Yukio Mishima, Japanese author, is undaunted and audacious when it comes to writing plotlines in the novel The Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea. There are scenes that may seem odd and disturbing to Western readers who read his novel for the first time. But when one decides to take a closer look at his unique writing style, the passages that once seemed repulsive to some suddenly turn beautiful. Mishima writes in the very beginning of his novel, “I could defeat ugliness” (Mishima 9). The term ‘ugly’ in this work refers to the state of not having glory and honor.
After examining and analyzing the entirety of the novel, it is evident that through Mishima’s rich use of imagery, personification, motifs and symbolism, he is able to demonstrate that death is a beautiful glorifying process, which guides the males in the novel to find the “Grand Cause” (180). The “Grand Cause” in the novel is portrayed as the search for glory; Mishima has his characters believe that ultimate prestige and veneration is found within death. Many Japanese people worship kami, spirits of nature that reside in physical bodies that serve as examples of what humans should act like.
Among these spirits, Japanese heroes are often found. In the novel, adolescent boys murder a cat. The boys are stripping the cat’s physical body to extract its spirit. To emphasize the act of obtaining glory, Mishima uses a great deal of color imagery, specifically the color white, to give reason as to why the boys want the life from the cat. White symbolizes purity, the freedom from adulteration and immortality, and therefore death. Purity in this passage plays the role of beauty. Mishima writes that beneath the surface of the dead cat was a “glossy-white inner life” (59). The boys and the dead cat “became perfectly at one” (59).
This shows that the spirit of the cat is now with the boys, and they secured glory. It is important to note that Mishima suggests that the cat obtained glory as well, by using the color purple to display further imagery. After the kitten dies, his pupils are described as “purple flecked with white” (60). In Japanese literature, purple represents wealth and privilege. The color imagery painted by Mishima indicates that the cat is now glorified. Now that the cat has acquired purity and beauty, it is now wealthy, a status that according to the human condition all living beings long for.
After Noboru killed the cat, the boy dreams of receiving a “snow-white certificate of merit” (61). Snow white is the purest, brightest shade of white. It is interesting that Mishima chose these words so to express to the reader how prideful Noboru is feeling. By killing the cat, Noboru obtained honor and respect (hence the merit). It is evident in this event that the boys are being deprived of their morals in order to seem more divine, because they are killing the cat to feel more powerful. The reiteration of white color imagery is emphasized because it stresses that white illustrates beauty.
The death of the cat earned Noboru, his friends, and the cat itself, glory. But Mishima’s choices of using color imagery made the writing of the process of death seem beautiful. Noboru, Chief and the rest of the young boys are not the only characters that Mishima shows to be divine. In the novel, Ryuji is trying to cope with his internal conflict of finding glory as a sailor, or finding love as a husband. The story ends with Ryuji dying in order to find glory. During his death, Mishima portrays him as a preeminent god by creating a dark powerful setting to compliment his character.
Gods are connected to the concepts of weather and human emotions, and are often considered the strongest forces to exist. During Ryuji’s death, the sea is described as possessing “the dark passions of the tides, the shriek of a tidal wave” (179). Here the tides are being personified, because they have dark passions and they shriek out to Ryuji, warning him of his upcoming death. It’s as if Ryuji and the tides are connected; thus Ryuji gains the sea’s passions, powerful shrieks and godly power to become ‘larger than life.
The personified sea is calling for Ryuji in such a decorated way (due to the imagery and diction) that it is completely dismissing the idea of ending Ryuji’s life. Mishima is telling the reader that Ryuji is having a beautiful death, and the beauty is the only aspect that truly matters to achieve and reach the “Grand Cause. ” Mishima writes, “in the depths of the world’s darkness was a point of light which had been provided for him alone and would draw near someday to irradiate him and no other” (180). Mishima is using direct imagery to literally “shine a light” on Ryuji, casting him as the glowing, honorary man in the blackness.
Ryuji is a very ordinary man who spends much of his time chasing after glory rather than living his life in the moment; hence when he dies, Mishima indicates that an ordinary man is just as beautiful as a god, and thus he ultimately transforms the banal into beautiful. Ryuji, constantly searching for glory, finds himself being rejected by it and “perilous death” (180) at the end of the novel. Reflecting on his life, Ryuji almost hears the “call of the Grand Cause” which Mishima writes is another name for “the tropical sun” (180).
The Mishima is using motifs and literary symbols from earlier on in the novel with the death of the cat to highlight this. In the cat scene, the heart is described as a “little sun” (61). The heart is the powerhouse of animals, which pumps blood to generate other parts of the body. The cat’s heart is a symbolized by the motif of the sun. The sun is a very prominent symbol in Japan. The country is known as the ‘land of the rising sun’ because of Japan’s location in the world. The sun is also the main feature on Japan’s flag. These concepts display Japan’s desire to be a glorified nation.
Comparing the heart to a sun in the cat scene shows the glory in the cat that Noboru and the boys were trying to obtain. During Ryuji’s death, the sun is rising and blaring across the sky. Glory is shining in Ryuji’s eyes, as he is dying, and as he hears the brass trumpet, another motif. The brass trumpet is mentioned previously in the novel as a horn. Ryuji can only obtain glory when he is a sailor, not when he’s married to a woman. When Ryuji kisses Fusako, “he could feel the horn probing deep inside him, rousing his passion for the Grand Cause” (77).
This suggests that Ryuji is always longing to find glory. When he is asked why he never married, Ryuji wants to say that he is waiting for the moment that “a limpid, lonely horn” will “trumpet through the dawn someday” and a “poignant voice of glory will call” for him from the distance (38). This is clear foreshadowing to Ryuji’s death. When Ryuji dies, the “tropical sun” is “blaring across the sky like the call of a brass trumpet” (181).
The horn is a calling for Ryuji that encourages him to continue search for the “Grand Cause. Ryuji is following the call of the trumpet towards the sun, towards glory. Mishima is saying that there is beauty in the heart of life, the tropical sun and the brass trumpet, which is a calming yet powerful sound the reader can just imagine hearing. The symbolic motifs of the sun and horn, intertwined with imagery, emphasize the fact that the search for glory leads to death, rather than actually obtaining glory. Mishima is using imagery, personification, motifs and symbolism to express to the reader the process of dying.
Throughout the book, death is seen as a “Grand Cause,” an embodiment of glory and beauty. To defeat ugliness, Mishima’s characters believe they must die, or kill someone else to obtain the glory found in death like the boys did with the cat. However, Mishima defeats ugliness not by making his characters reach eternal rest, but by painting a beautiful image to the reader in the process. He glorifies the concepts of violence and banality with his diction and imagery. This way, not only do the characters win beauty, but the reader does as well.