Customer Reviews

Runaway Horses

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Mishima is undoubtedly a fine writer. His technique and style are amazing. He can even make a two page description of kimono fabric interesting to an NFL linebacker! Many will certainly question the motivation of his writing (a return to samurai codes [Bushido], restoration of emperor, expelling all things western from Japan, etc.), but they cannot deny the accurate portrait Mishima paints of a mid-20th century Japan that is straddling the lines between traditional culture (buddhism/shinto/etc.) and western industrialization. Mishima takes a grand-scale problem and puts it into a specific setting. Obviously readers that have an understanding of the greater context of Japanese history from the mid-20th century will appreciate this novel more. I do think, however, that even someone that couldn't point to Japan on a map, but likes good writing and story-telling will be able to appreciate the book on those merits alone. While not as enjoyable as the first installment of the "Sea of Fertility" tetrology, it is an enjoyable book.

The Runaway Horse has been criticized unfairly for its glorification of nationalistic and even fascist views. The word Kamikaze has become such a taboo in the modern western world that anything that touches even slightly on the subject would be condemned.

In this amazing book, Isao symbolizes the purity of life. All that's good is pure, and all that's pure is good. Thus is the belief of Isao, and eventually, of Mishima himself as evident of his suicide in 1970. Having said that, I do not expect this book to be understood by its English readers. The translation proves to be a great barrier but more importantly, the philosophy that is the core of this particular book is too distant for the modern Japanese readers, let alone readers in North America who have been sheltered from different cultures.

Runaway Horse describes meaning of the true Japanese samurai, or at least of what Mishima believes it is. A samurai is not after his own glory or achievements. His only goal is to be loyal to the Emperor and to God. He is a mere servant of these goals and his life could and should be given up to the Emperor upon request. Isao believes that the blade and the blood of the corrupt politicians will be a wake-up call to the Emperor to restore feudal Japan. Although naive and violent at times, Isao is a one-dimensional human being that follows the human goal of "being yourself", Being true to yourself is an impossible task for most people, and therefore Isao is the idealized human being. It also reflects the Japanese philosophy of simplicity. The problems of the modern day world are so complex that only the simplest actions would resolve them, complex actions would not only take time to execute, but would entangle the matters even more.

This book also displays the obsession with beauty that Mishima has. In his mind, beauty is worth giving up your life for. His ideas of beauty are expressed with the most sensuous and colorful images shaped by adjective upon adjectives. Mishima's writing style, especially when it involves this matter, is not for everyone. Patient readers with deep imaginations, though, will find it joyful as descriptions from the book spring from the wells of their minds and take flight before their eyes. Isao's suicide is a painting that has been painted a thousand times in my mind, along with the rising sun.

(4.5 stars) Runaway Horses (1969), the second in the Sea of Fertility tetralogy, continues the characters introduced in Spring Snow into 1932 - 1933, a time in which Japan is beset with enormous internal problems - the economy and rural poverty, the corruption of politicians, the rise of communism, the cutbacks in the army, and in foreign affairs. Many incidents of political violence have taken place, including the assassination of the Finance Minister, and on May 15, 1932, the assassination of Prime Minister Inukai himself, by eleven Navy officers.

As the novel opens, Shigekuni Honda, a main character in Spring Snow, now a judge in the Osaka Court of Appeals, has reached the age of thirty-eight, a man leading a quiet life of reason who believes that his youth ended with the death of his friend Kiyoaki Matsugae, eighteen years ago. When he is asked to substitute for his Chief Justice at a kendo exhibition in Nara, some distance away, he accepts. The star of the exhibition is young Isao Iinuma, the nineteen-year-old son of Kiyoaki's tutor during their childhood. Later, after climbing Mount Miwa, Honda performs a purification ritual in a waterfall and sees, once again, young Isao. This time he is stunned to notice a pattern of three moles under Isao's arm. His friend Kiyoaki had exactly the same pattern of moles, and had insisted on his deathbed that "I will see you again." Honda, who has always grounded his life in reason, now believes that Isao is the confident samurai reincarnation of Kiyoaki.

At the Saigusa Festival of Wild Lilies, Isao gives Honda a copy of a book which is a prized possession: The League of the Divine Wind, by Yamao Tsunenori, which rails against making Japan a republic and insists that all foreign influences be eliminated from Japan. (The Japanese word for "Divine Wind" is "kamikaze.") Long passages which go back to the early parts of the Meiji dynasty, set the scene for the action to follow as Isao, dedicating his life to the pure samurai tradition, establishes a group of other young men who plan executions of those in public life who have violated the code.

Rich descriptions of nature, including a section in which a white camellia is personified, accompany the developing action, and some nature scenes of obvious symbolism add to the dilemma faced by Honda as he remembers dreams which Kiyoaki has recorded in his diary and left for Honda as a legacy. And as Isao begins to plan for what is the climax of this novel, one can see the author preparing the way for new understandings. Mishima succeeds in giving voice to points of view that would otherwise have been totally alien to me. By explaining the samurai code within the context of Japanese history and culture, and using characters of different beliefs whom I liked and respected, he was able to explain what lay behind the ritual suicide he himself committed shortly after completion of the tetralogy. Though the book is sometimes propagandistic and deals almost exclusively with men and their behavior, Mishima is a novelist who is in complete control of his subject matter, and his thematic transition between the 1912 and the 1932 periods is flawless. The Sea of Fertility has always been regarded as his masterpiece, and readers interested in Japan will not want to miss this novel. Mary Whipple

Spring Snow

In RUNAWAY HORSES, the second volume of Yukio Mishima's "Sea of Fertility" tetralogy, we are presented with a remarkable turn of events. Kiyoaki Matsugae, the tragic protagonist of SPRING SNOW, has been born again. Those who wondered why the first novel in the cycle had those long debates on the transmigration of the soul will be pleased to see the consequences of the Siamese princes' beliefs.

The year is 1932. RUNAWAY HORSES unfolds through the thoughts of Shikeguni Honda, once Kiyoaki's best friend, who is now thirty-eight years-old and a judge in Osaka. Honda encounters a young man, Isao, who is almost as old as Kiyoaki was when he died, and Honda comes to believe that this boy is his old friend come again, whose life contains events that Kiyoaki foretellingly dreamed of and wrote in his journal. While Kiyoaki's fatal flaw was excess love, his reincarnation is an obsessive patriot, who seeks to purge Japan of foreign ideals and the vices of a capitalism which denied the Emperor. RUNAWAY HORSES is, essentially, a novel of political extremism. The Japan of this era seems poised on the verge of either Communist revolution or, what actually came to pass, military dictatorship, and the uncertainty of the times makes for a very engaging setting. Some knowledge of Japan history comes in handy, although the novel can still be read as it is. The form of the work is also rather more varied than in the first volume of the cycle. RUNAWAY HORSES contains a fifty-page long imagined political tract praising the leaders of a 19th-century rebellion, which inspires the protagonist, and a courtroom scene recounted in dialogue form.

I found so much of this novel supremely agreeable. Mishima expertly causes the reader to feel the long years that have passed for Honda, and the shock that comes in being jerked back to the death of Kiyoaki. Some of the people and places linked with Kiyoaki are seen again in this novel, and often the characters have little idea of the connection, but the reader knows the haunting truth. Nonetheless, the novel is not entirely perfect. One common objection may be that Mishima gushes too much over the purity of Isao, for the author's own political ideals where much the same. Still, anyone concerned with issues of globalization and the existential crisis of the West and westernized nations will have some sympathy for Mishima and his protagonist, even though much about them is deplorable. And Isao is certainly more nuanced than the protagonist of Mishima's gory nearly-pornographic novella "Patriotism" of three years before. My own dissatisfaction about the matter comes from Mishima giving his protagonist, toward the end, the opportunity to rather unrealistically give a long speech to an audience that in truth probably wouldn't hear it.

Still, these are relatively minor complaints. I underestimated the beauty of SPRING SNOW the first time I read it, and I'm quite happy that I re-read it and moved onto RUNAWAY HORSES. The "Sea of Fertility" cycle is indeed an impressive work of fiction.

This 1969 novel is the second in a series of books written by this Japanese author. Set in the years of 1932-1933, Honda, one of the characters from the first book, "Silent Snow" is now a judge. When he meets the young man named Isao, he senses that Isao is the reincarnation of his friend who died in the first book.

Isao is a bright young athlete who is obsessed with the glory of the Samurai warrior code and gathers a group of friends in a plot to show his loyalty to the Japanese ideals by committing ritual suicide. Because of the fine writing I actually understood where this young man was coming from and how his choices impacted other young men as well as Honda, the judge, who who later defends the young man in court.

This book introduced a concept to me that I had never considered before - the concept of honor through personal suicide which is deeply imbedded in the Japanese consciousness. Because it is so masterfully written, I read the book with an increased understanding of this symbolic act which has existed in Japan through the ages. The ending didn't surprise me but what I was surprised at was my own deeply moving understanding.

Bravo to the author. This is a fine, but upsetting, book.

This book reflects in fiction the views of Yukio Mishima and his real life reflected the action of this book. There are too many similarities in this book's main character and Mishima's real life, namely both commit seppuko. Knowing the history of Yukio Mishima one has to ask did this book fore tell his death or did he simply follow the script he provided. The hero, or antihero Isao, wants to return prewar Japan to its traditional samurai-roots by plotting the assassination of leading industrialists with his band of conspirators ... somewhat like Mishima did with his Shield Society. The plan falls apart and the hero ends his life in disgrace just like Mishima did. Holding on to the past while the progressive tides wash over them is the basic theme. Something like the Islamic fundimentalists are trying to do currently. Not his best writing, but all is written with the samuri code of the harmony of the pen and sword at its heart.

This is not an intent to (summarize) mishima's sea of fertility... rather it's an approach into analyzing it ... a sort of reading between the lines...

Then ... again, what are we exactly trying to portray?

we would say we are ( intending ) to deliver a semiotic vision of what the sea of fertility represents ... we are not trying to ( read ) it for our reader , rather , we let him read , and help him amidst it , by presenting a cluster of signs , keys , semiotics , call it whatever you want , that would - at the end - clarify the road , and that can be grasped by the reader so he can get a wider vision , and a better comprehension of this gigantic universe , which mishima called ( sea of fertility ) ...

But first, why is this bizarre title (sea of fertility)?

mishima himself is going to answer this question , to give it the first ( leading ) sign , that we should know it doesn't crack secrets for us , but merely provides us with a minimum limit , which we can begin our journey from ..

in a note mishima sent to the famous American criticizer Donald Keene , he clearly admits that the reason he chose this title for his tetralogy is a hint for an area of the same designation on the moon's surface not so far of ( the sea of silence ) ... the reason for this reference is to aim at a ( contradiction ) between this vivid and colorful name , and the wasteland it stands for in real ... we can go further on saying that this title combines the image of universal nihilism with the image of ( sea of fertility ) ...

in summer 1945 mishima wanted to write an immense oeuvre that would sum up Miller's famous trilogy ( the rosy crucifixion ) , and that would stress more and more on that ( dark ) side of art ... to write a novel that would take six years of his life , and that would cover - chronogically - those sixty years from 1912 and on ..

That decision , which was the most important one in mishima's practical life , obliged writing this novel in four volumes , in each an individual story , for each a special protagonist , but these characters would not be totally separated from each other ...

How?

The figure in the first volume is the lad kiwaki, the noble descent of the wealthy family of Matsugai, lives a love story, one of its kind that memory would not forget easily, and his friend Honda stands as an eye witness for this superb experience of his...

From that point on , in every volume that succeeds, we can notice that the hero is merely the first one, but after being (reincarnated), to start a new cycle of life, and to let Honda only figure out the connections that ties these four characters...


Mishima Knew very well that his Tetralogy is a rich threshold for everything he learned as a writer ... he told his friends, that when he finishes it, there is only one thing left for him to do ... (suicide) ... and by taking his own life in November 25th 1970, he fulfilled his final quote: the life of men is short, I want to live forever...

( The sea of fertility ) is not an easy read nor its a happy one , it is a lament melancholic presentation of life ... rendered by an artist ...

Runaway Horses, the second book in Yukio Mishima's Sea of Fertility tetralogy, begins nineteen years after the first, Spring Snow, left off. It is 1932, and we are reintroduced to Shigekuni Honda, a supporting character from Snow, and the best friend of that book's hero, Kiyoaki Matsugae. Honda is now a junior associate judge at the Osaka Court of Appeals. He is thirty-eight, married, without children, and leads a comfortable and uneventful life formed by the logical precepts of his work. He still thinks of Kiyoaki, and believes that his own youth ended when he last saw his friend, nineteen years earlier. No matter how vivid his remembrances of that time, Honda knows that any passion inside of himself died then. He now loves his work and the rational safety it brings him.

Two events change this. First is the May Fifteenth incident, in which the Japanese Prime Minister is murdered by Navy officers. This event sets the historical theme for the book. The second event occurs when a senior Judge asks Honda to give an address at a Kendo tournament in Nara. There he watches a young standout competitor named Isao Iinuma, and learns that he is the son of Kiyoaki's old tutor, then an angry young right-winger, now a more moderate and well-known one who runs an "Academy of Patriotism".

In a scene under a waterfall, Honda realizes that Isao is the reincarnation of Kiyoaki, both because Isao has three moles on his side, just like Kiyoaki did, and also because the last thing Kiyoaki said to Honda was that they would "meet again under the falls." This of course knocks Honda off his comfortable course, and causes him to reflect on and begin to accept the spiritual.

But we soon learn that the real story here belongs to Isao. Like his father was, he too is an angry right-winger. Unlike his father, he intends to do something about it, inspired by a work called the League of the Divine Wind, in which a group of samurais commit suicide after a failed coup attempt during the Meiji Era. He too wants to perform a similar heroic act, and then gloriously commit seppuku. Rather than military targets though (he in facts tries to recruit members from the military) Isao wants to go after major industrialists, who he believes are ruining the country and besmirching the honor of the Emperor.

The majority of the novel follows Isao's attempt to put together a like-minded group to do the act. In between there's a love interest. We also follow Honda along his own path, and more clues pile up to make him believe in Kiyoaki's reincarnation. Meanwhile, Isao and his group are caught and brought to trial, forcing Honda and the young man towards a conclusion of half-victories for each.

Runaway Horses is a thematic continuation of Spring Snow, but still a much different book. Whereas Spring Snow was at heart a love story and the social and political formed the background, this book is driven by the environment of the times. The early thirties in Japan were filled with uncertainty caused by the depression, a changing society, and a patriotic fanaticism that led to the cataclysm of World War II. Isao dreams of his suicide in great detail, an eerie harbinger of what would come in Mishima's own life. At the core of the two books is a passion. In Spring Snow that passion was manifest in love. In Runaway Horses, it turns to violence.

Mishima's writing is the same as always though: superb. His setting of scene is always poetic, and his ability to render the human heart and mind equals the great psychological writers, like Dostoyevsky. Spending so much time in its characters' minds, the book is short on action (the trial is the most exciting part of the book). But it is always engrossing. Mishima shows us individuals grappling with the problems and challenges of a whole country at a volatile time to be alive. The ambition of this works on both a historical and individual level. We not only feel that we've read a satisfying book of deep emotion, but also feel as if we've learned a little more about the Japanese people at this point in history. The last five words are important though: this is one side of it. It is but one piece in the total picture Mishima presented in his tetralogy. And it's a piece that will make you want to read the rest.

Spoiler Free (no spoilers from Spring Snow either)

This is the second book in the Sea of Fertility tetralogy. First: if you have not read Spring Snow, I must insist that you read it first, otherwise it will completely ruin both of these novels. These first two novels were translated masterfully by Michael Gallagher (the translators were different

This story takes place some years after the events from Spring Snow. While Spring Snow focused on the love story between the two youths, this focuses more on the political situation in the years leading up to Japan's invasion of China and eventual involvement in World War 2. This is a tale of the ushering in of the new era of Japanese modern capitalism and western influenced culture and the fall of the old samurai code and the abandonment of the beliefs and moral codes of feudal Japan. Unlike Kurosawa's depiction in his film 'No Regrets for Our Youth' (in which his depiction does not pick sides), Mishima obviously sides with the parties interested in preserving Japan's past and bringing an end to the capitalist and western influenced culture.

The two truly neutral parties are Honda and Marquis Matsugae, the former as an important and concerned character, the latter as a helpless, observer.

I really can't get into the plot or development without giving away the events of Spring Snow so I won't get into that. But suffice to say: if you read and enjoyed Spring Snow, you will enjoy this novel. Though the romantic aspect is minor at best, Mishima portrays the political changes in a poignant and thought-provoking manner.

The question is: should a nation and a people turn their back on the past and physically, often violently suppress
their history, or should they build the future while keeping the mores and codes of the past close to heart? Truly a magnificent novel with some of the most poetic language ever translated into English.

This is a novel with gorgeous, even lyrical passages, yet in my view, considerable technical setbacks.

Why do i like Mishima? Becouse he was trained as a lawyer, and from the many years of discerning the nuances of legal practice, he developed a style of writing, that is structured, concise, and sometimes pompous. Concurrently, there is a dark tendency in his writing to place his characters irrationally attracted to themes relating to death, suicide, romantic tragedy or nihilism. The combination of these seemingly opposite forces, creates a mood of unsettling, and reckless passion.

When i read that Kiyoaki, who in Spring Snow had been endowed with an almost supernatural beauty, returned reincarnated in Isao, who was peerless on his purity of intent, i couldn't put the book down. Mishima created such a beautiful case for the purity of dying in defense of Japan and the emperor, that even me, who is on the opposite side of the political spectrum, was rooting for Isao to go ahead with his mission and inevitable seppuku.

If the book would have finished with the ritualistic suicide, it would have actually been beautiful. I won't recount the details of the plot, but there is an unfortunate twist that completely alters the sentiment of the idealistic and poetic opening pages. The denouement creates an anti-climax that forces the reader to question the validity of the values professed initially by the protagonist, to then again in a haste, switched back the storyline to a romantic conclusion in order to salvage the book. I found this thematic ambivalence, a source of irritation and a technical setback that undermines the quality of the book as a whole. Therefore I gave it four starts.