Yukio Mishima – Confessions of a Mask – Review

 

One of the more famous novels by Mishima, the book is a poetic exploration of the soul, the inner personality of the narrator, who the reader comes to know as Kochan. Admittedly, for this reader, the journey we take with the protagonist, his intense self-analysis regarding his true sexuality, at once gruesome and strange, including his fantasy life from a young boy towards manhood is quite uncomfortable in its honest and descriptive detail.

 In the beginning, the narrator communicates that he recalls his birth. The detailed descriptions of being bathed in a small, wooden tub, illustrating how the morning light reflects off a droplet of water dangling from the basin's edge, is really quite beautiful. At this early point in the biography, no more than a toddler, we feel the child's contradictions in memory and truth.

Later the young child comes across a painting of a knight on a horse, fitted with body armor and a long sword welding triumphantly in the sky. At first, he treasures this painting representing to the boy the idea of manliness, hiding it from his grandparents, to later discover that it's a portrait of Joan of Arc. Once told of this reality, the boy immediately discards the work, never to view again. On the surface, for a young lad, this could well be disappointing, but Kochan's visceral reaction goes way beyond what we generally would consider normal.

As a young man in boarding school, he comes to feel what is “love.” for another boy. The older classmate, known as Omi, represents everything that our narrator is not healthy, strong, defiant, and exuding self-confidence. The boy's do connect, only once in a game of physical engagement. The game turns out to be a kind of draw, and Omi finally acknowledges our protagonist. This is Kochan's first “boyhood love,” and the prose used to describe this pubescent love, at times, I found quite moving.

However, Kochan's inner fantasy life borders on true sadism, which could well put off certain readers. He often returns to a painting of St. Sebastian, depicting the saint hanging from a tree, his arms crossed above him, in the throes of death. The painting comes to be the central point or apotheosis of all Kochan's sexual fantasy life.

Our narrator's first female love, Sonoko, is the younger sister of his best friend. Here in the story, Kochan's inner conflicts of identity and sexuality turn more anguished and confusing. Their exchanges though subtle, reveal a connection of a type from the very beginning of their relationship. I believe that Kochan does indeed love Sodoko, but leads her on in an egoistic manner: leading Sodoko to believe he is someone else other than who he actually is – she falls in love with his “mask,” and to a certain degree, Kochan finds pleasure in this deception. Though the two never marry each other, Sodoko finally does after the war to another, and surprising to the both of them, they continue to meet, only to talk and simply be in each other's company. The narrator's continued inner analysis of the true nature of love and sexual love is expressed notably during this section of the novel.

Yukio Mishima was an intriguing individual: actor, playwright, model, filmmaker, and ideologically an imperialist – right wing. He organized his own militia as a revolutionary force, combating what he thought were the unnecessary western influences in Japan. This militia failed miserably, and soon later, Mishima committed seppuku, Japanese ritual suicide in 1970.

Confessions of a Mask reminded me of the unrelenting and honest self-analysis of the great authors of the 19^th century – Dostoevsky and the German philosopher Fredric Nietzsche.

Excellent yet disturbing.