Who was Shintaro Ishihara, and why were his accomplishments reflected in Yukio Mishima's ambitions, or vice versa?
"Mr Shintaro Ishihara was the Goethe of Japan. I was his pupil, a person in the same profession, and his escort runner. Here I have woven together my private recollections, which span as long as twenty-plus years and 'my unfulfilled promise' to him." ー Shin Ushijima
Chapter 1.2 Mishima's Shadow
Follow the book, My Mentor, Shintaro Ishihara, by Shin Ushijima, as it's published.
There was one thing that had puzzled me for a long time. That was Mr Ishihara's choice of university, Hitotsubashi.
Why did he choose Hitotsubashi? According to his own explanation, after his father died, his brother Yujiro, who later became a famous actor, would pilfer valuables from their home and sell them, then live it up day after day. Then, at some point, a friend of his father's told him that a new profession called certified public accountant had been established, which promised to be highly lucrative. And in those days, Hitotsubashi was the best university for that profession.
Strangely enough, however, Ishihara entered the Faculty of Law. To become a certified public accountant, you needed to study at the Faculty of Commerce. This question bothered me for a long time, but I had never asked Mr Ishihara about it.
Just recently, however, a clear explanation emerged to answer my long-standing question. Hitotsubashi, in those days, used to divide enrolled students into faculties by test results. That explained why, despite his original intentions to become a Certified Public Accountant, he ended up in the Faculty of Law.
A 'Solar Eclipse'
Speaking of the relationship between Mr Ishihara and Yukio Mishima, I feel compelled to mention The Solar Eclipse of Yukio Mishima (1991)." Authored by Ishihara, this book covers Mishima's life during the period from 1956 to 1990. It gives a full account of how Mr Ishihara viewed him, but at the same time, it amounts to the author's own soul-searching. The same nature is reflected in Genius ("Tensai"), on the theme of former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka. It was published by Gentosha Inc in 2016. After all, novelists cannot help but write about themselves and their own stories.
Two passages in Ishihara's Solar Eclipse particularly stand out.
One is his remark on the book of collected photos of Mishima, published by Shinchosha in 1983. Commenting on various photos of Mishima after he had shot to fame, Ishihara writes, "His self-consciousness oozes out, his pretension vividly on display." He also writes, "Looking at them leaves one feeling exhausted, or rather a bit disgusted."
Then he goes on to add, "My favorite photo is the one taken near Yotsuya Mitsuke, when he was in his early 20s and still a civil servant. In it, he exudes fatigue from his double life of working at the ministry and his profession of letters at home. The photo mirrors a lonely young man who harbors anxiety in his life before making his rise to fame, while at the same time revealing his unshakable determination. It captures the transience and insecurity of adolescence, and the beauty that comes with it." [The Solar Eclipse of Yukio Mishima, 1991.]
Mishima's Photo Book
As a side note, while the text here reads "Yotsuya Mitsuke," it corresponds to "Yotsuya, Tokyo" in the book of collected photos. This also shows a typical aspect of Mr Ishihara, as Jun Eto once described him, of having an "excess of unconsciousness." Knowing Mr Ishihara, he might have heard it directly from Yukio Mishima.
Ishihara's impressions of the photo book stand in contrast to an anecdote relating his first encounter with Yukio Mishima.
In the book, he recounts an episode when he posed for photos alongside Yukio Mishima on the rooftop terrace of Bungeishunju Ltd, which, in those days, was located on Dentsu Avenue in Shimbashi.
As Ishihara relates, Mishima was "wearing a trench coat and kid gloves of a greenish brown hue, which matched his suit under the coat." Mr Ishihara warned him to be careful because the railing was very dirty, smeared with soot and smoke. But "Mishima leaned further forward, as if deliberately wiping the dirt off the railing with his gloved hands." (Solar Eclipse at P9.)
As it turned out, his suit and gloves became very dirty. However, Mishima, undeterred, broke into uproarious laughter while they debated whether the title of the photo should be "the defiance of old and new mavericks."
"As I watched him, I tried to figure out what kind of person he was. But at the same time, I couldn't shake the feeling that he was overexerting himself and heading somewhere unknown," Ishihara recounts at page 10.
Political Ambitions
A second instance of note was that Ishihara ran for the Upper House of the Diet at the age of 35 and won easily with more than 3 million votes. I saw him in the flesh at that very time and described my impressions in Is My Homeland Worth Sacrificing My Life for?:
"I caught sight of Mr Ishihara ー sporting a 'Shintaro-style haircut' (short hair like a crew cut) and clad in a white blazer with no adornment except for a Japanese flag pinned to his chest. He was a radiant future Caesar, standing atop his campaign van, with a brilliance so dazzling it nearly blinded me. It was in front of JR Nippori Station. As I watched him, my thoughts turned to Caesar's The Gallic Wars."
That is precisely how it was.
Yukio Mishima's Grudge
There is a story that Yukio Mishima had intended to run in the election, too, but Mr Ishihara got a head start on him. Thereafter, it seems, Mishima was in a very bad mood for a while.
According to a secondhand account by Hiroko Sato, the wife of former Prime Minister Eisaku Sato, "Yukio Mishima often complained to his mother before his death that he was so bored that he would rather die than keep leading a drab life. His mother asked him why he was so bored, and he whined in a tantrum that the Nobel Prize [in Literature] went to Yasunari Kawabata, and Ishihara became a politician." (P102, The Solar Eclipse of Yukio Mishima.)
Ishihara's reaction was simple. "In a nutshell, it seems that I have deprived him of the plaything he was craving," Ishihara said, putting two and two together. (Same page.)
His use of "plaything" may sound familiar to Ishihara's fans. He used the same term in Season of the Sun: "Her act of killing herself deprived Tatsuya of his favorite plaything for good… the plaything which does not fall apart no matter how many times it is punched." (Page 80, Season of the Sun.)
I found it peculiar that Mr Ishihara used "plaything" for the Diet member position that Yukio Mishima so badly craved, as well as for Tatsuya's beloved dead girlfriend. However, any logical explanation eludes me.
'Utterly Beyond Redemption'
Mr Ishihara kindly read some of my books.
"Ushijima-san, you don't capture the dynamic of affairs between men and women in your books. Mind you, this world is only composed of men and women," he admonished me once.
"If you say so," I replied. "Maybe so, but I am more interested in organizations and individuals than affairs between men and women." At that point, I suspect, he regarded me as utterly beyond redemption.
Find the Table of Contents
(To read the book in Japanese, please visit the publisher's website.)
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Author: Shin Ushijima
