Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters

Good morning.

Good morning, Mr. Mishima. Would you like breakfast now?

Not today.

What about the children?

Your wife's already taken them to school.

Recently I've sensed that

an accumulation of many things

which cannot be expressed

by an objective form like the novel.

Words are insufficient.

So I found another form of expression.

Is everything as planned?

Read these in the car.

I'll be right out.

Did you get my letter?

Don't worry. You'll find our little drama newsworthy.

And bring a photographer.

When I examine my early childhood,

l see myself as a boy leaning at the window...

forever watching a world I was unable to change,

forever hoping it would change by itself.

At seven weeks of age, I was taken from my mother

by my grandmother.

Close the curtain!

It's almost time

for him to visit his mother.

No! I need him to rub my legs.

Tell her I'm too sick this week.

Next week.

You would have died

in your mother's care.

A delicate plant like you...

must not go outdoors.

If you want her so much, just go!

Leave me forever!

Be a good boy and rub my legs.

That's wonderful.

Only you can make Grandma feel better.

I looked after my grandmother's failing health.

She entertained me with stories and provided playmates.

On special occasions, she arranged

trips to the theater.

- Watch it! - Sorry.

Don't apologize to these commoners.

Can you believe these crowds?

When I was a girl,

people still had a modicum of manners.

Eat your lunch.

Look. All this riff-raff.

You're just a fragile plant.

The theater is very stimulating. You're old enough to go now.

It would have been too much for you before.

The stage made everything more beautiful.

It turned men into women.

It transformed the entire world.

Look this way.

Look up, sweet.

When I was 12, my grandmother, then dying,

permitted me to return to the care of my mother.

Later that year I entered middle school.

All right, you cowards!

Who's next?

Who is this? The poet?

Mr. Tough.

I'm shaking.

- You'll get killed! - Mama's boy!

In my earliest years, I realized life consisted

of two contradictory elements.

One was words, which could change the world.

The other was the world itself, which had nothing to do with words.

For the average person,

the body precedes language.

In my case, words came first.

I can't hear a word you're saying.

Your name's Mizoguchi. I know what you want.

To be friends because we're both cripples.

Your stuttering and my frog feet.

That's all right. I do too.

You're still a virgin, right?

Yeah, I thought so.

No success with girls,

and not enough guts to go to a whore.

If you're looking for another virgin, you struck out with me.

Stutter! Go ahead and stutter.

Virgins are beautiful,

but there's nothing beautiful about you.

Guys like us

are just like beautiful girls.

We get sick of always being stared at.

It's like...

a m-m-mirror...

you can't b-b-break.

You're so self-important.

You make too big a deal about your stuttering.

I suppose you're a damn poet.

G-g-Golden Pavilion.

It's too beautiful.

An acolyte.

Even worse.

Face the fact you'll never be loved.

It's the same for everybody.

You can trick girls into loving your deformity

instead of hating it.

Come on. I'll show you.

Damn!

You did that on purpose!

What can I do?

You just going to walk away?

Help me up.

Is there a doctor nearby?

My house is around the corner.

Suddenly I came across a picture

whose only purpose had been to lie in wait for centuries and ambush me.

The white matchless beauty of the youth's body

hung against the tree trunk, his hands tied by thongs.

I trembled with joy. My loins swelled.

My hand unconsciously began a motion it had never been taught.

My need to transform reality was an urgent necessity,

as important as three meals a day or sleep.

Beautiful.

Mm, really.

Scenic beauty is hell, isn't it?

Take that one up the path and screw her.

She wants it.

B-b-but how?

Make her pity your stutter.

Make her worship it. That's why we're here.

Stutter!

Maybe she'll fall in love with a stutterer.

Do you stutter?

Well, are all the deformities here today?

Let's split up.

We'll meet here again in two hours.

D-d-do you want to go home?

He's gone off and made her feel she's a saint.

That's his usual trick.

H-h-how do you know?

Oh, come on.

How do you think?

What are you doing?

What's wrong?

Just as I thought.

It seems you haven't been going to school.

Have you been ill?

Master...

That's no way for a Zen acolyte to behave.

Master...

Nothing's that unbearable.

You'll get over it.

No. Everything...

is p-p-powerless.

What happened? She ran away?

It was as s-s-small as this but grew so big.

It filled the world...

like tremendous music.

That's the p-p-power...

of beauty's eternity.

It poisons us.

It blocks out...

our fives.

Please, enough of your pride!

Beauty is like a rotten tooth.

It rubs against your tongue, hurting,

insisting on its own importance.

Finally you go to a dentist and have it pulled.

Then you look at the small bloody tooth in your hand

and say, "Is that all it was?"

That's the way it is.

Only knowledge

can turn life's unbearableness into a weapon.

Beauty...

is now...

my enemy...

Life is b-b-bearable only when I imagine...

the G-Golden Pavilion...

has been destroyed.

The American b-b-bombers will come.

Then...

I'll be free.

When I was 18, my class was assigned air-raid duty.

I wrote short stories and poems

but dreamed only of joining the war

and dying for the Emperor.

I wanted to explode like a rocket,

light the sky for an instant and disappear.

I took the pen name Yukio Mishima.

What are you doing?

Nothing.

I thought you were at Lit. Club.

You kidding? That mediocre bunch?

You should try to make more friends, sweet.

It's not good to be alone so much.

"This is no precocious genius.

He is not a writer. And never will be."

What's this?

That's a "respected" poet.

He's talking about me.

Don't show it to anyone else.

They might agree.

Cough.