Pages: 180
Nationality: Japanese
Language: English
Published in: 1966
Yukio Mishima is one Japan’s foremost novelists and playwrights. He was active for apprx 20-25 years, between the 1940’s and 1960′. Already as a young boy, he displayed a prodigious talent for writing, and was first published when he was twenty-three years old. Mishima committed suicide in 1970, by performing a hara-kiri/seppukku on himself (auto-disembowelment with the use of a sword).

‘Death in Midsummer’ is a collection of nine short stories and one play. The back fo the book reads, that these ten short texts “represent Mishima’s extraordinary ability to depict, with deftness and penetration, a variety in human beings in moments of significance’, which in brilliantly sums up the essence of this book, as I have understood it. The text on the back cover picks up however, and adds that “Mishima’s characters are often young, sophisticated Japanese who turn out to be not so liberated from their past as they had thought”.

It is, I assume, primarily my through and through European heritage, and also, my, to some extent, ignorance of Asian history and culture, that I find it difficult to read this book on more than a very shallow level.
It appears to me, that too much of Mishima’s intentions and meaning has been lost in the english translation. Language must necessarily entail culture and ways of being and thinking, and so henceforth, some of the meaning in a literary work is presumably always lost in translation. When a reader is not only not Japanese, but not East-Asian or even Asian, the normal losses in translation appear to be amplified by powers of ten.

Mishima depicts a variety of human beings that are going through, or have gone through, something that in various ways will alter their lives; always, the events told are inherently linked to current societal standings. Mishima is brilliant at describing nuances in the human psyche, and with merely a few strokes of the pen is he able to bring imaginary people to brimming life. In an indescribable way, his stories reach a climax very early on, but contrary to normal conduct, it is reluctant to fade away; every sentence in Mishima’s stories seem a vital point for the entire text, and given that one doesn’t read carefully, it will be even more tricky to decipher the point of it, than it is if one does.

Mishima is in my opionion as much of an aesthete as he is an ingeneer; his style is captivating, beautiful – sometimes enchanting – but he constantly leaves the reader wondering, asking, hesitating. In the story “The Great Priest of Shiga and his Love”, Mishima tells the story of a most accomplished buddhist priest, who at the end of his life is waiting for the eternal rest, entrance to the Pure Land, beyond death. One day, as he sees the Great Imperial Concubine passing by, a woman who’s beauty has no likes in the world, the Great Priest is unable to retain his indifference towards that which is merely physical. However much he concentrates on the rational, the pure, the non-wordly, he cannot forget the face of the Great Imperial Concubine. The Priest perishes, because he now knows that he cannot be allowed entrance to pure land; his sin has been too great already, to not to have rid his mind of his love for the Concubine. The priest goes to visit the Concubine, an evident sign on that he has given up his faith, on that he cannot reconcile with the physical worlds effects on his body, and his will to reach Nirvana. The Concubine lets the Priest touch her hand, which he strokes over his face; he then turns around and leaves, and then dies, in full peace.

Initially, I thought that Mishima had directed a criticism against Buddhism with this text, for being indifferent to all the beauty of which life offers, and that to live life with one’s back turned against it, is foolish and ridiculous. Supplied with the ending however, I was caught surprised, and I don’t know quite what to make out it. Mishima had seemingly argued human forgetfulness, the invevitability of physical attraction, and the meaninglessness in simply awaiting salvation in quietism, when he with the last ten or more sentences turns the dagger around.

Seeing as this book is not quite my forte in literature, I will refrain from commenting much more on it, and so avoiding to make any clumsy misinterpretations of the actual stories in the book. I much enjoyed reading Mishima’s text, but not being very well read up on him and his life, or Japanese culture, I am hesitant to making detailed assertions about his work. What is for sure is that the texts are interesting; they portray the most fundamental of human emotions, but are also full of insightful symbols and, more, cultural references that are beyond my grasp. Reading ‘Death in Midsummer’, one will most surely be moved by the stories: and envious of Mishima’s delicate writing. One will towards the end most surely be thinking of the texts, asking questions about the texts, and be going back to them for re-reads.