Spring Snow (The Sea of Fertility #1)

by Yukio Mishima

At that moment, a single wisp of hair slipped over her clear white cheek, and out of the fine-drawn corner of an eye a smile flashed in a spark of black fire. But the pure line of her nose did not move. It was as if nothing had happened … this fleeting angle of the Princess’s face—too slight to be called a profile—made Kiyoaki feel as if he had seen a rainbow flicker for a bare instant through a prism of pure crystal.

And Kiyoaki, like an ant that senses the approaching flood, was experiencing the first intimations of his family’s rapid collapse.

His elegance was the thorn. And he was well aware that his aversion to coarseness, his delight in refinement, were futile; he was a plant without roots. Without meaning to undermine his family, without wanting to violate its traditions, he was condemned to do so by his very nature. And this poison would stunt his own life as it destroyed his family. The handsome young man felt that this futility typified his existence.

At the moment nothing interested him. Boating? His father had thought the little green and white boat he had imported from abroad to be stylish. As far as his father was concerned the boat was culture; culture made tangible. But what of it? Who cared about a boat?

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.

“But what interests me is this: once Yuan Hsaio had been thus enlightened, could he drink that water again, secure in the knowledge that it was pure and delicious? And don’t you think that the same would hold true for chastity? If a boy is naïve, of course, he can worship a prostitute in all innocence. But once he realizes that his woman is a slut, and that he has been living an illusion that merely serves to reflect the image of his own purity, will he be able to love this woman in the same way again? If he can, don’t you think that would be marvelous? To take your own ideal and bend the world to it like that. Wouldn’t that be a remarkable force? It would be like holding the secret key to life right there in your hand, wouldn’t it?”

But still he felt a certain dread. He could not bring himself to look up into the sky at the moon itself, the origin of the image in the water. Rather he kept looking down into the basin and into the water contained by its curved sides, the reflection of his innermost self, into which the moon, like a golden shell, had sunk so deep. For at that moment he had captured the celestial. It sparkled like a golden butterfly trapped in the meshes of his soul. Yet, he thought, were these meshes fine enough to hold it? Once caught, would the butterfly not slip out soon and fly away? Even at fifteen he feared its loss. His character was already formed, and each of his triumphs would bring this fear in its wake. Having gained the moon, how much then would he dread life in a world without it. The oppression of such fear! Even if this moon aroused nothing but hatred in him. For even in the triviality of a single playing card missing from a deck, the world’s order is inevitably turned awry. And for someone like Kiyoaki, the smallest incongruity took on the proportions of a watch deprived of one cogwheel. The order of his universe collapsed and he found himself trapped in terrifying darkness. The lost playing card, of no value in itself, would, in his eyes, assume the significance of a crown over which rival claimants were locked in a struggle that would plunge the world into crisis. His sensibility was thus at the mercy of every unforeseen occurrence, however trivial, and he had no defen...

Kiyoaki had observed the ritual countless times since early childhood. No burning crises. No storms of passion. His mother knew exactly what was coming next. The Marquis knew that his wife knew. Their expressions blank, innocent of foreknowledge, they glided downstream like twigs hand in hand on clear waters mirroring blue sky and clouds, to take the inevitable plunge over the crest of the falls.

For everything sacred has the substance of dreams and memories, and so we experience the miracle of what is separated from us by time or distance suddenly being made tangible. Dreams, memories, the sacred—they are all alike in that they are beyond our grasp. Once we are even marginally separated from what we can touch, the object is sanctified; it acquires the beauty of the unattainable, the quality of the miraculous. Everything, really, has this quality of sacredness, but we can desecrate it at a touch. How strange man is! His touch defiles and yet he contains the source of miracles.”

Its stone was a rich, square-cut emerald. On either side of it, the fierce beasts’ heads of a pair of yaksha, the warrior gods, had been finely etched in gold. All in all, it was an immense ring of such quality that for Kiyoaki to have overlooked it until now was proof of how little he was inclined to take notice of others.

The study of law was certainly a strange discipline. It was a net with mesh so fine as to catch the most trivial incidents of daily life, yet its vast extension in time and space encompassed even the eternal movements of the sun and stars. No fisherman seeking to increase his catch could be more greedy than the student of law.

Yet he knew that their thoughts were elsewhere, adrift on some broad ocean. But he was pleased by it, for to him the idea of human emotions remaining steadfast and inextricably anchored in the body, in the here-and-now, was unbearably oppressive.

At that instant, although totally engrossed, he was still keenly aware of his own good looks. Satoko’s beauty and his: he saw that it was precisely this fine correspondence between the two that dissolved all constraint and allowed them to flow together, merging as easily as measures of quicksilver. All that was divisive and frustrating sprang from something alien to beauty. Kiyoaki now realized that a fanatical insistence on total independence was a disease, not of the flesh but of the mind.

The moment when a kiss ends—it was like awakening reluctantly from sleep, struggling drowsily against the glare of the morning sun as it struck their eyelids, as they yearned to hold on to the fragment of unconsciousness left to them. That is the moment when sleep is sweetest.

The decisive ring in his own voice took Kiyoaki by surprise. Suddenly he understood. What he really wanted to do was to challenge the world.

“But let me ask you this: what happens after a hundred years? Without us having any say in the matter, all our ideas will be lumped together under the heading, ‘The Thought of the Age.’ Take the history of art, for example: it proves my point irrefutably, whether you like it or not. Each period has its own style, and no artist living in a particular era can completely transcend that era’s style, whatever his individual outlook.” “Does our age have its style too?” “I think I’d be more inclined to say that the style of the Meiji era is still dying. But how would I know? To live in the midst of an era is to be oblivious to its style. You and I, you see, must be immersed in some style of living or other, but we’re like goldfish swimming around in a bowl without ever noticing it. Take yourself: yours is a world of feeling. You appear different from most people. And you yourself are quite sure that you have never allowed your personality to be compromised. However, there is absolutely no way of proving that. The testimony of your contemporaries has no value whatever. Who knows? It may just be that your world of feeling represents the style of this era in its purest form. But then again, there’s no way of knowing.” “Well, then, who does decide?” “Time. Time is what matters. As time goes by, you and I will be carried inexorably into the mainstream of our period, even though we’re unaware of what it is. And later, when they say that young men in the early Taisho era thought, dresse...

History is a record of destruction. One must always make room for the next ephemeral crystal. For history, to build and to destroy are one and the same thing.

“But in the long run, all human will is doomed to frustration. It’s a matter of course that things turn out contrary to your intentions. And what conclusion does a Westerner draw from this? He says: ‘My will was the sole rational force involved. Failure came about by chance.’

“Without the concept of chance, you see, the Western philosophy of free will could never have arisen. Chance is the crucial refuge of the will. And without it the very thought of gambling would be inconceivable, just as the Westerner has no other way of rationalizing the repeated setbacks and frustrations that he must endure. I think that this concept of chance, of a gamble, is the very substance of the God of Europeans, and so they have a deity whose characteristics are derived from that refuge so vital to free will, namely chance—the only sort of God who would inspire the freedom of human will.

“You are not likely to see things this way. I wouldn’t expect you to subscribe to such a philosophy. The only things you do put any faith in—and that without much thought—are your own good looks, your changing moods, your individuality and—not your fixed character, but on the contrary, your very lack of it. Am I right?”

If the two of them had really fallen in love that snowy morning, how could they bear to let a day pass without meeting, if only for a moment or two? What could be more natural? Yet Kiyoaki was not inclined to follow his impulses in such a way. Oddly enough, living only for one’s emotions, like a flag obedient to the breeze, demands a way of life that makes one balk at the natural course of events, for this implies being altogether subservient to nature. The life of the emotions detests all constraints, whatever their origin, and thus, ironically enough, is apt eventually to fetter its own instinctive sense of freedom.

He was daydreaming, and his thoughts, moving like the sea, gradually turned from the rhythm of the waves to that of the long, slow passage of time, and hence to the inevitability of growing old—and he suddenly caught his breath. He had never looked forward to the wisdom and other vaunted benefits of old age. Would he be able to die young—and if possible free of all pain? A graceful death—as a richly patterned kimono, thrown carelessly across a polished table, slides unobtrusively down into the darkness of the floor beneath. A death marked by elegance.

The Marquis and Marquise, whatever their intrigues, wore their emotions like clothes that were dyed in the vivid primary colors of the tropics. Kiyoaki’s emotions, however, were as subtly complex as the layer upon layer of color in the dresses of the court ladies; they were constantly merging—the drab brown of an autumn leaf shading into crimson, the crimson dissolving into the green of bamboo grass.

Kiyoaki was like a lake whose clear waters reveal the very pebbles on its bed at one moment, only to cloud over the next in a sudden squall.

With cool composure, Satoko watched the bustle as these events went on around her. There was very little sun in April that year, and as one dark day gave way to another beneath the overcast sky, the fresh imprint of spring faded, to be replaced by the signs of approaching summer. Satoko looked out over the wide, neglected garden from a bay window of her austere room in the handsome, old-fashioned mansion that now retained its pretensions only in its imposing gate. She saw how the camellia blossoms had already fallen and new buds were pushing out from the thick dark clusters of leaves. The intricate tracery of branches and pointed leaves of the pomegranate, bristling with thorns, also showed reddish buds that were straining to burst. All the new buds grew vertical, so that the entire garden seemed to be standing on tiptoe and stretching upward to reach the sky. Indeed, every day seemed to bring it closer to its goal.

Those who lack imagination have no choice but to base their conclusions on the reality they see around them. But on the other hand, those who are imaginative have a tendency to build fortified castles they have designed themselves, and to seal off every window in them.

His eye was caught by the iridescent back of a beetle that had been standing on the windowsill but was now advancing steadily into his room. Two reddish purple stripes ran the length of its brilliant oval shell of green and gold. Now it waved its antennae cautiously as it began to inch its way forward on its tiny hacksaw legs, which reminded Kiyoaki of minuscule jeweler’s blades. In the midst of time’s dissolving whirlpool, how absurd that this tiny dot of richly concentrated brilliance should endure in a secure world of its own. As he watched, he gradually became fascinated. Little by little the beetle kept edging its glittering body closer to him as if its pointless progress were a lesson that when traversing a world of unceasing flux, the only thing of importance was to radiate beauty. Suppose he were to assess his protective armor of sentiment in such terms. Was it aesthetically as naturally striking as that of this beetle? And was it tough enough to be as good a shield as the beetle’s?

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. He had lost Satoko. And with that he was content. For by now he had learned how to quiet even his subsequent resentment. Every show of feeling was now governed with a marvelous economy. If a candle has burned brilliantly but now stands alone in the dark with its flame extinguished, it need no longer fear that its substance will dissolve into hot wax. For the first time in his life, Kiyoaki came to realize the healing powers of solitude.

The rain was still falling outside the windows and veiled the courtroom in a bleak light which seemed to focus on Tomi Masuda. She stood there as though she were the sole representative of all the complex passions of man, living, breathing, grieving, and crying out in pain. She alone was endowed with the privilege of emotion. Until a few moments before, the spectators had seen nothing but a plump, perspiring thirty-one-year-old woman. But now with bated breath and staring eyes, they were looking at a human being wracked by her feelings, writhing like a fish carved up alive for the dinner table.

Once passion was set in motion according to its own laws, then it was irresistible. This was a theory that would never be accepted by modern law, which took it as self-evident that conscience and reason ruled man.

From the vantage point of this terrace, Kiyoaki had spent whole days last summer carefully observing each subtle nuance of the shifting clouds. The sunlight became awesome as it shone on the cumulus clouds, towering up over the offing like huge masses of whipped cream, and penetrated their deep, curving hollows. While the, areas that lay in shadow resisted the probing sun, its bright rays threw the rugged force of their sculptured outlines into relief. In his imagination, the parts cut off from direct light were totally different in character from those that were dazzlingly exposed. They slumbered on uneventfully, while in contrast their brilliant counterparts fiercely enacted a swiftly unfolding drama of tragic proportions. But there was no place for the human element, and so both slumber and tragedy came to the same thing, an idle game at best. If he gazed fixedly at the clouds, he noticed no alteration, but if he looked away for a moment, he found that they had changed. Without his realizing it, their heroic mane became ruffled like hair disheveled in sleep. And as long as he kept his eyes on it, this new disorder persisted in just the same slow-moving way. What had disintegrated? One moment their brilliant white shapes dominated the sky, and the next, they dissolved into something trivial, an enervated banality. Yet their dissolution was a kind of liberation. For as he watched, their scattered remnants gradually reformed and as they did so, they cast strange shadows ov...

“There is an abundance of death in our lives. We never lack reminders—funerals, cemeteries, withered commemorative bouquets, memories of the dead, deaths of friends, and then the anticipation of our own death. Who knows? Perhaps in their own way the dead make a great deal of life. Perhaps they’re always looking in our direction from their own land—at our towns, our schools, the smokestacks of our factories, at each of us who has passed one by one back from death into the land of the living. “What I want to say is that perhaps reincarnation is nothing more than a concept that reverses the way that we, the living, ordinarily view death, a concept that expresses life as seen from the viewpoint of the dead. Do you see?”

One could certainly think of a man not in terms of a body but as a single vital current. And this would allow one to grasp the concept of existence as dynamic and on-going, rather than as static.

One hot sultry night, as Kiyoaki was settling into an uneasy sleep, he began to dream. It was quite unlike his previous experiences. If one flounders in the shallows of sleep, wading where the water is tepid and full of all sorts of flotsam that has come in from deeper water to pile up with the land debris in a tangled heap, one is liable to slash one’s feet.

“I wonder how women prisoners have to dress. What would Kiyo do if he saw me like that … would he still love me or not? I’d like to know.”

Kiyoaki seemed to embody beauty more than any other boy in the school, whereas the other was like the chosen emissary of ugliness and sinister shadow.