Mishima Against Type: A Review of Forbidden Colors

We had arrived at the park entirely by accident, having attempted to see the Imperial Palace and failed. We had marked down the wrong date on our small blue permit. Instead of going back to the hotel, a Western-style hotel for tourists with a sushi restaurant and Zen garden that were too just-so, we wandered off, away from the way we came, and found the park. A plaque told us, in proud bronze lettering, that this was the first Western-style park in Japan.

We passed a low grey wall and sat on a worn iron bench overlooking the small pond at the heart of the park, in central Tokyo. We took in the view: skyscrapers beyond the trees, a palace roof to the east, elevated trains darting across the city on brick bridges to the west.

In Western parks, we desire to wander as equals, separate but together. There’s a bourgeois spirit in the smooth lawns and paths made for strolling. The Western paths of the park and English plaques could not hide, though, that the park was Japanese. Billowing domes of camphor trees, cloud-pruned black pines, and iris on the shore told the truth: that this old, Western park was a Japanese animal, a lovingly tended languid beast resting in the city center. Small ponds and tenderly laid-out stones, interspersed with statues and small displays, created ebbing nooks and track-back paths for little adventures on a walk. Turtles sunbathed on the rocks below us. The wayfaring spirit of the Western park is wholly unlike anything that existed in Japan before the Meiji Restoration.

The park, called Hibiya, feels like Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C. Like Lafayette, Hibiya doesn’t feel ancient, but old, like a great-grandmother’s cupboard full of dusty Depression Glass, or a radio from 1932, sitting in an antique shop display. And also like Lafayette, Hibiya was once a popular spot for gay cruising, especially in the immediate aftermath of World War Two. As Mishima writes,

As a human banquet at midnight might become in the final act of a Shakespearean play a banquet for ghosts, the bench where lovers from the office casually sit and chat and enjoy the view becomes at night something that can be termed a "First-class Stage." The dark stone stairway which grade-school children on a hike find too steep and must run up so as not to fall behind has its name changed to "Runway for Men." The long road in back of the park has its name changed to "First Sight Road." All are night names. The police knew these names well as part of their jurisdiction which they neglected, since there were no laws by which they might crack down. In London and in Paris, of course, parks serve this purpose as a practical necessity, but it is a sign of some ironic charity that a public place like this, symbol of the principle of majority rule, should benefit such a small number of people. H—— Park has been used as a gathering place for men of this sort since the time of the last emperor, when a part of its area was a military drill field.

Seventy-five years ago Mishima must have prowled this park at night, looking for men, in search of a story. Though the novel omits the name—likely a necessity at the time of publication—I know where he went for this story. A story that Bronze Age Pervert told me to read.

 

Forbidden Colors

In Forbidden Colors (禁色, Kinjiki, 1951; Part II published as 秘楽 or “Secret Pleasure,” Higyō, 1953; translated by Alfred H. Marks, 1968), we follow an old author, Shunsuké, and his young and handsome accomplice, Yuichi, on a journey to take revenge on women. Forbidden Colors has a reputation as a nasty, vicious novel; it is considered a great meditation on cruelty and social life.

Shunsuké is an old writer whose affairs with women have been awful and desperate. Married thrice, he has been cuckolded and blackmailed. He has grown to hate women. In his career as a beloved author, he has sought to bring others low, to make them feel that love, but also thought and feeling, are not real. He nurses a burning, but patient, resentment against the world. In the novel, he is symbolically represented as a forest fire, festering on the horizon, lapping at the edges of life like a hungry dog.

One day, his latest lover, the alluring 19-year-old Yasuko, runs away from him. Bored with life and unable to help himself, he chases her down to a seaside resort. After arriving, he tracks her down to a beach, where he stumbles upon a beautiful young man, Yuichi, emerging from the blue water. Through troubled family business arrangements, Yuichi happens to be Yasuko’s fiancé. He has wolf-like features, rosy cheeks, and soft-boyish lips. He captivates men and women. Not one flaw mars his face in a world where one beautiful feature can compensate for a face of flaws.

Shortly after their meeting, Shunsuké discovers Yuichi’s engagement to Yasuko, and they spend an awkward evening at dinner. Late that night, escaping from Yasuko, Yuichi comes to Shunsuké’s room and confesses that he has no desire for women. Yasuko says that he can only love boys (the Marks translation uses “boys” rather than “men,” and many of the gay lovers in this novel are young). Shunsuké is not shocked. He is thrilled. He sees in that moment a terrible opportunity: the chance to use Yuichi to take vengeance upon women. Shunsuké is ugly, even unlovable by women; Yuichi is irresistible to women, though he could never love them. He is an exquisite weapon. Shunsuké aims to use Yuichi’s beauty to lure his own ex-lovers into Yuichi’s arms, and to have Yuichi then deny them, to torture them with anxious love, as he himself has been tortured.

Shunsuké lends Yuichi money for his family debts, securing Yuichi’s service as his weapon of sexual vengeance. He then sets Yuichi on the people who have hurt him the most recently, while encouraging Yuichi to marry Yasuko, regardless of his homosexuality. After all, as Shunsuké says, marriage is naturally loveless, even sexless—so to marry without love is rather normal. Assured by Shunsuké, who is quickly becoming a mentor, Yuichi marries Yasuko and begins to seduce his targets: the refined Mrs. Kaburagi and her husband, Count Kaburagi; and the flighty, thoughtless Kyoko.

Forbidden Colors is a tightly written drama rendered in a painterly, fierce hand. The characters are complex and human, and the novel has much more to say across its 400 pages. While much of the novel has to do with homosexuality, there is not one graphic moment. The novel is not intent on scandal. It is a wonderful novel about social life that depicts cruelty without apology: certain elements of the novel, such as a planned rape, the age of Yuichi’s lovers, and what more liberal readers would interpret as misogynistic, or even homophobic, content would likely get the novel “canceled” today. Beyond this, though, the homosexual society Mishima is writing about largely no longer exists. The social acceptance of homosexuality has largely destroyed the world he immersed himself in for the novel, though, as any late-night visit to Hibiya will show you, some of it remains: but not the high society, only the bathroom hook-ups. It is a window into a dead past; therefore instructional, as it gives you the chance to understand how one once could navigate society, romance, and friendship.

Spoilers follow. Though I doubt most readers will go through this book. It’s a rather long romantic drama. So what does it have to say to us?

On Love Despite

Though Yuichi is sexually attracted to men, he comes to love—neither fully platonically nor romantically—both Mrs. Kaburagi and his wife, Yasuko. This feeling first surfaces for Yuichi after Mrs. Kaburagi discovers her husband and Yuichi in an intimate moment in her own home. She is shocked to realize the Count, like Yuichi, is a homosexual. Upon seeing this, she flees to Kyoto. In Kyoto, she sends Yuichi a letter promising him freedom with her. Yuichi, suffering under the triple life of daytime family man, nighttime homosexual, and sometimes seducer, for a moment desires to escape with her. Shunsuké convinces him to stay, insisting that Yuichi already knows the fleeting nature of this love in the face of his true sexual desires. He stays. He knows Shunsuké is correct, but he maintains a soft spot for Mrs. Kaburagi, as she did not fully reject him, even after discovering his sexuality, and because her loyalty satisfies his enormous ego.

Yuichi learns soon after that Yasuko is pregnant. She confesses to him that she’s hoping this child binds him to her. Stricken with guilt and fearing commitment, he considers an abortion to free Yasuko from him. As before, he meets with Shunsuké, who convinces him to keep on the path. Yuichi and Shunsuké relationship increasingly takes on the form of a dare, with Shunsuké even goading Yuichi to stay in the delivery room (quite shocking in Japan in the 50’s) through the birth. The fire roars on the edge of the forest.

He does so, and yet, upon seeing his child born, a girl they name Keiko, he accepts that some part of him does love Yasuko. Though he married her intending lovelessness, and stayed through the delivery intent on unfeeling observation, he comes to love her. Their marriage cannot be called a fraud, as it has genuine moments of tenderness and romantic beauty. As the novel progresses, we enjoy Yuichi’s increasingly dramatic attempts to conceal his sexual desires, which confirm his deep care for Yasuko and her sensibilities. He cares enough to lie and maintain the social pretense of heterosexual happiness. He even enlists Mrs. Kaburagi in his pretense of heterosexual attraction, in an effort to comfort Yasuko and his aging mother after a particularly awful moment of exposure.

After this, Yuichi arrives at Shunsuké’s home, aiming to return the money. He has decided to end his relationship with Shunsuké, realizing after Mrs. Kaburagi’s aid and his own efforts to protect Yasuko that Shunsuké is wrong. Yuichi arrives, and over a slow evening of chess and drinking and chatting about literature, Shunsuké lectures Yuichi on the artistic meaning of death, which he considers the only way to complete the work of art he has made of life. Yuichi cannot find a moment to repay him. Shunsuké then disappears into another room, and when Yuichi searches for him, he finds Shunsuké dead, next to a note telling him to look in his desk. There, Yuichi finds ten million yen. Shunsuké’s suicide deprives Yuichi of total victory, preserving Shunsuké’s artistic integrity before what would have been defeat (make of this what you will in light of Mishima’s death).

Despite Yuichi’s failure to fully throw off Shunsuké’s yoke, his victory remains. Shunsuké did not realize that Yuichi could find freedom, happiness, and love that Shunsuké could never find. Shunsuké’s use of Yuichi as a weapon of vengeance affirms less that there is no love in the world than that Shunsuké was simply incapable of love. His revenge against Kyoko—completed in the most vicious way—is always undercut by his inability to take vengeance upon Mrs. Kaburagi, who wins herself a true place in Yuichi’s heart, but never wins his body. She learns that to possess the former, she must renounce the latter. This is a dark mirror held up to Shunsuké, who saw only her body and never her soul. While a loveless, sexless marriage may sound cruel, Mishima insists that Mrs. Kaburagi and the Count become more comfortable with each other and enjoy more fully the things they share love for; and though Yasuko is horrified to learn of her husband’s true feelings, she continues to play the role of wife, realizing that, beneath his absence of sexual desire, there is a true love.

Translated as “Forbidden Colors,” the Japanese title, 禁色 or kinjiki, refers to the eighth-century system of the Ritsuryō code: dress colors were restricted to specific courtly and royal ranks. The second character, 色, also refers to erotic love. Shunsuké is forbidden beauty, so he uses Yuichi as his puppet, yet grows to desire him. In turn, Yuichi cannot claim conventional love, yet wears Yasuko—and Mrs. Kaburagi—as wife and lover. Each seeks to transcend their status and claim what they cannot have. Erotic desire drives them, in vengeance, love, and business. They find happiness and love only to the extent they can reconcile desire with possession, which often challenges desire itself.

Mishima is just as attuned to the society that flows from the Western park as he is to courtly history. In fact, Mishima is aware that despite the egalitarian landscaping of the Western park, stratification always returns at night. Just as high society may aspire to bourgeois egalitarianism, beauty always returns to dominate. Not one billionaire would enter a room and declare himself better than all others there; but a beautiful person enters, and everyone knows they are better. The political power of beauty is that it always reveals that inequality is fundamental to nature, as it is to culture. Yuichi’s victory is not because he is a good person, but because he is beautiful. Because he is beautiful, he can succeed where Shunsuké could not.

Like Oil and Watercolor

Beautiful things always intimidate me, Shunsuké thought. More than that, sometimes they drag me down. How can that be? Is it a superstition that beauty elevates mankind?

On a deeper reading, a great concern of the novel, less a secondary theme than an insistent argument, is that love and marriage; beauty and youth, or beauty and being uplifted, or beauty and originality; sex and romance; man and woman; art and life are wholly disconnected. Convention dictates, for example, that marriage is loving and that men love women; Mishima aims to show that these are independent things, like colors on an artist’s refreshed palette, unmixed without the brushstrokes of life.

The two strolled about for a time, side by side through the crowds. "You don't like youth, do you?" Yuichi came out with this suddenly. They were words Shunsuké had not anticipated. "What do you mean?" he said, affronted. "If I don't like youth, how did I ever beat my old bones into coming down here?" "Just the same, you don't like youth." Yuichi said it again with finality. "Youth that is not beautiful. 'Beautiful youth' is an annoying twist of phrase. My youth was ugly. That's something you can't imagine. I spent my youth wishing to be born again."

Though they may mix—men may love women, as Yuichi comes to love Yasuko and Mrs. Kaburagi—this love isn’t assured by social convention, but is hard-won, and never so simply given. This idea is initially cruelly explained by Shunsuké, who sees in the separateness of these things their absence (insisting to Yuichi that a loveless, sexless marriage is simply the way of things). Yuichi, who becomes an adept painter of these colors under Shunsuké’s tutelage, comes to far outdo his master and find in a loveless, sexless marriage: love; and in his absence of loving women, love for women.

Mishima’s Forbidden Colors is often considered a vicious work; I found the novel tender and tame. The novel is considered cruel because it is unsparingly honest. While Shunsuké’s insistence that marriage is loveless is rather extreme, many marriages are! I have seen more loveless marriages than loving; and those which are loving nest cruelty like straw for duck eggs. Mishima is giving you the freedom to live with that fact, rather than run from it. In the end, Yasuko no longer loves Yuichi romantically; yet there is still love between them. Even if evoked through dark deceptions, if half-honest and given unwillingly, if burdened and hard-won, there is a baby laughing! There is still a marriage. There is more life. The humane reading of the novel is that Mishima offers us, through unsparing depiction, the ability to live freer and more beautiful lives if we accept that our conventions are courtly and contrived, rather than absolute and unforgiving. He is not inviting readers to take vengeance upon women, but to cease avenging themselves: to live well in one’s station; or to rise above, by virtue of unconquerable beauty. Both are superior to living poorly, or living low, when one could live better.

Mishima’s lesson to the reader is that living an artful life doesn’t necessitate living a cruel one. When we think of an artful life, we may think of a person who coldly does as they desire, rejecting closeness and trust for purity, clinging to beauty at the expense of love, but in Forbidden Colors Mishima insists that the artful life is the opposite. An artful life is one in which convention becomes a tool, rather than a restriction to be studiously obeyed or wholly ignored. In the separateness of such fundamental things as love and sex, men and women, marriage and happiness, there is opportunity for a triumphant, creative life. Mishima’s desire is that we paint with these colors, more honestly, more freely, to live in love with them as they are, in their full embrace, even if this comes at the absurd cost of a sexless love or loveless sex. Just as Yuichi found love despite Shunsuké’s cruelty, we can find love, regardless of what cruel truths life holds for us.

fin

At Hibiya Park, there is a pub, which serves a rare white beer. Go if you ever can.