the sailor who fell from grace with the sea by yukio mishima

saturday aug 4, 2007

i make an appointment to meet a client at klcc. i reach there early so i rush up to kinokuniya on the 4th floor and frantically look for yukio mishima's (his real name being kimitake hiraoka) book, the sailor who fell from grace with the sea.

when jade first suggests it for our book club, i look at the title and it puts me off. what kind of stupid title is that i think. but having a love for books must mean that i take care never to judge a book by its cover, and in this case by its title too. so i leave my thoughts behind.

this is my first encounter with mishima. i start reading the 180 paged book. it takes me less than an hour to finish 110 pages. it is a smooth read. no complications. nothing special. i need to go now. and will come back tomorrow to complete the book.

sunday, aug 5, 2007

i have only half a mind to go back and complete the book. i must mention this. perhaps for some reason if i had not gone back to read it today, it would have been one of my greatest regrets.

i complete the remaining pages in half an hour. what can i really say? i close the book and close my eyes a while. this is conceivably the most disturbing book i have read. i think to myself that the author must be dreadfully warped to end the book like that. so i decide to read about him.

sure enough, now that i have read him, possibly i understand the book better.

i ought to mention that mishima san performed seppuku in 1970 at the age of 45.
after having read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukio_Mishima i think his life is as interesting and depressing as his death.

the book starts with a 13-year-old protagonist, noboru narrating his everyday thoughts. he lives with his widowed mother, fusako. they meet a sailor, ryuji who falls in love with her. so everything seems fine until ryuji decides to give up the sea to embrace a life of love, comfort and security ashore by marrying fusako.

noboru belongs to a clique of 13-year-old boys who consider themselves geniuses and think that the world is hypocritical, empty and meaningless. they are intelligent and act against societal norms. they are disgusted with their fathers, something which surprises me until i read mishima's relationship with his dad. their speeches contain almost shakespearian brilliance despite bordering insanity most of the time.

a sailor giving up the sea is perceived to be one of the worst kind of betrayals by these boys. someone who is full of bravado and masculine glory of searching for the horizon and always leaving women behind is now changing his ideals with inklings of romantic love, home, hearth and comfort. noboru who first idolizes him cannot forgive this deceit. ryuji must somehow remain a pure hero, uncorrupted by sentimentality. noboru must do something desperate to avenge this betrayal and so the boys secretly think of his elimination.

the group has it fatally wrong. this book deals with the cruel and animalistic nature of adolescent boys and their unreasonable thought process. their actions are repulsive and perverse. their obsession with death and their belief that a man can only prove his freedom by killing is totally distorted.

the fact that mishima allows noboru’s beliefs to remain unchallenged, and even to prevail, suggests that this sort of credence reflected his own views. and having read about him, i know it is okay to make that conclusion.

in fact, i can feel mishima's anger and disappointment throughout this book. mishima the man and mishima the author is not much different. having said that, i still think this book should be looked at separately and appreciated for its paradoxes, of beauty equated with violence and death, of passion and careless thoughts, of the yearning to be loved and the freedom away from it, of the ugliness and beauty of life and finally of courage and fear.

the story is elegantly wrought and mishima has distilled it down to its essential elements. it has surprised me with its complexity towards the end because in the beginning it seemed very simple. but slowly i got sucked into his bizarre and glorious (if i may describe as that) world. i will most definitely venture into his other books. since it is simple reading, its great for beginners. and though the theme is pretty disturbing, it does reveal some truths about human nature.

above all, i think it is a nihilistic masterpiece!!