Spring Snow

by Yukio Mishima

“Iinuma, you know . . . I made a blunder today. If you promise not to tell Father or Mother, I’ll say what it was.” “What was it?” “Today, when I was carrying the Princess’s train, I stumbled a little. But the Princess just smiled and forgave me.” Iinuma was repelled by these frivolous words, by the absence of any sense of responsibility, by the tearful look of rapture in those eyes, by everything.

The hot sun struck the backs of their close-shaven necks. It was a peaceful, uneventful, glorious Sunday afternoon. Yet Kiyoaki remained convinced that at the bottom of this world, which was like a leather bag filled with water, there was a little hole, and it seemed to him that he could hear time leaking from it, drop by drop.

The rough grass pricked through the backs of their kimonos, making Kiyoaki rather uncomfortable. It gave Honda, however, the sensation of having to endure an exquisitely refreshing pain that was fragmented and spread out under his back.

“I’m convinced that the trouble with you is, you’re horribly greedy. Greedy men are apt to seem miserable. Look, what more could you want than a day like this?”

“You remember that the story is set in Tang China. A man named Yuan Hsaio was on his way to the famous Mount Kaoyu to study the teachings of Buddha. When night fell, he happened to be beside a cemetery, so he lay down to sleep among the burial mounds. Then in the middle of the night he awoke with a terrible thirst. Stretching out his hand, he scooped up some water from a hole by his side. As he dozed off again, he thought to himself that never had water tasted so pure, so fresh and cold. But when morning came, he saw what he had drunk from in the dark. Incredible though it seemed, what had tasted so delicious was water that had collected in a human skull. He retched and was sick. Yet this experience taught something to Yuan Hsaio. He realized that as long as conscious desire is at work, it will permit distinctions to exist. But if one can suppress it, these distinctions dissolve and one can be as content with a skull as with anything else.

leave things as they are, as gloriously undefined as the line of the seashore.

Above all, she was the woman who loved him without having bothered to consult him at all in the matter. This Kiyoaki could not bear. Not for him the meek acceptance of favors granted. He had always firmly shuttered his heart against the rising sun, for fear that a single ray of its harsh, overcritical brilliance might pierce through.

Iinuma had plenty of time to reflect later, but very often a man’s whole life alters course because of a moment’s hesitation. That instant is like a fold made down the middle of a sheet of paper. In it, the underside becomes upmost, and what was once visible is hidden forever.

“Shouldn’t we go home?” she said, her voice altogether too composed. “There she goes,” he thought, “leading me by the nose again.” But even as he grumbled to himself, he knew that he was letting pass by the moment when he had the chance to change things. He could say: “No, let’s not go back.” But to do that was to reach out and pick up the dice. And his unskilled hand would have frozen at the very touch of them. He was not ready.

KIYOAKI DREW COMFORT from the peace of mind that comes with loss. In his heart, he always preferred the actuality of loss to the fear of it.

The court ritual began with the presiding judge putting the usual questions to the accused about name, address, age, and social status.

“That’s it. That’s the secret,” said Chao P. when he saw what Honda had done. “If you did that all day, time would have to stop. When I get back home, I’m going to have a sundial set up in the garden. And then on days when I’m very, very happy, I’ll have a servant stand next to it from morning to night and cover it with his shadow. I’ll stop time passing.”

A man may be hard to persuade by rational argument while he is easily swayed by a display of passion, even if it is feigned.

Although Honda was well aware that a man in love has no room in his heart for anything but his feelings and loses even his ability to sympathize with the sorrows of others, he could imagine no heart more naturally suited than Kiyoaki’s to be such a vessel of pure passion, cold and tough as tempered glass.

When he passed underneath the light of the gas lamps in Toriizaka, he stretched out his hands. He was shaken to see how pale their backs looked, for he remembered once hearing that invalids near to death look at their hands constantly.

To stain your family honor! To throw mud in your father’s face! Could there be any disloyalty, any breach of filial piety worse than this? If it were in times gone by, I as your father would have had to cut my belly open and die in atonement to the Emperor. You’ve behaved like an animal. You’ve done something that’s rotten through and through.

She was speaking now in retaliation against all those others, too, who surrounded her in her old age, and whose treacherous power she could sense closing in to crush her. Her voice came echoing gaily out of another era, one of upheavals, a violent era forgotten by this generation, in which fear of imprisonment and death held no one in check, an era in which the threat of both was part of the texture of everyday life. She belonged to a generation of women who had thought nothing of washing their dinner plates in a river while corpses went floating past. That was life! And now, how remarkable that this grandson, who seemed so effete at first glance, should have revived the spirit of that age before her very eyes.

Her character was essentially different from his, with its delicacy, and while she was endowed with the intelligence to perceive the savage nobility that lay at the root of his dishonorable behavior, once family honor was at stake, this same intelligence enabled her to put aside her admiration and adroitly conceal any such noble manifestations.

And then it dawned on Kiyoaki that his father could never disown him now—he was much too afraid of what the world would say.

“Be sure that nothing of this becomes known outside the house. You’ll have to warn the women to keep their mouths shut and we’ll have to speak to the doctor too.

everything has to be hidden

The day after she told him, and the day after that too, Tadeshina happened to cross paths with the Count, but he gave no sign of being concerned about the problem. He was, in fact, profoundly shaken. But since the problem was at once too vast to deal with on his own and too embarrassing to discuss with others, he made every effort to put it out of his mind.

“I won’t be able to mix much in society from now on, because of you.” “Be kind enough to forgive me,” Satoko answered calmly, without a trace of emotion. “My, you have all sorts of birds in this garden, haven’t you?” he said after a few moments. “Yes, we have all sorts.”

His own heart seemed to him to be much like an arrow stripped of the flashing white feathers that gave it direction.

“I’ve dared to betray His Majesty. There’s nothing to do but to die.”

That’s it then. There’s no reason to have such regrets. I have no other choice but to risk my life if I want to see her. To me, she’s the essence of beauty. And it’s only that which has brought me this far.”

pretty clear thoughts for a fever-ridden mind

But more than that, he thought, wasn’t it true that no passion whatever would succeed in sweeping him away? For he realized that his nature seemed to be lacking in the quality that made this possible. It would never assent to such an invasion. His affection for his friend was deep, he was willing enough to weep when required—but as for feelings, he was lacking in something there. Why did he instinctively channel all his energies into the maintaining of a suitable inner and outer decorum? Why, unlike Kiyoaki, had he been somehow unable to open his soul to the four great inchoate elements of fire, wind, water, and earth?

I’m doing it because after seeing the look of desperate hope in his eyes, I do not feel that I have any other choice. If Your Reverence could only see that look, I’m sure that you too would be moved. As for me, I can’t help but believe that it’s far more important now to grant him what he wants than to worry about his illness.