Reviews

As in Spring Snow, at the core this is an intimate study of pure passion, this time not love but that inspired by an ideal.

The novel develops three main narrative strands: how Honda's (the friend of Kiyoaki Matsugae, the main male protagonist of [b:Spring Snow|62793|Spring Snow|Yukio Mishima|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1360239609s/62793.jpg|2295485]) rational and perhaps cynical view of the world wobbles when startled by an unexpected and shattering event, meeting what may be Kiyoaki's reincarnation; the state of Japan's society and political landscape in the 30s; and the personal story of Isao Inuma, burning with passion for the Emperor and the true Japanese spirit.

Honda runs into Isao by chance at a religious ceremony: he is the son of Kiyoaki former tutor, conceived about the time of Kiyoaki's death. Where Kiyoaki was languid and nonathletic, Isao is steely and determined, fired up by his idea of purity of mind. In young Isao Inuma's world, giving yourself totally to an ideal cannot be disentangled by the ultimate sacrifice, taking your own life and offering it to the altar of the object of your love (in this case, the Emperor). He has been influenced by readings of past insurrections (most notably the Shimpūren Rebellion which celebrates seppuku as the purest means a man has to show he is a man.

Honda is more and more taken by Isao, and troubled by his own doubts that he could be Kiyoaki reborn, and his doubts take him to a reassessment of his own life and beliefs. On the other hand, Isao is a young man on the brink of maturity with an immature but very set view of how a real men should conduct himself for Emperor and country. In the background, Japan is a country in turmoil, where a deep economic crisis and a selfish political and economic elite feed resentment and anger. As a stereotypical angry young man, Isao grows more and more angry and determined to act since, citing Wang Yangmin's words, "To know and not to act is not yet to know."

Various characters act in the story to provide more perspective to what would be otherwise Isao's plain fanaticism: there is Isao's father mix of pride and jealousy and Honda's constant harking back to rationality and hard facts. Other characters have a more ambiguous relationship with Isao, which appears at least in part manipulative: Makiko, Liutenant Hori and Prince Toin, and Sawa. Whatever their real objectives, none of them seem to manage to achieve them eventually, and Isao's dogged purity comes out even brighter. It is no longer the enthusiastic and somewhat childish, blind purity of the uninitiated, but the purity of somebody who now knows what (dis)illusion is, who has experienced his own downfall and seen his ambitions crushed. There is nothing of the romanticism that Isao read about in "The league of the Divine Wind" - no rising sun or moonlit woods nor fresh breeze bringing the perfume of the pines, just the loneliness and the determination that raise the act to its utmost level. At least, this is how I read it, and knowing about Mishima's own life makes this reading all the more unsettling.

A chilling message I disagree with, yet a beautiful book.