A Son of the Rock

In The Sea of Fertility, Penguin, 1987, 196 p. Translated from the Japanese 天人五衰 (Tennin gosui) by Edward G Seidensticker. First published 1971.

In this conclusion of Mishima’s tetralogy, not long after which he committed seppuku, once again we find ourselves following Shigekuni Honda’s obsession with the reincarnation of his boyhood friend Kiyaoki, this time in 1970. Tōru Yasunaga is a signalman notifying the imminent arrival of ships to Shimizu harbour. He is an orphan and has a female acquaintance, Kinué, who, in order to come to terms with her lack of attractiveness, has convinced herself that she is beautiful.

One day Honda and his platonic companion Keiko visit the signal station. Honda recognises on Tōru the three moles he believes signify the reincarnation and resolves to adopt Tōru to try to protect him from the early deaths the three previous incarnations had suffered.

Tōru will eventually work this situation to his own advantage but it only reveals his own selfishness.

The evolution of modern Japan is tangential to this final instalment of the tetralogy but its background nevertheless colours the novel. That Tōru is a kind of negative impression of Kiyaoki perhaps reflects Mishima’s own assessment of his work and life and the direction Japan took over his lifetime.

When a minor character refers to “people who commit suicide to establish themselves,” illustrating it with an elaborate analogy, it may be a prefiguration of the author’s own intentions.

Pedant’s corner:- “a crematory” (usually a crematorium,) “the hoi polloi” (‘hoi’ already means ‘the’; it’s just ‘hoi polloi’.)