwise everything, all of the
transpagations were unreal and nothing means anything.
And she says, well, that's as each one thinks, as each one

(50:27):
chooses to. So having strung the beads of
the tautology on the string of reincarnation or transmigration,
at the very end, the abbess suggests that it was all
delusion, it's all a dream. And of course, that's a, that's

(50:47):
a favorite Buddhist metaphor, that they don't say life is a
dream. They say life is like a dream,
life is delusory. And so that's, I think the point
of that final thing. We're left wondering, did it,
did it really happen? But did he interpret things
properly? Was there really a connection

(51:09):
among those 3 or 4 protagonists?Well, we're not sure.
What we're left with is emptiness.
But, but emptiness again, is such an important positive
concept in Buddhism. Well, it's.
Profound. I mean, you mentioned Kiaki and
us, you know, these characters of the, of the, of the, the sea
of futility, these young boys together in the Pierce school

(51:32):
again reflecting Mishima and Kiyaki dies.
And this, this search for the other character, Honda, who is,
is kind of throughout his life, he's a very old man by the end
of the book, by the end of the series, he, he, he sort of
encounters these various reincarnations of that
character. And it takes them to all corners
of the world, Varanasi in India,to Thailand.

(51:58):
And along the way, you know, this is kind of great
meandering. But as you say, in the end it's
all emptiness. And all and all, there's another
kind of emptiness, and this is anihilism that the 4th
protagonist, Tolu turns out probably to be a fake, not to be
real. Why he he has the marks, but he

(52:21):
doesn't die all of them all everyone else has died at 20 as
Mishima son thought he would. By the way, all of them died
about the age of 20 except Todu.And Todu has clearly is a
person, a bad character. We don't like Todu.
I think he represents the corruption of Japanese youth
seen by Mishima in the 60s. I can only think if he thought,

(52:44):
if you thought I don't want contemporary youth, what would
he say about youth today? Not that I know that much about
them. I think.
I think it's been a downward spiral.
So we doubt that he is actually an incarnation, reincarnation of
the others. And he tries to kill himself but

(53:06):
fails. And he's simply left blind and
disfigured, you know, helpless. So it's a very, very painful
ending for the tutrology and we're doubting whether he could
have been a real incarnation. Probably not because he couldn't
even die what he should have. And Honda trying to understand

(53:31):
it all goes to this. What is it?
Geshuji in in Nada and has an aninterview with the abbess who is
none other than what was her name?
Satoko. Maybe so.
So the the aristocratic, beautiful woman.
And she poses this question. So we're left the Emmy.
You know the Japanese word for emptiness, Ku ku.

(53:54):
Sky as well. That's it means sky, Yeah.
But it also means it's a translation of the Sanskrit word
shunyata, which means emptiness.And shunyata is a word.
It's a word you like, Tata Vasnes.
Shunyata, emptiness. It's a word.
It's a kind of the ultimate reality.

(54:15):
This. Is the This is the ultimate
reality. This is the absolute emptiness.
As I say, ku da adi, MU da adi. So, so, so, yes, MU is another
word for nothingness, and ku is emptiness.
And yet in certain Buddhist contexts and important Buddhist
contexts, this is absolute reality.
This corresponds for Christians to the Godhead, a personal God,

(54:40):
but an impersonal Godhead. Well, that's some, I, I guess
that's been really a fascinatingfor me personally, you know, in
this context, you know, we're having a conversation and I'm
interviewing you. But part of my, my journey
through Mishima's work is it sort of lines up with a period
in my life where I think I was spiritually looking for

(55:01):
something. And where I've, I've arrived at
now as I've become a Christian, as I've learned more about this
faith in a sense underpins the Western tradition.
It's been really interesting to relate that back to the context
of living in Japan and having conversations with people about
something like reincarnation andthe great darkness and, and

(55:25):
emptiness in the sense that thatrepresents for me.
And that which always was very uncomfortable.
But now I feel a lot more comfortable maybe talking about
it with someone because I realized that it's not the way,
but it's, it's, sorry, what am Itrying to say here?
It's, it's been interesting. And I, I sort of feel that, you
know, this, there's not, there'snot the same light that I see

(55:49):
with these, these, these storiesas you know, this, there's
nothingness. I don't know.
I don't know if there's anythingyou can sort of respond to.
I know I can't. It's a difficult problem.
It's hard to talk about. There is certainly, there is
certainly nothing, nothingness in our sense at the in the
fourth volume with our disappointment in Toru and the
mess he makes of his life. But then there's the nothingness

(56:11):
or emptiness at the very end which the abbess expresses.
And and that there's nothing butsilence and the sound of the
cicada, which reminds us of the famous haiku by it was a basho.
But the stillness, the cicada's cries penetrate the rocks.

(56:35):
Yeah, it's extraordinary. And and that's, you see, I wish
he'd focused on, he focused on, on consciousness only, which is
an extremely abstruse doctrine of Nara Buddhism.
The other difficult doctrine which sort of comes out, I think
at the end of the of the Teutology is it's called

(56:58):
Madhyamika, which is the doctrine of the middle in which
somehow it's it's the dialectic of of of yes and no somehow
sublimated or transformed. And you're neither existence nor
non existence nor non non existence.

(57:21):
Everything is everything is negated.
But the with the end is from what is put of the ultimate
truth. So it's, it's not negative from
our sense. It's, it's since I'm a critter.
I was raised as a Catholic and then I left off the practice of
it. I was very interested in
Buddhism, lived in Buddhist temples of a couple of different

(57:44):
traditions. Briefly, not that I did
intensive asceticism, but I lived in a, in a Buddhist
atmosphere. But I still love Buddha.
I still love Buddhism. You see this, there's Amida
Buddha there and Christ, Christ on the cross there.
I mean this, this is, they're still both active in me.
It's interesting how Michel Mussan never said a word about

(58:08):
Christianity, but what he writesabout, for example, Greece, his
love of classical Greece, of Pagan Greece in Rome is so clear
that he hints that for him the Christianization of Greece in
Rome was a falling off. Yes, it was his longing was for,

(58:29):
for the, the, the pure pantheismof Greece in Rome, which is a
way, in a way like the pantheismof Shintoism.
So, but I, I don't think he was a deeply religious person.
I never expressed any interest in Christianity.
And I've have a Buddhist, Buddhist nun.
I lived in a in, in in a Nadiafra temple for about a

(58:51):
year. And actually her speciality was
none other than Yuishi Gidon. She wrote her master's degree
on. I was conscious at all.
I remember her saying that she could never live in Europe, and
I said why? And she said crosses and
crucifixes everywhere she was thinking, I think of Italy or

(59:13):
all of these wayside shrines or Italy or Austria or southern
Germany, Wherever it's Catholic,there are frequent images of
crucifixion and, and, and for her, of course, it is cruel and
bloody. The central image of the
Christian faith for her is connected with budget and

(59:34):
cruelty. And of course, I tried to
explain that for for Christians,no, it's a symbol of love, a
love that transcends pain and death.
But she wasn't convinced. She just she was really put off
by by the symbol of the cross. Well, again, it is interesting
though this this blood sacrifice, though the mission
does write about extensively. You know this.

(59:55):
Yeah, but that's that's that's more Shinto dying for the
emperor, dying for your country very much mission.
I don't think it plays a part inin Buddhism.
I don't think Buddhism has a cult of.
Bloody sacrifice. In fact, there are no there's no
custom of, for example, even animal sacrifice in Buddhism as
there is in Hinduism. They have a cult of Kali.

(01:00:19):
Living animals are a sacrifice to her because she wants blood.
But that's not true in Buddhism.There's no animal sacrifice and
there's no. And I think the Buddhists in
their own way disapprove of suicide as much as Christians
do, but for a different reason. They would say it's pointless
again, but the idea of transmigration, you're, you're

(01:00:40):
running away from something, you'll encounter it next time,
it's running away, but killing yourself is not the answer.
So the, the two traditions sometimes are saying the same
things. But the hard thing for me in
Christianity, in a way, not in the sense that I think it's
cruel, but the emphasis upon blood from the Old Testament

(01:01:02):
through the New Testament, St. Paul is very, very striking and
it's something you have to come to terms with.
It says somewhere, maybe in the Old Testament, without the,
without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin.
Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin.
That's a reference to the animalsacrifice of the temple, but

(01:01:25):
also, of course, the final sacrifice of Christ, in which
blood, blood no longer needs to be shed because perfect, the
perfect man shed his blood for us, but still it's blood
sacrifice. But that I wonder what Misha
Rasad would have said about that, about that aspect of
Christianity that should have appealed to him, the idea of the

(01:01:46):
shedding of blood being very crucial and important.
It's not a part of Buddhism as far as I know.
It's almost a sense of of ego there though that the the
shedding of blood, an act that we couldn't do, we couldn't
perform it in the same way. You must, of course, submit
yourself to that image of Christand you must stand before it as

(01:02:09):
below it and sort of impasse. There's a raising up of that
image and standing before God, and yet the image that we see
again and again. And Mishima's writing, though,
is of the man himself trying to do that, and whether it's the
kamikaze pilot or Mishima or these officers in the coup

(01:02:30):
d'etat. The coup d'etat, who are going
to first of all kill the wicked advisors and then kill
themselves, right. It's never explained why, but I
imagine it's because they know that without having killed the
advisers of the emperor, withoutthe emperor's express
permission, is criminal. And therefore they can pay for
that by shedding their own blood.

(01:02:51):
Yeah, it's full of it's full of blood, full of blood.
But I don't think it comes from Buddhism.
I think it comes from Michel Sonhimself, and he finds echoes of
it in internationalism. All your times that you spent
working with Mishima's writing, of translating it, of reading
it, what what strikes you the most and what what have you

(01:03:15):
taken away from his body of work?
Well, just the things we've beentalking about, the, the emphasis
upon death, the struggle betweenlife and death and the, the
somehow the, the mystery of, of,of shedding one's own blood or

(01:03:37):
perhaps the blood of others sacrifice, all the things we've
been talking about. It's what I take away from them.
And as I at my age, as I am now,I don't, I don't, I wouldn't go
to Mishmus fiction for some sortof ultimate truth or some sort
of religious insight. I am drawn by the beauty of his,

(01:04:00):
of his language, by his learningand by his evocation of a very
rich Japanese tradition. Those are, in other words,
aesthetic, essentially aesthetics.
I've drawn to Mishima's aesthetics, but I I'm not
necessarily drawn to his, to theanswer that he seems to be
giving. That's why you were probably

(01:04:20):
were not there because you left early.
But having having gone through Mishima's life and death and,
and then quotations from this work, I was a kind of
inspiration when I was making notes for it.
I said, but I want to end this talk after all this talk of, of,

(01:04:42):
of bloodshed. And, and I'm going to end this
talk with a quotation from another great work as the book
of Deuteronomy chapter. I think it's chapter 30,
nineteenth verse. Now, I have set before you these
two things and Chris's thereforechoose life.

(01:05:05):
That was my final worth. I said, therefore choose life.
And that's what I would say to mission my son.
You should have chosen life. But maybe he did.
Who knows? Who knows?
And like that agonizing last 10 or 15 minutes of his life, who
knows what he, what he experienced or what he said.
It's like this. People like suicides can't.

(01:05:26):
Medieval church thought all suicides were damned.
How can you say that between thejumping from the height and the
falling to the depths of the seaor smashing yourself on the
rocks beneath, who knows what went through the mind of the
person? Who knows whether he did not
repent, did not sort of see things in a different way.
And I mean, I think when you said.

(01:05:48):
That quote at the at the book launch the other I think that
was actually the moment that I left because I did.
I do recall you saying that quote.
You do. You heard that.
You said that I had it written down here and I thought that.
Was. A profound question to ask and
again, this this Infinity of thethe attack on the aircraft
carrier of the knife guy into the into your body.

(01:06:11):
It just, it makes one think about what is life.
Of course, faced with the sympttiness, we must admit that
there is something here as well,something real.
Well, I think Mishmu was very serious about these issues and.
And that's why I think he lookedaround him at the spread of kind
of cynicism and frivolity. And just as he said, Japan has

(01:06:36):
one great kaizai taikoku withoutany spiritual.
I think he was right to turn away from that.
But I think it's sad that he found as a substitute only deaf
and blunt and deaf and sort of self extinction.
So finally, I, I, I don't agree with him, but I can, I admire

(01:06:59):
his, I admire his literature very much.
It's it's beautiful writing and I think you've done a wonderful
job. Translating that and bringing
that into English in a way that I certainly there's a there's a
style to Mishima. He uses quite old Japanese or
yes, he does. It's about a classical style.

(01:07:19):
Classical style and. To bring that throne to English,
in a way. And very poetic.
And of course, here at Key moments, they break.
Into poetry, yeah, the spirits break into poetry 3 or 4 times
to express their passion. So I'm glad you enjoyed it.
I enjoyed doing it and I was pretty pleased with it.
I'm sure there are errors or things that could have been done

(01:07:39):
differently, but I was fairly pleased with it.
So I one thing I would finally, I will say is after Mishim
Hassan died, I went to my, the German Jewish friend Eric and
said, you know, I think I shouldwrite my dissertation on Mishim.
I think I've done enough on Tamizaki.
I've done my MA on Tamizaki. I'll do.

(01:08:00):
He said, no, it's much too early, Paul, don't, don't,
don't, don't do that. So I said, OK, I'll wait.
I waited 40 years. I spent 40 years translating
Tamizaki, whom I greatly respect, but now finally in my
last five or however many years I have left 5-10 years I'll
spend it translate Mishimu. That's profounding.

(01:08:22):
Thank you so much the the. The final thing then is what is
next for you? I mean, you've alluded to some
other work. Yes, I am trying to put together
an. Anthology of Mishimasan's
untranslated non fiction. He has some of it.
He wrote memoirs, He wrote travel pieces, for example,
Greece, for example, Paris, which he loathed, literary

(01:08:50):
commentary mostly on other Japanese writers.
He loved Modi Orgai. Oh yes, and he recognized the
greatness. Of tanizaki but.
Also felt that Tanizaki was a somewhat misunderstood writer.
Remember he wrote it. It is essay which which I have
translated, which I hope will come out, he says in Japanese.

(01:09:12):
He says, but he wasn't really a lover of women.
So the next thing is, I've looked up at 10 or 12
translators. All of them are very skilled,
very good, and try to put together an anthology of maybe

(01:09:35):
300-1000 and 50 pages of Misha Maison's untranslated memoirs,
travel pieces, essays on literature and also some lighter
pieces, some comical pieces. He he wrote a variety of things
which he then collected on the title Fudo Toku Koi Kukosa,
Courses in Immoral Education. You know, just just finally, I

(01:09:59):
think you'll appreciate this. And thank you so much for that,
that probably one of my favoriteshort stories of hers is 1
called Raisin Bread. I think.
I don't know it. I don't know it's from.
Is it translated? Into it?
Yeah, it's in. English and it's.
It's in. Acts of worship as the
compilation of stories. Yes, I know that.

(01:10:21):
So that contains with Kumaro. Budo no pan.
Budo no pan I think it's called.And that was like.
Just a. Really youthful, fun loving
short story on these kids, you know, kind of teenagers doing
teenage things and it just there's a there's a liberty to

(01:10:42):
it that I really like. I remember that.
I'm sure I've got it somewhere, the volume.
The Acts of Worship translated by John Bester, right?
Yeah. Wasn't it John Bester?
I'm not sure who it translated, but it's yeah so.
Within that there's some beauty and I look forward to maybe
reading a little bit more of hisnon fiction perhaps as you
finish that. But Paul, thank you so much for

(01:11:02):
sharing your experience. Again, this is Voices of the
Fallen Heroes and Other stories,and you've translated three
stories actually in this. Yes, they're all very different.
Yes, I I enjoyed all three of them actually.
Very, as you say, very different.
But the good news is that I heard from the publisher that
they are going to be publishing.A paperback edition in January

(01:11:25):
of next year. Excellent.
So they're it's selling fairly well.
I would have thought this was a paperback edition, but I guess
it isn't. This is the kind of this is
their equivalent of a hardback semi hardback, but they are
going to put out another anotheredition anyway.
Thank you very much. Thank you, thank you.
I enjoyed this. Thank you for listening.
I am Cody Allingham and that wasthe.

(01:11:47):
Transformation of value. If you would like to support
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