Herself

by Hortense Calisher

  Often, even if we refuse the psychiatric labels, we will attach the sociological or literary ones; we tend to think of writers outside the western framework, if not as “simples” or “originals” then as the primitive genii of other anthropologies or thought-systems which attract us for their qualitative difference—as Buddhism does the solid Madison Avenue matron or the floating intellectual—rather than for their intelligence. In dealing with Sun and Steel, as with all Mishima’s work, one is encountering a mind of the utmost subtlety, broadly educated, in whose novels for instance, the range may even appear terrifying or cynical, to those who demand of a writer steadily apparent, or even monolithically built views. These are there, indeed touchable at every point in his work, but the variation of surface, and seeming reversals of heart or statement, sometimes obscure this. And the Western split may have done it, in his work as in his life. So that, as he foresaw, his death better explains both. Leaving us to review the explanation.

  Mishima’s Western scholarship is very touching, all the more for the possibility that as he rejected words for body, dead literature for live action, or tried to bring the two down to the “average” coherence, he was also denying the Western impurities that had early ensnared him. For everywhere, his references to our literature, our martyrs, are hallowed, reverent to what he borrows or admires, and sometimes as oldfashioned as our own youth. (When since, have I heard mention of Amiel or seen a modern writer lean on him?) He takes our classics as seriously as we did once, as a matter for life and death. And death he does illuminate and widen for us, but—in a paradox he might well have anticipated—only when he takes his own unique path of experience and learning, not ours. For though he makes analogues with the martyrs of a Christianized West, in the end, the once-proud grail of Western existence, addled and dusty as this has come to be, eludes him. What does not occur to him is that the sought death may be as artificial as imagination, against the sought life.

  Still, he is telling us that death is one of life’s satisfactions. We may not be able to believe it, or may wish that death had not so enhanced itself for him. But he tells us how he came to this pass, with a sanity that ought to be exquisite enough for our own. And crosses cultures to do it, to tell us how a man bent on seppuku might come to it by way of St. Sebastian.

  Can Westerners understand such a death as easily as they understand dying like a pricked gray flab in a hospital? Or accept the artist who tosses his life in the balance, as easily as they do those who jerk to the very end of the galvanizing money-string, or distil their life-knowledge only in teaspoonsful of ipecac for the applause of a liverish coterie? Mishima is explaining his life and death in admirable style, in words that hold their breath, so that the meaning may breathe. In a low voice just short of the humble. On the highest terms of that arrogance which decrees him the right to. Our souls may not be cognate, but he makes us feel again what it is to have one. And understand the persuasion of his. If he had been otherwise in his youth—a porter, a woman, a dancer—the tower of his symbols might have built another way. But to ask him to break out of the mystic cage of his logic is like asking it of Thomas a Kempis or Augustine, or to be a Catholic praying for the conversion of the Jews. What he is telling us is that he is a priori this kind of man, and that insofar as we cannot break out of the cage of our bones, so are we. Here is not a man with an opinion; he is telling us how he was made. To paraphrase him in words not his, or with muscles not his, is to try to build a china pagoda with a peck of nails. Sun and Steel’s power is that it is a book one must experience step by step, led as if by a monk, or by a great film-master, from inner tissue to outer and back again, along his way. It is not necessary to accept that way. But only the frivolous will not empathize with what is going on here; this is a being for whom life—and death too—must be exigent And were.

  Thursday Morning—in the Kaneiwaro Dekkan, Kyoto

  A J. hotel which I can recommend to anybody as charming, clean, exactly as in the best movies with Marlon Brando—and that I wish I were out of. The JNR—little did I know—but I am ahead of my story, though scarcely strong enough to pen it.

  Waseda, on Tuesday, was a success. Beautiful private U., rather like Stanford in status I should say, founded by Baron Okuma some 60 yrs ago. Rolling, usual garden which-we looked at through fine rain. Professor Tatsunoguchi, fat version of yesterday’s professor (as to ego—much fatter) translator of Twain, etc., etc. Also had interpreter. They were very dubious about the question-and-answer or seminar method—I finally suggested we ask the students to write their q’s thus evading the horrid necessity of their standing up. This we did—the interpreter rapidly translating both my prefatory remarks, and later, the interchange. As a matter of fact I was a howling success.

  I began by referring complimentarily to the J. writers I had been reading—this, the compliment, one must do here, even more than the usual politeness, and even if one believes it! Told them I did not lecture, that I was interested in the past—as all writers are, but not as a scholar—this is the line that divides the writer and the scholar. Paid a passing compliment to scholars, of course. But the writer’s time was, now—he cd not wait for the respectability of being dead. And since the students’ time was also “now,” I hoped we cd talk together. We wd do this as it was done in America—explained process etc. They did ask all sorts of questions—“Why can I get no knowledge of Am. local customs and dress from reading Faulkner”—explained that it was an imaginative world—that they wd not find their favorite Faulkner and Erskine Caldwell a trustworthy guide to a tour of the average street, even in the South. They asked what we thought of new Rus. lit.—I explained that we didn’t know much of it, told Pat’s synopsis of their state-approved novels, “Boy meets Girl, B. meets tractor, B. gets tractor.” Interpreter asked, puzzled what was a tractor—when I spread my arms and said—“a great big farm machine”—they rocked. A good many serious questions which I answered so. Found myself declaiming, in answer to q.: “What do you feel is the function of place, if there is a place, for literature in today’s scientific world?” Answer—“To reinterpret humanity to science.” This, I was told later, went over big—one forgets that Hiroshima is always in their minds. And so on—anyway I was glad to have “vindicated” the Amer. method to some extent.

  Then that evening, off for Kyoto by rail—pure hell, though funny. Found out later, had 2nd-class tickets—1st class almost imposs. to get. Had a lower in a 4 berth watchamacallit. Airless, the sheets perfumed. Three Jap. gents in other berths. Kimono and slippers come with each berth—I lay rigid, telling myself not to be Western. Compromised by stripping to underwear, which meant I had to close curtains. My downfall therefore on my own head. Fan going above, but even with curtains ajar in the dark—awful. No chance of going to john as a persistent stream of gents all night, and one who was apparently perishing of tuberculosis or senile bronchitis, spent the night there. In morning, the gentlemen stand about reflectively in underwear, in aisles and berths, anywhere, leisurely tying their ties, donning their trous. I saw no women—all at home apparently, where I should have been.

  Met by John Reinhardt of the Cultural Center, extremely nice as is his wife—just out of Manila post. Says Mrs. Nakpil is brilliant, shd meet. Doesn’t think much of B. Santos’s writing. Says all those boys have a knack for getting “Rockefeller grants, grants of all kinds. Mrs. N. and Nick Joaquin prob. the best writers, not N. V. M. Gonzalez. Had a Western shower and breakfast, then off to this hotel, where they understood my statement that I wished to nap, not eat, for a “Bath”—so I had it. Terrible solecism, soaped in it, not yet knowing. No one saw—but they will know. Discovered that the dreadful sickly-sweet smell, which I had shed at once in Reinhardt’s, by taking off everything but my convenient sack dress, had returned after the shower. Of course, it is the soap, all the cleaning stuff—and inescapable. I wish I had not such a sharp nose. (N.B.—Can an action, like soaping, be a solecism—no, but I am too humidity bloated to find words. Hands, eyes, e
tc., are puffed. Oh me—and Manila and Bangkok are to be worse??)

  Had tempura lunch, attended by giggling wife of hotel-owner. Wiggled chopsticks, drank the sauce the tempura should have been dawdled in, giggled and pantomimed too, and managed by placing my hand horizontally at the top of my gullet to say I had had enough just at the crucial moment when the course next in line was revealed to be apparently a section of flying fish with the wing still bravely aloft. Pity of it is that if were not feeling effects of heat cd have done well—have feeling cd perfectly well eat that fish if it were a cold crisp day, the air nothing but Air.

  Then off to sightsee with Hamada, R’s assistant—told me he had been “nowhere except Siberia as a R. prisoner.” (When, in complimenting him on his Eng., I asked if he had been to States.) Saw a few shrines—like pictures of them, that is all I can say. Nijo Castle is however beautiful. Has the “Nightingale floor”—built to give off squeaks, so the shogun might hear anyone coming to murder him—many enormous empty rooms matted as usual, but with sliding panels of lions and tigers (imaginary since Japan has none), beautiful floating panels of trees, painted by court painters. “Paintings on gold-foil screens are attributed to Kano Tanyu and his school. Brass plates in oblong, and other fancy shapes on crossbars and upper parts of pillars etc. have hammered work on intricate tracery, decorative but also serve as cover for nails and jointures-beneath.” Was particularly interested in side panels in corridors, some where ceiling joined side wall, others on south wall. Beautiful abstracts—waves, nebula-flocked squares, large and small, an gold and white, waves indicated by white. Might be in the Modern museum, and wd outshine much of the current Whitney. Then to dinner with the R.’s, wonderful Kobe beef. (Cows are massaged daily, and fed beer.) This morning go to “Detached Palace,” and Osaka for lecture. I wonder if I can take it??

  Friday—Sept. 19,1958—Kaneiwaro Dekkan, Kyoto

  Well, I lasted and handsomely, thanks to the weather, which took an enormous turn to the cool—result of a typhoon which flooded parts of Tokyo, but not here. Today is hot again, but at least I can now remember there is another world outside the billowy cotton one in which I float in humid weather. Realize too, how ill I had been feeling. Went off bright and early with a Miss Suzuki assigned me, and wandered thru the Katsura Palace, formerly the seat of the shogun, or of the Takagawas (sp)—they all are one or the other, or the same. As is J. architecture—if one makes a virtue of space, ricepaper panels and some paintings, how can it be otherwise? Very lovely frame for the outdoors—which it is meant to be—I liked specially the principal room for moon-viewing, where the frame between the panels encloses the outdoor picture meant to be seen. The gardens, all shrubs of course and no flowers, wander with intent from one summer-house to the other, different names, different seasons for each house. At one point there was an artificial seaside-shore of smooth black stones—the feudal court could “go to the sea-shore”” or picnic in the country, or have tea at a spot of another character, all as if it were traveling, actually within the bounds of the palace gardens. Is this not the fantasy of a nation crowded on a small island and making the best of it? This suggested by Miss S.’s remark that she wd like to go to America, J. being so crowded. (So many want to—girl in Imperial who handles theater ticket desk, asked wistfully if I was a professor, and spoke of her wish, etc.) In our wanderings we followed a J. group of sightseers, as always very respectful, attentive to what is being seen. Apparently one cd not go unaccompanied—nor did they expect it, or wander an inch from the prescribed path, although I should have liked to, in fact to have spent a day by one of the lily ponds or squatting on my haunches in the moon-room—but alone.

  Thence to Osaka, the Milan of Japan, by fast suburban train, Mr. Hamada, escorting me to station. Many formal good-bye’s—some talk on the status of J. women. His wife is a designer—school of dressmaking. He says they are “modern” and she exercises judgment in the house. He has bought a Western-style home vacated by Army, but has added one J. room.

  Osaka ACC was a surprise in comp. to Kyoto, which is small, with ragged, somewhat untidy look of the Civic Center, whatever was it called, that I visited in one of the British New Towns—Harlow. Osaka’s in a modern office building, and the offices themselves very extensive, a film room, etc., might be any place on Madison Ave. Met by Mr. Osada, graduate of U. of Washington as is his colleague Mr. Kitamura—a former newspaperman, as he quickly informed me. They are so quick to give themselves status. He did have rather a more informal manner than any Japanese I had yet met. Was unable to get more than a faint smile from Osada at any time, although I imagined here and there that he “appreciated” a sally or so. He said the English-Speaking Society to which I was to talk, was too well grounded in English for me to need an interpreter—seemed to be a matter of pride, so I let it be. (At the moment I am typing this the maid has come in to serve luncheon—now there are 4 of them—apparently they have never seen a typewriter close up—I am typing this in the center of a nosegay of kimonos.)

  Saturday, Sept. 20th, ’58—Grand Hotel, Kobe

  My yesterday’s talk to the Osaka Society had seemed to have gone quite well—they did know English better, many of them. Asked questions. Always one is asked about Poe. One lady asked about the change in Hemingway from early bks to Old Man of Sea (change in philosophy) when I told her I thought his ethic had always been the same—man’s virility against nature, etc., etc., she seemed puzzled—not by what I said, but that I should not universally admire and be in accord with reputation. If a writer, or anybody, has attained prestige, one accepts that and does not judge. Then a young man asked a long socio-political question in two parts—the 1st purporting that writers cd not write what they thought politically in America—was it not so?—2nd—wasn’t that the reason Henry Miller was persecuted in America? Said “I am happy to tell you that is not so.” A laugh when I said Miller’s trouble was due “to pornography.” Yng man said “I mean Henry Miller who has married Marilyn Monroe.” But all seemed well at time, ending amicably. Reporter from Mainichi came up, asked me apologetically what he called either an impohtent, an impehtinent, or an impuhdent question—which I hope I answered clearly.

  Later Osada and a Dr. Suzuki (medical doctor who—status again—was quick to tell me that she had just attended some big International Christian Med. Conference) took me to dinner at a tempura restaurant. This very diff from temp. I had had in hotel. Beautifully styled little place, every detail in order, in a posed and lyric order. We sat first at a table and had the excellent J. beer, with hors d’oeuvres, all good. I found I could use chopsticks—once one learns the rhythm it isn’t hard. Then we went to counter and sat while the counterman fried us delicacies, a single one at a time, in a great conical vat of oil just beneath the counter. Each tidbit was then placed with tongs, on a napkin in front of us—a peeled fried chestnut sprinkled with sesame seed—beautiful and good—a small oblong of fried bread, a shrimp with its tail, ditto, a quail’s egg. I was greedy—had two, on the principle that quail’s eggs are scarce in my life. Wd not have known it was an egg, had I not been told. Then shrimp and rice, which I ate ignoring sticks. They do not seem to end meal with tea here—what tea I’ve had is pale yellow, not much aroma—no connection with good China tea.

  Thence, by prior arrangement (they “consult one’s wishes”) we went to the puppet theater. This, the antecedent of Kabuki, can be seen only in Osaka, or the general region, I was told. Since it requires 3 men to a puppet it is very expensive, thus a dying art, Osada said. We went behind stage first, saw the puppeteers—one of them made a doll work for me, shake hands, weep, etc. It made me feel like a child being taken on an extraordinary treat. As it was, we saw only the last act. Samisen player a noted one—a commentary kind of music it is. The second actor, a declaimer, narrator, singer—all in one. I had heard D. do something similar from a Nō—it is very entrancing to listen to, and the puppets gliding along with two men in black, conical hats and all, and master-puppeteer, in full view
, garbed grandly in white with spread collar—had a ballet fascination that probably grows with watching. We had too little time. Took the train back to K., found the hotel without trouble, and so to bed. And then at breakfast the next morning, pick up the Mainichi and read the attached clip, “Calisher Repudiates Present US Writers.” Wrote letter of protest, which Mr. Baskin in Kobe is going to show the Mainichi. Baskin said he knows the reporter, who has a chip on his shoulder—remarks were deliberately twisted. Ah well.

  Meanwhile in Kobe, that afternoon (9/19) met the small group—all professors, who came in one by one to meet me and talk haltingly. A Mr. Pehda, former Fulbright who has stayed on, returning to States and here again (when Americans fall for J. they get it bad) was very very helpful. Great interest as always in our homosexual writers—Capote, etc. Asked me if they were a group—I explained. The brightest prof., whom I liked, said that the chief difficulty that J. had in understanding our literature was caused by the fact that the Japanese are without a sense of original sin. I told Prof. Sanno that this was the most interesting thing I had heard in J.—which I think it so far is—perhaps this is responsible for the continuous western complaint that J’nese have no “reaction” or no “emotion”—which we confuse with all the variations of guilt etc.