In The Sea of Fertility, Penguin, 1987, 196 p. Translated from the Japanese 曉の寺 (Akatsuki no Tera) by E Dale Saunders and Cecilia Segawa Seigle.  First published 1970.

This instalment of Mishima’s tetralogy starts in 1940 and follows on from Runaway Horses by featuring now retired judge Shikeguni Honda, still convinced that Isao Iinuma was a reincarnation of Kiyaoki Matsugae, the doomed lover in Spring Snow; a belief mainly due to the presence of three moles on their left sides.

As part of his legal consultancy work protecting Japanese exporters’ interests Honda travels to India via Thailand. He meets a six-year-old Thai princess, Ying Chan, who is convinced she is Japanese but her assertions are, of course, treated by her family and attendants as mental aberrations. Honda believes her and tries unsuccessfully to see if she also has three moles.

On to Benares in India where Honda has an epiphany while Mishima takes the opportunity to impart to us a lengthy treatise on various ideas of reincarnation from around the world. At a waterfall in the Antaji caves Honda also recognises a scene which Matsugae had predicted he would encounter.

The Second World War comes and goes off-stage and the story undergoes a shift in tone when it restarts in occupied Japan where Ying Chan has come to study. Honda becomes obsessed by the idea of seeing her naked to confirm his reincarnation belief. He invites her to his house (but several times she does not turn up on time.) He tries to get the nephew of his neighbour to seduce Ying Chan, on whose intended room he can spy via a peephole, but this plan fails. (I note the recurrence of this peephole scenario in Mishima’s later novel The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea.)

Honda becomes even more of a voyeur before the novel’s climax during one of his houseparties and there is an odd, almost detached, final chapter set in 1967 where he discovers Ying Chan’s destiny.

Mishima’s unease at Japan’s loss of identity under Western influence is less to the fore here than in the previous two volumes. It is almost as if this instalment is from a different story sequence, despite the reincarnation connection.

Pedant’s corner:- “voices chanting a sutra rose rapidly to a crescendo” (No. The crescendo is the rise, not its culmination,) “plusses and minuses” (pluses and minuses?) “the aureoles around the nipples” (the areolae.)

In The Sea of Fertility, Penguin, 1987, 247 p. Translated from the Japanese 奔馬 (Homba,) Shinchosha Company, 1960, by Michael Gallagher.

It is the early 1930s, a time of political uncertainty and assassination in Japan. Thirty-eight year old judge Shikeguni Honda comes to believe Isao Iinuma, a promising practitioner of kendo and also the son of a former tutor of Honda’s teenage friend Kiyaoki Matsugae whose unfortunate life was portrayed in Snow Country, is in fact Kiyaoki reincarnated. This is a thought Honda keeps to himself, though.

Nevertheless he takes an interest in the young man, who after one conversation gives him a booklet titled The League of the Divine Wind. This chronicles a failed revolt in the eighteenth century of a group of that name who felt the Western influence on Japan was inimical and ought to be overturned. Unfortunately, they believed only swords were suitably condign weapons to enact the divine will and so fell to defeat. In that revolt’s aftermath one of its leaders is said to have given voice to the spirit of the Samurai: “Were we to have acted like frail women?”

This incident is an illustration of the tension that existed in Japan between the traditional and the modern and which was in many ways Mishima’s overriding concern. At one point a minor character says, “‘That’s just how things are here in Japan. All one has to do is plunge one’s hand in, intent only on a bit of amusement, and there’s a poisonous snake in there waiting.’”Iinuma also hatches a plot, this time to kill the men whom he believes are leading Japan to ruin, or at least to a neglect of the old ways. When this, too, fails due to the authorities getting wind of it (not through one of the co-conspirators though) Honda gives up his judge’s job to defend Iinuma.

The political background appears from time to time in conversations but is never foregrounded but still the forces which would propel Japan into conquest – and ultimate disaster – are in evidence. The adventure in Manchuria, about which some of the characters have misgivings, is about to begin.

Mishima’s sympathies seem to lie with the traditionalists and Iinuma’s desire for purity and unease at the Japan in which he lives perhaps matches the author’s own.

Pedant’s corner:- Translated into USian. “In 1933, the third year of the Genko era” (the third year of the Genko era was in 1333,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech, “‘one should keep them until lay them reverently on the family altar’” (is missing some words between ‘until’ and ‘lay’,) “the cry of cicadas” (cries of cicadas surely?) “England’s going off the gold standard” (Britain that would be, not England,) hiccough (there’s no such thing. It’s a hiccup,) “it’s being not all likely” (it’s being not at all likely,) “a green finch” (a greenfinch,) “scarlet-leafed forest” (scarlet-leaved.) Benzine (petrol,) “somewhat tasteless” (somewhat distasteful,) “having spent the New Year’s in a police cell” (having spent the New Year in a police cell.) “The whistle of a freight passing through Ichigaya Station” (of a freight train – though in British English that’s ‘goods train’,) “the groans … had nothing of kendo about it” (the groans … had nothing of kendo about them,) “but these was limited to” (these were limited to,) “none of those … were” (none … was,) “with his fingertips of his left hand” (with the fingertips of his left hand.)