For those of you who haven't heard this shtick yet, I'll repeat, in broad generalities, the basic concepts that inform my Unified Theory of Human Existence. Essentially, it holds that there are really just two competing impulses and ideas that govern all of humanity, there's the, generally female, predilection for Security and the, largely male, desire for Freedom. Take any issue or epoch and you will find that battle lines drew up along these lines. Now, while I, of course, favor the forces of Freedom in this drama, I respect those who favor Security and understand the natural impulses that lead folks to yearn for it.
But, these are only the healthy impulses, there are a couple of other omnipresent ideas and desires that animate human affairs--to dominate and to be dominated--and I do not respect them; they are malignant pathologies afflicting the human body politic. These malevolent motivations arise at both ends of the political spectrum and are best illustrated in the theories of Fascism, on the right, and Communism, on the Left. Despite the perceived antipathy between the two systems, both are in fact based on the desire of some members in society to dominate their neighbors. In the case of Communism, the desire stems from the fear of the naturally unequal distribution of talent and capabilities to humans. Communism seeks to dominate the gifted in order to favor the weak. Fascism, on the other hand, presupposes that a certain group in society has special merit, typically a racial group, and then seeks to dominate that group or even opposing nation, for the benefit of the chosen group.
All of which brings us to Yukio Mishima's novel, The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea, which along with Robert Musil's Young Torless (see Orrin's review), is perhaps the best fictional effort to depict the rise of Fascist tendencies in the individual. Mishima was an extraordinarily troubled fellow. Raised by his domineering grandmother, he determined at an early age that he was a homosexual. He became obsessed with sadomasochism, the body, martial arts, bodybuilding and the fascist militarism of Japan's past. In 1968 he founded the Shield Society, a kind of private Bushido-based army. On November 25, 1970, he tried to inspire a national uprising by taking over a military complex. When this failed miserably, he committed ritual suicide, seppuku.
In Sailor, he tells the story of Noboru, a teenage boy who spends his days roaming around with a gang of vicious boys and his nights hiding in a wardrobe in order to spy on his widowed mother as she has sex with her lover, the sailor Ryuji. As he and the gang become more psychotic (at one point they kill and skin a cat) and his mother and Ryuji announce their plans to marry, Noboru draws up a list of charges against Ryuji. When Noboru is discovered spying and Ryuji decides not to punish him, the boys decide to execute him because he has become "a father."
What precisely is the nature of this crime--being a father--as the boys see it?:
There is no such thing as a good father because the
role itself is bad. Strict fathers, soft fathers,
nice moderate fathers--one's as bad as another.
They stand in the way of our progress while they
try to burden us with their inferiority complexes,
and their unrealized aspirations, and their
resentments, and their ideals, and the weaknesses
they've never told anyone about, and their sins,
and their sweeter-than-honey dreams, and the maxims
they've never had the courage to live
by--they's like to unload all that silly crap on
us, all of it!
Now, I don't know how much of this Mishima intended and how much of it his subconscious spewed forth, but this father hatred is central to understanding his pathologies. In a fundamental sense, morality is a male construct; just as laws and regulations are fundamentally expressions of the female. Legalism presupposes a willingness to yield freedom. Each law and regulation represents another chip struck from the tree of liberty. But when the entire skein of regulation is put in place, those whose central concern is for security can rest easy. Permissible behaviors are strictly delineated and a powerful security state necessarily exists to enforce them. Thus, the boys in Noboru's gang, determine that they must commit a murder now, before they are adults, because the law will essentially allow them to get away with it.
Freedom, on the other hand, requires a rigid personal moral system in order to function. For only if we can be confident that others will be restrained by an internalized understanding of right and wrong will we be willing to grant each other the freedom that we ourselves desire. Fear is the enemy of freedom, morality its ally. The father figure, representing as he does the imposition of internalized moral inhibitions, is a threat to the boys. Ryuji, in refusing to punish the boy, is confident that the lesson can be learned and internalized without external punishment. But it is this very attempt to transmute the boy's values that guarantees the gang's enmity and results in his death sentence.
This is an extremely creepy story. It offers a pretty disturbing
glance into the psyche of a troubled genius and seems likely to remain
the pinnacle of gay, fascist, Japanese literature.
(Reviewed:25-Dec-99)
Grade: (C)
