Part One: Summer

[Betty]

SUMMER

...other books by Mishima: Death in Midsummer & Other Stories; and The Sound of Waves, set on a seacoast.

Quotes from this The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea:

"He thrust his head into the space and discovered the source of the light: strong summer sunlight was reflecting off the sea"

"The most ungentle night of all came toward the end of summer vacation."

"The summer morning sun lay as thin as a dazzling sheet of hammered metal across the colossal anvil of the harbor scene."

[Betty]

Chapters 1-2.


Setting:

Yokohama, the Occupation Army already left;

Noboru's father died 8 years ago.


Characters:

Noboru Kuroda, 13 years, "convinced of his own genius...and certain that life consisted of a few simple signals and decisions"; compares his heart to a "large iron anchor"; spies on his mother and golden Tsukazaki to the chorus of the blasting ship's horns, a perfect conjunction of "the universal order at last achieved..."

Fusako Kuroda, 33 years, Noboru's mother;

The sailor, Second Mate Ryuji Tsukazaki about 33 years;

chief of youth cadre, about 13 years.


Chapter 2:

Ryuji realizes his indifference to tropical adventures after his many years of seamanship--"mooring", "warping", "towing" and "standby watch". He has no close shipmates, has a yen for pop music and sailor songs, and has "unexpressed feelings". He regards himself destined for glory,

"There must a a special destiny in store for me..."

[Betty]

Chapters 3-4.

After Fusako's husband's death eight years ago, she carries on the management of his business, Rex Ltd, an exclusive shop of imported clothing and accessories in the coastal city of Yokohama. One of her friends obtains an invitation from a ship's captain for a tour of his vessel; so, she's able to grant Noboku's wish. Due to the captain's absence, Ryuji tours Fusako and Noboru around the Rakuyo, its pilot house, chart room, bridge, etc.

The story then goes deeper into Ryuji's alienated, dark thoughts.

"...[H]e knew that he had been chosen to tower above other men."

"...[I]deal love: a man encounters the perfect woman only once in a lifetime and in every case death interposes--an unseen Pandarus--and lures them into the preordained embrace."*

In the beginning, Ryuji sees Fusako as only an elegant, attractive, ideal woman from all outward appearances. He doesn't see a soulful connection with her.

"She can't penetrate to the feeling deep down...or see through the murk of my manhood to the longing that sometimes makes me weep..."

*Wikipedia: Pandarus was a Trojan, who broke the truce of peace in The Iliad; he appears in Troilus and Cressida and medieval literature, bringing together the couple to be separated in the end.

[Betty]

Chapters 5-6.

The chapters alternate between Noboru and Ryuji. Infrequent italics indicate their thoughts. In the narrative we learn about the young chief's nihilistic, egocentric view of an unheroic world, depicted in "the uselessness of Mankind, the insignificance of Life". The chief continues,

"There's a huge seal called 'impossibility' pasted all over this world. And don't ever forget that we're the only ones who can tear it off once and for all."

"Real danger is nothing more than just living. Of course, living is merely the chaos of existence, but more than that it's a crazy mixed-up business of dismantling existence instant by instant to the point where the original chaos is restored, and taking strength from the uncertainty and the fear that chaos brings to re-create existence instant by instant. You won't find another job as dangerous as that. There isn't any fear in existence itself, or any uncertainty, but living creates it."

At a shed of the chief's immense, unpeopled house, the chief and Noboru exercise their "real power over existence", murdering and vivisecting a kitten, the chief surgically removing its warm innards, down to the "perfect" essence of its soul, neither animal nor human.

The next chapter shows Noboru's and Ryuji's initial social awkwardness with each other in a sudden meeting, each concealing a secret which the other knows--Ryuji's night with Fusako known by Noboru and Noboru's afternoon with the chief known by Ryuji. Noboru can't persuade the chief of Ryuji's exceptional heroic stature and Ryuji's not helping him with a recounting of the day's mundane events. At an invitation from Noboru, the boy and man relax in Fusako's cooled house. When their conversation turns to their mutual interest in ships and sea stories, Noboru's faith and joy is renewed in Ryuji as an "absolutely authentic" hero.

[Silver]

I am curious to see just how the lives of Noboru and Ryuji are going to incept each other, and how they will end up interacting in the long rung.

Noboru looks up to Ryuji, and so I wonder if Ryuji is going to end up "saving" Nobrou and perhaps offer him an escape through the sea from his current life and the direction it is taking.

Or if Ryuji will find a kindred spirit in Noboru and Noboru will end up drawing Ryuji into his own demented vision of life and the world.

The possibility that Noboru might end up killing or attempting to kill Ryuji also crosses my mind, particularly if Ryuji fails to live up to Noboru's ideal of him, as when he was disappointed with his encounter with Ryyji in the park, and did not like the way he smiled, or the mundane answer he gave for why his shirt was wet.

[Betty]

Noboru and Ryuji interact throughout the story. Noboru mythologizes him at times then disapproves of him at other times. The chief of the boys' cadre consistently criticizes Ryuji and Noboru's admiration for him; whereas, Noboru is inconsistent. Noboru would like Ryuji to remain mythologized as an heroic, solitary sailor who overcomes the powerful sea and shares his seagoing adventures.

Fate plays a part. The myth of Ryuji is his superhuman control over circumstances; whereas the reality is that his survival is by chance as is demonstrated with the stray kitten and that his emotions are human.

[Silver]

As of now there still remains a certain aloofness in their interactions, while they have been brought together and are connected through Naboru's mother, they still are traveling two very separate paths.

It will be interesting to see if in the end Naboru's hero worship of Ryuji ends up pulling Naboru away from his former ideology or if it is Ryuji that is drawn into that world of Naboru's.

I think there is also the possibility of catastrophic results coming out of Naboru being torn between these two different viewpoints, and if Ryuji's continued relationship with Naboru's mother might have the affect of placing him more in the rule of a man, and less in that of a hero, what affect that will ultimate have on Naboru.

Or will Naboru's two worlds in fact remain separated from each other, allowing him to straddle between them both. Will he be able to stay in the line between his hero worship of Ryuji and his continued following with the ideas of the Chief? Or in the end will one have to be sacrificed for the other? And will either Naboru or Ryuji themselves end up becoming a sacrifice?

Naboru and Ryuji may both be heading into very disastrous waters in the way in which they have crossed into each others lives.

I think there is the potential for both to either be ultimately saved or destroyed.

[Betty]

Noboru's mother disapproves of the chief but what can she do to prevent the boys' association? Ryuji befriends and entertains Noboru more than guiding the boy.

We will further observe Noboru in the story. Does his nascent moral character give way to the chief's indoctrination?

[lanalang]

Yesterday I finished the first part. At the beginning I thought it was boring, but then I had to think again. Mishima's prose is so graceful and he uses the metaphors so egregious that his descriptive power make you seem to be in Yokohama where, above all, you can see the lights and hear the sounds of the harbour. I'm loving the atmosphere.
Very strong the moment of the cat. What the hell...poor cat! Anyway, I found interesting and fascinating the young chief's attitude. I hope to know more about him and I wonder how the relationship between Naboru and Ryuji is going to evolve, so I think I'm going to finish this reading by tonight. :)

[Betty]

I'll finish it in the next few days. I'm wondering what The Sound of Waves is like? I like this suspenseful story.

[Motheaten]

Asma wrote: "I'll finish it in the next few days. I'm wondering what The Sound of Waves is like? I like this suspenseful story."

The Sound of Waves is probably his simplest book. The writing was good as expected from Mishima, but by the end of the book I was a little bored. A good story is all it is.

[Betty]

I think that you are right, Motheaten, regarding "The Sound of Waves" though I might sometime read it.

"The Sailor..." is okay. It says something profound about group psychology, about postwar adolescents and family life, and about tragic circumstances (those playing out before being understood).