Why do men dream so fondly of glory worth dying for? Why do boys yearn to face risk, danger, adventure worth killing for?
In Yukio Mishima's short novel The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea, these questions and more are subtly raised, yet thoroughly turned over; like an almost-solved Rubik's cube, they come frustratingly close to completion while never reaching a perfect answer. The linear plot is for the most part, and by all appearances, rather mundane. It is in the richness of the characters' inner worlds that the story truly twists and turns, as each character flows so close to their true wants and desires, only to ebb maddeningly, violently away. Their beliefs are laid out bare for the reader to examine and are presented abstractly. Despite the resolute faith each character holds in the rightness of their view on the world, new and unexpected elements rise up to thrust these views into disarray. The reader watches circumstance and relationships test these beliefs and the characters' faiths crumble as they grapple with the incompleteness of the truths to which they cling. I hope to explore these themes as presented in the blossoming relationship between Ryuji and Fusako, yet one character deserves closer and more careful inspection: Noboru. In him, we see a quality often found in children, one that both paradoxically preserves their innocence while precipitating their potential for corruption: the dogmatic, whole hearted belief that their limited view of the world is the only one. Noboru's beliefs were challenged arguably more relentlessly than anyone's, and his twisted sense of childlike idealism had him cling to his faith tighter than anyone. We are not permitted to see the very moment his beliefs drowned him, only his descent towards the abyss.
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I actually had my good friend Yohaan suggest we do this book as part of a nascent book club we started last year. The first entry was L'Étranger, a callback to our high school days where we had to study the brief novel for HL IB English. Looking back, it's a very interesting thematic throughline between those two books. Two men, misunderstood by the world around them and face condemnation, yet at the same time who barely even comprehend themselves. Unfortunately, Yohaan and I never got around to discussing more than one chapter of The Sailor who Fell from Grace, and our book club was put on indefinite hold - mainly due to my inability to commit the time. It wasn't until this year when my absolutely stunning partner, Nat, and I were shooting the shit about starting a book club between ourselves due to our overlapping tastes. After they had brought up wanting to read Yukio Mishima, I agreed, and we settled on The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea. I found it to be a funny bit of synchronicity and resolved to finish the rather short book. At some point I had overtaken Nat and read a bit further ahead than our book club pace, and I got to a section that involved a pretty graphic scene with 6 schoolboys and a kitten. I almost DNF'd the book there, and was about to recommend we pivot to a different book club read, but something held me back. I wanted to see where this story was headed after what felt like a shocking and abruptly violent turn. I had read as Ryuji sang his song and shed tears for it, and throughout I found myself asking, why did he long for this glory, this glittering destiny that was only permitted to him? Why do men dream so dearly of glory they would sacrifice happiness for?
I read on, and found to my surprise that the story did have a significant and consistent pay-off. In all ways, be careful what you wish for.
The story opens with Noboru’s mother saying goodnight to him and locking his bedroom door. Noboru is a young Japanese boy of thirteen years, living with his mother in his family home on Yado Hill. The two have a complicated relationship - by all appearances, Noboru is an intelligent, well-mannered boy and his mother dotes on him, but we see right away that Noboru has picked up the habit of spying on the woman at night through a peephole into her room that he finds by crawling inside a large chest in his bedroom. He discovered the hole on some unspecified morning and was amazed to see that through the peephole, his mother’s room took on a whole new appearance, as if it were that of a stranger’s. We don’t know for how long he would watch his mother through the peephole. We do know that he would do this quite often, especially on nights where she nags or scolds him. Strangely enough, on days when she is gentle with him, he never looks - indicating a punitive element in Noboru’s decision-making to spy upon his mother. This bizarre habit leads to Noboru becoming intimately familiar with his mother’s body - the first woman’s body he had ever known. It also gives the reader a small glimpse into the mind of Yukio Mishima and his proclivity towards seeing women’s bodies as objects of seduction, sensuality, and power, able to evoke both pleasure and fear in men within the vicinity. Fusako Kuroda in her own right is portrayed as a rather stoic woman. After the death of her husband five years prior to the start of the story, she remains the sole breadwinner and provider for herself, her son, and her estate. We see brief interludes of her time managing the luxury department store, Rex, after her husband’s passing; employing a staff of four sales girls and the ever reliable Mr. Shibuya, who acts as the backbone of the store’s operations, Rex caters to a boutique clientele of wealthy foreigners and local celebrities. One such woman, Yoriko Kasuga, is an award-chasing film actress who becomes a recurring character that acts as a feminine foil and, eventually, a dear friend to the store manager. It’s clear that Fusako immerses herself deeply in her work, as it was only the morning after her tryst with Ryuji that she had fully counted the years since her husband’s death for the first time. This occupation with busyness can be seen as both a way to distract from the grief and loss, as well as a realistic portrayal of the onslaught of work that comes with single motherhood.
Fusako’s strength also displays itself in her role as a mother and in the devotion she shows towards parenting Noboru. We see that she often helps him with his homework despite not being particularly scholarly herself, sends him to bed with a goodnight, and even indulges in his fervent passion for ships — an indulgence that leads to the chance, yet fateful encounter with Ryuji Tsukazaki. Fusako had relented to Noboru’s incessant requests and asked for a formal letter of introduction from an old shipping executive friend of hers so that Noboru might see the shipyard. They ventured into the ten-thousand-ton Rakuyo, which was to remain anchored at Takashima Pier for four days. After searching in vain for the Captain of the titanic freighter with the letter of introduction in hand, they were approached by Second Officer Tsukazaki. Their first interaction was charged, piercing, and oddly uncomfortable. Fusako had the queer feeling of being probed by eyes so used to scanning distant horizons, and instantly felt intense familiar sensations that caused her to shudder and nearly faint. In the context of how doggedly she kept thoughts of her husband away from mind through her obligations, we could surmise that Fusako had not felt such a reaction from a man in quite a few years. This is further reinforced in the story when we are informed that in the five years since her husband's passing, she had not been intimate with any man. Ryuji's stolid, inscrutable exterior, his scanning eyes, the heat of his body and of the sweltering summer day, along with the fact he got along with Noboru who was brimming with rarely seen excitement and questions, all of these and more compelled Fusako to invite the second officer for dinner the next night.
She remains stoic in the face of his imminent departure for distant shores - she refuses to utter the words of docile submission that might reveal the hopes and dreams she has been secretly nurturing in her chest: "You'll be leaving in the morning, won't you?" Instead she chooses a more accusatory tack in an attempt to save face, saying she's sunken pretty low because of Ryuji. Despite the tenderness she shows time and time again to him and despite the tears she shed at the thought of their parting, her years of having to be strong alone have left their indelible mark in how she comports herself.
The introduction and characterization of Ryuji is the means through which the dreamlike tapestry that makes up the thematic undercurrent of the plot begins to unfurl. At the age of 20, he had passionately been certain that glory was the one thing for which he was destined. Ryuji has spent his life as a sailor at sea waiting steadfastly for the call of glory - he dreams of a grand purpose crafted specifically for him, one worth risking death for, and certainly one worth foregoing the mundanities of shore life. When referring to his colleagues who read and reread letters from children and loved ones wishing for their safe return, he calls them hopeless, seeing them as having thrown away opportunity. The two million yen he has amassed over his sailing career speaks just as much to his lack of ties to the land or reasons to "invest" rather than hoard, as it does to his fixation on a grand, ill defined dream (if not more so). We see later that he truly has no plans for the money, saving it as the only recourse for one with no family or dependents. While nurturing these closely held ideals of manliness and glorious purpose, by all appearances he comes across to others as a rather eccentric, unsociable, and relatively simple. He is prone to "boasting about his own prowess like a very ordinary man indeed", though even in these moments his head fills with thoughts of words that ought to have been said, or ideas from the depths of his heart he had not the clarity or confidence to convey. His own internal self-appraisal wavers from worthless to worthy of towering above other men.
He espouses a deep passion for the sea, likening it to a love worth dying for. His favourite song, titled "I Can't Give Up the Sailor's Life", is one that would sometimes bring him to tears upon singing it or hearing it played. Interestingly, despite this proclaimed love for the sea, we are informed early in his characterization that "whereas most men choose to be sailors because they like the sea, Ryuji had been guided by an antipathy to land" - as though he is running from something. Later, we learn that he had been raised by a single father who had worked steadfastly to provide for his sister and him after their mother's death. Ryuji's home had been destroyed in air raids late in the war, then his sister passed away from typhus a short while later. It was just after he had graduated from a maritime highschool and was ready to start his career that his father also tragically passed away, leaving Ryuji all alone in the world - it's stated that his only memories of shore life were of endless devastation: poverty, sickness, and death. In light of this, it becomes likely that Ryuji saw the sea as an escape from the painful circumstances that he associated with his life on land. His infatuation with glory and with the sea may in fact be the result of a rebellion against the dismal reality he was faced with, and a way to imbue meaning to the loss he suffered at such a young age. He is connected to Noboru in this fashion, who suffered the loss of his father at 8 years old - however, Noboru and his group of nihilistic friends cling to the belief that his father's death had been a happy incident, "one to be proud of". While we will unpack the worldview espoused by Noboru and his peers that informs this strange reframing of the untimely death of a parent, on its face Noboru's perspective is easily scrutinized. His father, what with the little we know of him, seems to have been a steadfast provider, building the house they resided in, running Rex Ltd., and providing both Fusako and Noboru with exceedingly comfortable lives. In rejection of this apparent reality, Noboru sees fathers and teachers as guilty of a grievous sin by virtue of being fathers and teachers, allowing for a space in which his own father's death could be viewed as penance for this transgression. These two male characters in various ways view death as a necessity for glory or sacredness.
Ryuji, however, struggles with maintaining his convictions in the face of a reality that would suggest otherwise. As his feelings for Fusako deepen, he finds himself questioning where his future truly lies. In his mind he tries to view her as "just another body", yet in the same breath acknowledges how delicate and fragrant of a body she was; he admits that her eyes had haunted him since the time they agreed to meet for dinner, and in their embrace he felt happiness enough to "drive a man crazy". The breeze carrying her sweat and fragrance reaches him and seems to scream in his ears the words, "DIE! DIE! DIE!", which acts both as a proclamation of the impending death of his lofty, almost delusional ideals, and as subtle foreshadowing of what his union with Fusako ultimately portends for his future. He questions what place the song he once shed tears for now holds in his life, he questions his dreams and his very self. "The man sets out in quest of the Grand Cause, the woman is left behind"; this maxim finds itself playing over and over again in his dreams, yet upon their last night together, Ryuji must admit to himself that no Grand Cause was to be found at sea. As he saw the tears sparkle on Fusako's cheeks, illuminated by the wavering flame of the lighter she had procured, he felt deeply relieved by the assurance that she would miss him as well, and allowed himself to weep.
It's clear that Ryuji has fallen in love, and for what seems like the first time. We know his prior sexual experiences came bought and paid for at a visit to a brothel during his earlier travels. After Fusako hires a private investigator to look into Ryuji's past, we find out he has no secret lovers, no hidden children, lending greater credence to Fusako being his first true love. The passion of their coupling, the mutual obsession that develops between the two in a short amount of time, and the fact he both received letters from her and wrote back to her after his departure (despite previously admonishing his fellow shipmates who did the same - "A sailor looks forward to letters more than anything" he says upon his departure, a stark pivot from his earlier opinion) all go to show the powerful shift occurring within Ryuji; rather than yearning for something worth dying for, he stumbled across someone worth living for. He even goes as far as to offer her the entire sum of his bank account, his hard accrued 2 million yen, as part of his marriage proposal; an offer that stands on its own whether Fusako were to accept or reject him. He begins to work at the department store Fusako manages, dressing in fine pressed attire and learning the tricks of the trade in an effort to provide as her future husband and business partner. We see Ryuji also try his best to settle into the role of a male figure in Noboru's life, eventually calling him "Son" and hoping in return to be called "Dad".
Noboru's relationship with Ryuji is a fascinating one to unpack, and also reflects deeply Noboru's relationship with the world around him. At first he idolizes the sailor, and sees the perfect union of Ryuji and his mother on their first night together as something he'd do anything to protect, "no matter how awful". The relationship warps and wefts over time as Noboru begins to know more of Ryuji as a man, rather than as an idol. Hatred and dissatisfaction calcify in Noboru's iron heart, until the peak of the story brings Noboru to the point where with his very hands, he verges on the brink of destroying that which he swore to protect.
As we investigate the most fascinating of the trio at last, we see Noboru is a child who harbours a darkness and antipathy deep within himself, despite, by all accounts, being well cared for and wanting for little. Hard-heartedness was said to be a point of pride for him, so much so that he liked to imagine his heart to be a large iron anchor, polished and indifferent as it submerged past corrosive waters and refuse to the ocean bottom. The strange voyeurism he exhibits as he spies on his mother's intimate and private moments is our first inclination that something sinister lies within Noboru. While this act is not the most shocking we see him perpetuate, it is the most consistent and hangs over his head like a sword of Damocles throughout the narrative - despite promising to never draw any attention to the peephole and the dresser that conceals it, we as readers expect him to fail at this charge; the shoe will drop when he least suspects it. Noboru's anarcho-nihilism is reinforced and exacerbated by his group of friends. The school boys, led by a youth known only as "the chief", regularly discuss topics such as "the uselessness of Mankind" and the "insignificance of Life". These boys relate to each other in a numbered hierarchy with the chief indisputably at its head, which is fascinating considering their disdain for the order of adult society. They strive to practice "absolute dispassion", which effectively translates to maintaining a neutral, if not clinically detached, disposition as opposed to emotional displays and outbursts. Despite this book being written in 1963 (and translated to English in 1965), this display of "absolute dispassion" still rings as accurate social commentary on the youth of the 21st century. Those as young as Gen Z and Gen Alpha who have spent any significant amount of time on the Internet would be familiar with similar attitudes of "nonchalance" or "holding frame" that largely carry the same meaning - a meaning that is deeply rooted in the association between stoic, subdued emotionality and admirable poise, and is still well embedded into the cultural zeitgeist of today. In Noboru and his group of friends, this absolute dispassion takes on a misanthropic nature. These youth are considered extremely intelligent and good students, yet these qualities are wholly misapplied towards stoking the flames of nihilism further - Noboru's initial excited adulation towards Ryuji is criticized and deemed as childlike, with the chief espousing that "there is no such thing as a hero in this world" and that Noboru's "ideas about people are still pretty naïve". This perspective is paired with a supreme arrogance most often seen in youth around their age, with the chief stating that no adult would be able to do what they couldn't do; they, who are destined to rip off the huge seal of "impossibility" plastered all over the world to free their unlimited ability. The bond shared between the boys doesn't come across as true camaraderie, the friendship of youth - they act upon each other like chains, dragging themselves down with snide remarks, condescension, yet holding fast to their bond as stalwart proof of their superiority over all others who do not share their view of the world.
It's important to reflect that each of these boys, like Noboru, comes from what would be traditionally called "good homes". Their families are well off, cover their material needs, and are, for the most part, present. The chief, who holds the most conviction in the uselessness of mankind and in his own superiority, acts as a Judge Holden-esque character, pushing his peers into thoughts and acts past the point of moral reasoning in service of chaos and violence. Yet he especially is shown to suffer some degree of loneliness and isolation in his home life. His parents were never home, and he was often left to his own devices in his large, hushed, and eerily empty house with only books and a distant butler as his company. Through him, the furthest gone of the group, we can surmise that much of their maladaptive behaviour might stem from various combinations of neglect and boredom.
An idle mind is the devil's workshop, as my mother would often say.
We see the combination of arrogance, nihilism, and disdain for humanity in their rhetoric take a deadly turn when the group finalizes their plot to catch, murder, and dissect a kitten. This disturbing narrative sequence reminds me very much of Golding's Lord of the Flies, triggering the descent into madness and depravity for these youth as much as Piggy's death heralded Jack and his gang's headlong fall into killing and savagery. The boys believed that the very act of murder was the only thing that could fill "the world's great hollows", allowing them to achieve real power over existence. This first ritualistic killing of an innocent animal is what further emboldens the boys towards the unimaginable.
Circling back to Noboru's idolization of Ryuji, we are given a meta-textual warning around the natural pitfalls of placing the idea of a person (or even the person themself) on a pedestal. Noboru first sees Ryuji as a "fantastic beast that's just come out of the sea all dripping and wet". He believes, as Ryuji believes of himself, that the man is inherently different, destined to do something...terrific. Over time, as Noboru interacts more with Ryuji and sees him to be very much just a man, resentment builds. He starts collating a list of charges against the sailor, indictments where Ryuji failed to measure up against Noboru's unspoken and lofty expectations. The charges, written in Noboru's diary, were for crimes such as smiling at the boy in a "cowardly, ingratiating way", for taking a shower at the park - "just like an old bum", or even for returning to the Kuroda household in the first place after his departing voyage. All these charges amount to Ryuji simply being a man, a relatively ordinary man, betraying Noboru's idealized image of him as a hero of the sea who stands apart from guilty fathers and impotent adults. The most grievous charge came surprisingly in a moment where Ryuji tried to extend genuine compassion and forgiveness to Noboru in a moment of paternal affection: Noboru and his covert peephole had been discovered by Fusako after he had accidentally fallen asleep in the dresser with a flashlight on while doing homework, allowing for the barest trickle of Judas light to betray him. Upon discovering him, Fusako descended upon him in disgust and fury, beating him and urging Ryuji to do the same once he enters upon this shameful scene. Fusako had hoped Noboru would apologize for this transgression, had hoped he would break down in tears and apologize for the humiliation he brought upon her. Instead, she was met with silence - Noboru was resolved to see this through to its conclusion. In fact, it seems a part of him had fantasized often of the moment he might be found out; right before he fell asleep in the chest with his flashlight on, he had in fact anticipated this very situation and was already devising clever excuses to downplay his actions, excuses that fell away from his lips once dream resolved into reality. Yet his fantasies diverged from reality at one point: Ryuji's reaction. Rather than matching his wife's rage and indignation, the sailor approached Noboru with empathy, forgiveness, and a desire to wipe the slate clean. This unexpected reaction disgusted Noboru to his core and shattered his sterling vision of "this splendid hero who once shone so brightly". He thinks to himself that here was an example of the chief's rightness in saying that there were worse things than being beaten.
Bringing this account to his group of friends in an emergency meeting, they surmised that Ryuji had committed a grievous betrayal against Noboru: he had become "the worst thing on the face of this earth, a father". They conspired to pass his sentence, and in doing so they aimed to save him by restoring his status as a hero in their eyes the only way they believed was possible - by making him into a martyr. Their plan was to lure him under false pretenses to their meeting place, where they would drug him with sleeping pills and carry out a similar dissection as had been performed on the innocent kitten. Emboldened by an article of the penal code that stated youth under 14 were not punishable by law, the group successfully carries out their scheme. The story ends with Ryuji reflecting on his life at sea, and in doing so feeling acutely the enormity of what he had abandoned in choosing to settle down with a family. He had been rejected by perilous death and the glory that came with it, he had spurned the call of the Grand Cause, believing it now eternally beyond his reach. As he drank the drugged cup of tea given to him by Noboru, he took in its bitter taste, remarking that "glory, as anyone knows, is bitter stuff".
As we reach our conclusion, I find myself sitting with themes and questions that beg further exploration: Did Ryuji, on some level, foresee his impending death and embrace it? Is Mishima alluding to the idea that by giving up his dream of glory, Ryuji "fell from grace with the sea", thus forfeiting his life? Does he share Noboru's convictions that fathers are the flies of this world, that society was basically meaningless, ran and ordered by blind men who constrain the unlimited potential of those that dare threaten to tear it all down? To me, this uncertainty in the author's central message is what makes this story so beautiful, yet also so frustrating and tragic to digest. If I were to state my claim, I believe Ryuji only really started to live when he allowed love into his heart in the twilight of his life. His betrayal at the hands of Noboru and his friends does not mark a failure in ideals on Ryuji's part. His life may have been cut short by choosing love on land over solitude at sea, but in doing so he chose life! He chose to live, to love both Fusako and Noboru, and to dream of a new family. The alternative may have prolonged his years, but he would have died a different kind of death longing for a glory and release that might never come.
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He wanted to talk about the strange passion that catches hold of a man by the scruff of his neck and transports him to a realm beyond the fear of death.
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A man encounters the perfect woman only once in a lifetime and in every case death interposes—an unseen Pandarus—and lures them into the preordained embrace.
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And it seemed increasingly obvious that the world would have to topple if he was to attain the glory that was rightfully his. They were consubstantial: glory and the capsized world. He longed for a storm. But life aboard ship taught him only the regularity of natural law and the dynamic stability of the wobbling world.
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The universal order at last achieved, thanks to the sudden, screaming horn, had revealed an ineluctable circle of life—the cards had paired: Noboru and mother—mother and man—man and sea—sea and Noboru. . . .