The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea (Vintage Classics) [Paperback]

 

 

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Yukio Mishima's 'The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea' is a short novel but, due to its tight plot, brevity is not an issue. Published in 1963, seven years before he committed ritual suicide, the novel explores motivation and the factors that can cause someone to abandon their passions and resume their life embracing the dreams of another.

Noboru Kuroda, a thirteen year old on the cusp of an adult world, is part of a savage gang whose members, despite their exemplary grades at school, have rebelled against the adult world they deem hypocritical. Under the tutelage of Noboru's friend, also thirteen, they condition themselves against sentimental feelings - a goal they call `objectivity' - by killing stray cats.

Ryuji Tsukazaki, a merchant seaman, has been granted two days' shore leave and has spent the time romancing Noboru's widowed mother, Fusako. Noboru likes the sailor at first, his commitment to the sea and all the manly stories he has to tell. But, as Ryuji falls for Fusako, Noboru feels betrayed by the man's burgeoning romanticism and, with the help of his gang, feels that action should be taken against the man who has replaced his father.

The first thing I noticed while reading this novel was that the characters are rich with life and history. Noboru, at thirteen, has strong feelings for his mother that manifest through voyeuristic sessions at night when, peeking into her room through a spy-hole, he watches her undress, entertain, and sleep. Ryuji, the sailor, knows he has some purpose at sea and continues his life off the land in the hope that one day he will learn his place in life. And Fusako, five years widowed, displays certain strength as she runs her own business, mixes with a richer class of citizen, while trying to raise he son as best she can.

The way the characters develop from this introduction is fast yet believable - the book, in fact, is split into two sections, 'Summer' and 'Winter', to show that enough time has passed to be plausible. Noboru's respect for Ryuji wanes as he becomes the worst thing, based on his gang's beliefs, a man can be in this world: a father. Ryuji's abandonment of his life's passion is, of course, the main thread of the novel and it is a tragic decision he makes to give up the destiny waiting for him at sea in order to embrace the world of Fusako and the new direction she has planned for him.

The best thing about this novel is the language. The translator, John Nathan, has done a wonderful job and not a page passes without hitting you with a warm wash of sea-spray. Metaphors and similes are drenched with watery goodness as they add to the novel's appeal. The prose is warm during the 'Summer' section but as the book turns to 'Winter' the turns of phrase become icier and tend to sting more. The dialogue is nice and realistic and doesn't smart of stereotypical Japanese honour; the way the characters interact completely plausible.

I hadn't heard of Mishima until I picked up this novel and, given that he had three Nobel nominations in his lifetime, I will certainly look out for more of his work. His concise prose, realistic characters, and the way his voice carries the sea makes him a rare find. If books were shells, I would hope to hear Mishima in every one.

Mishima is the Prince of Ice, a man of cold emotional detachment paradoxically consumed with the minutae of burning emotions. Remaining detached he could inhabit the skin, blood and bone of his characters. He projected himself away from the real world into the imaginary where he could inhabit himself.

Within this book each person tries to connect across an emotional wasteland. The metaphors abound, the Chief's empty silent house; a boy left to himself who hates his parents. Ryuji losing first his mother, then his house, thn his sister to typhus and then lastly his father. He hates the land because of what it represents sickness and death. His connection to the sea is his escape from memory. His burgeoning love brings him back to the land.

Fusako, his soul mate has lost her husband and is in a form of bereavement. Norburo has lost his father and dotes on his mother, with a fear of losing her. This cements the mother son bond.

Mishima understands the power of bereavement, the impact of loss and neglect as it arose within his family. He lost his sister to typhus and suffered a form of deep emotional neglect being kidhapped by his grandmother. The key points were his abilities to articulate grief and an emotional coldness caused by death, a deep sense of permafrost that gradually thaws through time or remains icebound and suspended.

The descriptions of lust, the juxtaposed position of the young Chinese sex worker and his burning desire for Fusako convey a suppressed erotica slowly uncoiling throughout the story.

Bodies and sweat are also perceived as real anchor points of human corpreality, the essence of existence as the descriptions of muscle sweat and musk, perfume the story. Mishima was always aware of the odours and their effects described within his novels.

The characters try to break out of their bleak barren worlds through death, love and lust to find some meaning in the austere inhospitable worlds they exist within. Within this bleakness the boys emerge from adolescence with a nihilist rejection of all adult values.

The Mishima critique becomes directed at the man who surrenders his physicality, his involvement with nature to become a Japanese westerner. Ryuji becomes the man who sells English tweed to a sanitised Japanese society. This is his life sentence.

Mishima like JD Salinger vents his spleen at parental double standards producing sterility and imprisoning their subjects. The boys have no sense of empathy to anchor them in the real world. They are a collection of isolated individuals who can skin a cat with the deft skill of an amateur scientist in his laboratory. They just want to see what exists inside the living. Skin, blood and bone is the response, the life form has evaporated. The empty carcass represents their vacuity.

It is a short book, but immensely powerful as Mishima communicates beyond time and culture to articulate a profound dread; the endless nihilism of nothing. All papered over by the pretence of stability in a forever rapidly changing world. Meanwhile the inability to conceptualise empathy sees these cat skinners moving onto bigger prey to revenge their childhood slights. They want to take the life of those adults who surrender their vision of an aesthetic Japan based upon the old values. This marked the tension within Mishima's real life.

The Chief who forever remains in the background hints at a darker malevolence in the adult world, "something worse". Perhaps he is attempting to articulate sexual violence which would destroy his ability to sustain empathy.

The book prods and probes the psychological and physical violence young boys endure within the growing up period and marks the conclusions drawn from trying to make sense of the adult world. Although it is a dark story it is revelatory in its illumination.

Sometimes you comes across a book so beautifully written that it stands out from the rest in just the first few pages. This is one of those books. This is a simple story of a sailor (called Ryuji) who falls in love with a shop owner widower (Fusako) and who eventually get engaged to get married. The woman's son (Noburu) secretly watches the couple makes love and starts to hate the sailor for the softer side of his character that he sees, rather than the gruff adventurer hero he has built up in his mind. The son is also part of a gang that practises detached emotional responses to life and who inflict great cruelty on animals to test their detachment. Rather than being truly evil the son is more lead astray than anything else, but this leads the book to it's dark, yet compelling conclusion.

This is one of those books that is beautiful to read, with wonderful poetic descriptions, but it also has an element that leaves you feeling slightly disturbed as well. The early scenes between Ryuji and Fusako have an erotic feel to them, but at no point are they explicit or gratuitous. The sexual energy is explored through simple things like the parting of her mouth, the smell of her body or the eating of a cherry. All simple things, but when written as skilfully as this, very effective. Ryuji's fall from grace with Noboru is quite sad to read, especially as we are made aware of Ryuji's inner thoughts and intent that Noboru can't fathom. This makes the ending all the more chilling and powerful and I was worried how the author was going to deal with the ending, but he managed to finish this with huge impact and style and it is one that leaves you thinking about it long after you have placed the book back on your bookshelf.

Apparently Mishima was nominated for the Nobel Prize three times and with books like this I can see why. It is short, but expertly crafted and the prose is a true pleasure to read. I can't wait to read more by him and if you are considering reading this book then I can definitely say it is worth a try.

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3.0 out of 5 stars a book of despair - not for a pick me up
The image that sticks with me of this book is the 'Lord of the Flies' type behaviour of the young lad and his 'mates'. Read more

Published 7 months ago by aragorn17

5.0 out of 5 stars Mishima's Masterpiece?
This was really quite the surprise read for me, I didn't really know what I was getting with Yukio Mishima's `The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea' (mainly because I... Read more

Published 21 months ago by Simon Savidge Reads

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding
Reminded me quite a lot of Toby Litt's Deadkidsongs, and a wee bit of Hemingway. Stark, minimalist, absorbing, and as an introduction to Mishima I could not have been happier. Read more

Published on 13 Jun 2007 by Mrs Quoad

5.0 out of 5 stars Mishima's Best
A humble and much contested opinion - but to me this is Mishima's best. Delicately written, swimming in feeling and a hazy atmosphere of remembrance. Read more

Published on 8 Nov 2002 by textum_books

4.0 out of 5 stars On the border between potency and preposterousness
Essence of Mishima in one very artful, very imaginative short novel, published in 1963, about a boy who observes a handsome young sailor's relationship with his widowed mother as... Read more

Published on 9 April 2001 by cdonald@baiko.ac.jp

5.0 out of 5 stars An invitaion beyond the realms of worldly thought
Although the only book I have read by Mishima (so far), it is definately among my favourites. Mishima's aim was to shock people, and so he does. Read more

Published on 20 Feb 2000

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