Confessions of a Mask: Yukio Mishima (Penguin Modern Classics)

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In the West, the closest approximation to an I-novel might be something like Karl Knausgård’s My Struggle, though even this comparison isn’t quite appropriate due to its length. The I-novel that Westerners will probably be most familiar with is Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human, which—as hopefully this review will reveal—might serve as an amusing counterpoint to Mishima’s own Confessions.

I should also mention here that Mishima’s prose is absolutely stunning – props to Meredith Weatherby, the translator, as well. The descriptions are matchless, and the language beautiful in a deeply philosophical way: not always sense-making, but aesthetically it’s incomparable. If this rings a bell, this is what’s at the very core of negative capability. For those unfamiliar, Confessions of a Mask has the reputation as Yukio Mishima’s ‘coming out’ book, in which he openly proclaims his homosexuality to the world in the form of his very own I-novel. Two of these subjects are worth considering in greater detail, however: both the sincerity of what he proclaims to be his homosexuality, as well as the sincerity with which he writes his ‘I-novel’. And the latter must be considered first. After this visit, Sonoko hints heavily at her interest in marriage. Kochan waves this off as cooly as he can. When she asks if he will come again, he says “Hm, perhaps so, if I’m still alive.” 14 The absurdity of his speech is then underwritten in bold by his description of leaving her at the train station:

One might suggest that this is perfectly inline with the sort of pathological confusion that seems to characterize the average homosexual’s interior life. It’s possible, given that their collective behavior could suggest such, though it’s uncharitable to make such sweeping assumptions. However, one might also rebut with the question of how to define an ‘average’ homosexual, and should such a general profile be constructed, it becomes harder to profile Kochan according to it without introducing quite a few suppositions into the narrative that simply aren’t there. Confessions of a Mask revolves around the protagonist’s basically futile attempts at understanding his own place in the world. Put somewhat crudely, he is gay – at a time where the word “gay” meant “happy”. As his relationship with Sonoko progresses, it becomes clear that she thinks both very highly and very fondly of him. Rather than sincerely reciprocate her feelings, he writes at length on the torture he experiences when he is unable to reconcile the contradictions of how he feels he is supposed to act and his own inclinations for violence and grief.

This deserves a relevant side note: his preoccupations with violent fantasies merge into pseudo-realities. When he is called up for service in the military, by coincidence he is ill with pneumonia, and thus granted exception by a misdiagnosis of tuberculosis. He makes no effort to correct the record, however, despite yearning, as he claims, for a valiant young death in battle. In particular, he romanticizes the experience of the kamikaze pilots whose soldier-suicide is offered up as religious rite for the living Showa God-Emperor. And yet, when his lot is drawn, he takes advantage of circumstances that relegate his war service to that of finishing law school and working in factories on home soil. Even in this he is not satisfied, as that dark portion of his conscience still yearned to die in a bombing campaign.I really don’t feel a review of Confessions of a Mask can properly reveal the genius of Yukio Mishima. Anyone familiar with Mishima’s life can definitely see parallels between Mishima and the protagonist – whose name is Kochan, the diminutive of Mishima’s real name, Kimitake. My blind adoration of Omi was devoid of any element of conscious criticism, and still less did I have anything like a moral viewpoint where he was concern. Whenever I tried to capture the amorphous mass of my adoration within the confines of analysis, it would already have disappeared. If there be such a thing as love that has neither duration nor progress, this was precisely my emotion. The eyes through which I saw Omi were always those of a 'first glance' or, if I may say so, of the 'primeval glance'. It was purely an unconscious attitude on my part, a ceaselesseffort to protect my fourteen-yesr-old purity from the process of erosion. Fiction, however, is not synonymous with ‘lie’. It is of altogether different mode, sitting downstream from the operation of reason, by which truths and lies are discerned, morality, from which good and evil are discerned, and aesthetics, from which beauty and ugliness are discerned. The fiction that a mask participates in is that of the stage performance, wherein everyone accepts the mask as necessary towards the functioning of the drama. When I arrived at the house in the suburbs that night I seriously contemplated suicide for the first time in my life. But as I thought about it, the idea became exceedingly tiresome, and I finally decided it would be a ludicrous business. I had an inherent dislike of admitting defeat. Moreover, I told myself, there's no need for me to take such decisive action myself, not when I'm surrounded by such a bountiful harvest of death—death in an air raid, death at one's post of duty, death in the military service, death on the battlefield, death from being run over, death from disease—surely my name has already been entered in the list for one of these: a criminal who has been sentenced to death does not commit suicide. No—no matter how I considered, the season was not auspicious for suicide. Instead I was waiting for something to do me the favor of killing me. And this, in the final analysis, is the same as to say that I was waiting for something to do me the favor of keeping me alive.”

One may wonder if this too-clever self-reflexive narrative was intentional. This was, after all, Mishima’s second novel, and he was only twenty-four when it was published. Although it is rich in the imagery that would come to define his literary output, both in its violent and sensual content, as well as the mastery with which it is depicted, it is nonetheless quite undeveloped in comparison to his later work to be found in, for instance The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, much less, Spring Snow. There are no supposed-tos in literature. As a result, I feel silly talking about genre. Moreover, to a great extent, genres as we understand them are somewhat Eurocentric. On the other hand, as it often is in literature, seeing too strong autobiographical references is risky, in terms of literary criticism. More importantly, it’s pointless. The story is neither about Kochan, the protagonist, nor about Mishima; rather it is about all“Kochans” and “Mishimas”, in Japan and elsewhere, in the 1940s and always. Even though still young, I did not know what it was to experience the clear-cut feeling of platonic love. Was this a misfortune? But what meaning could ordinary misfortune have for me? The vague uneasiness surrounding my sexual feelings had practically made the carnal world an obsession with me. my curiosity was actually purely intellectual, but I became skillful at convincing myself that it was carnal desire incarnate. What is more, I mastered the art of delusion until I could regard myself as a truly lewd-minded person. As a result I assumed the stylish airs of an adult, of a man of the world. I affected the attitude of being completely tired of women.

This practical and insightful reading guide offers a complete summary and analysis of Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima. It provides a thorough exploration of the novel’s plot, characters and main themes, including memory, beauty and the relationship between death and sexuality. The clear and concise style makes for easy understanding, providing the perfect opportunity to improve your literary knowledge in no time. Those familiar with this book, or at the very least, its reputation, will likely find this an odd choice of review for The Pillarist. This was not one that this writer read with the intention of reviewing, in large part due exactly to those reasons. However, as should become clear from the review, the book’s reputation deserves to be a lot more nuanced than what popular opinion has flattened it out to be. Nor should it have ever been championed by certain segments of sexual revolutionaries who have tried to make Mishima one of their own. Flattening this into a mere closet case scenario ignores the more obvious psychological baggage of Konchan’s passions. He finds a natural, if uneasy, camaraderie among men, and he very clearly falls in love with a woman, Sonoko, whom he finds very beautiful. Meanwhile, his libido is engaged by depictions of great strength and great violence. He’s hardly the picture of a normal, healthy young man, but so too is he hardly the portrait of a homosexual. Kochan’s neurosis is a bit less common than something so simple. Mask This is what the protagonist of Confessions of a Mask feels, almost all of the time. Review of Confessions of a Mask: General Impression Ultimately, Confessions of a Mask poses a question most, if not virtually all of us, are too scared to ask.

His preoccupations with women’s attire should be remembered alongside his admiration of male beauty—which later he comes to firmly identify specifically with strength—and his utter disgust at seeing that usurped by anything feminine. Upon being told that the knight in one of his favorite storybooks was in fact the great saint Joan of Arc, he reacted with total repulsion and abandoned the book altogether. To say the least, while at school, particularly during a boring class, I could not take my eyes off Omi's profile. What more could I have done when I did not know that to love is both to seek and to be sought? For me love was nothing but a dialogue of little riddles, with no answers given. As for my spirit of adoration, I never even imagined it to be a thing that required some sort of answer.” The Encyclopedia Britannica defines the I-novel as “characterized by self-revealing narration, with the author usually as the central character” 1. Though vague, where this differs from standard autobiography is the intensely psychological and aesthetical characteristics of the genre’s approach. Autobiographies tend to be something of a commentary on the events of a person’s life, if written in the form of a retrospective, or alternatively, a simple narration of those events from memory. By contrast, I-novels are meditative exercises in which very little narrative space is given to the actual events of the narrator’s exterior reality, while the interior elements of it—his thoughts and passions, feelings, fears, considerations, suppositions and fantasies—are prioritized instead.

Could this have been love? Grant it to be one form of love, for even though at first glance it seemed to retain its pristine form forever, simply repeating that form over and over again, it too had its own unique sort of debasement and decay. And it was a debasement more evil than that of any normal kind of love. Indeed, of all the kinds of decay in this world, decadent purity is the most malignant. It is interior presumption, then, to presume, outside of the mode of theatrical performance, that only the chosen few who seek to guard dangerous taboos are those who wear social masks. This is the error of the simplistic attempt to interpret Confessions of a Mask as the dull memoir of a closeted homosexual. Everyone wears some sort of a social mask, as all social interaction bears with it an element of the theatrical. Mishima knows this. What makes Kochan’s mask noteworthy enough to become the subject of a novel is this: he subsumed his entire identity into the mask, such that he refused to turn any of his attention whatsoever to whatever part of himself was wearing it. It wasn’t so much that his mask was Janus-lined, though the analogy could be appropriate. Rather, he made every effort to adhere to the surface of social interaction that he lost sight entirely of his own self awareness. This is especially ironic given how self-absorbed the novel was by its very genre. Confessions of a Mask follows a perfectly clear trajectory, in terms of narrative journeying. There is a logical sequence between events. All of this has been important for sketching a brief psychological portrait of the sort of character Kochan believes himself to be. The action of the plot doesn’t begin until well into his school years, and then, for the most part, a chapter later, with the introduction of Sonoko. At the heart of Confessions of a Mask is, as far as Kochan believes, the tension between how he thinks he is supposed to act as a burgeoning young man entering into the prime of his virility, and the erotic fixation he has with strength and death.