Stirring a Conservative Society

Born Kimitake Hiraoka, Yukio Mishima is one of the most revered names in the ambit of Japanese literature. He has crafted a literary legacy that transcended time; this lush literary heritage elevated him as one of the most, if not the most influential and important Japanese writers of the 20th century. He published his debut novel, Kamen no kukuhaku (Confessions of a Mask), was published when he was only twenty-four years old. It was an immediate sensation that marked the ascent of a remarkable new voice in Japanese literature. This initial success reinforced Mishima’s resolve to pursue writing as a full-time career. The rest, they say is history. His career spanned over two decades and produced essays, short stories, and even scripts for classical Japanese theater. He even starred in multiple films.

The diversity of his works easily makes him one of the representative writers of Japanese literature. However, it was his novels that cemented his legacy as a top-notch writer and made him a household name not just in Japan but across the world. A prodigious talent, his works, including Sea of Fertility Tetralogy and The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, are critically acclaimed. Beyond writing, Mishima is quite a controversial figure within and beyond Japanese literary circles. His political activism and ideologies set him apart. He also had no scruples when pushing the boundaries of his writing and confronting norms and societal values. Despite the controversies and his untimely demise in 1970, he remains an icon of Japanese and world literature. The passage of time has also not blunted the luster of his illustrious career.

Among his more controversial and shocking works was his third novel, 禁色 (Kinjiki), originally published in serialized form between 1951 and 1953. Translated into English in 1968 as Forbidden Colors, the novel initially focuses on aging and cynical novelist and poet Shunsuke Hinoki. He built a literary career that elevated him to being one of Japan’s most respected postwar authors. He was aging and has become obsessed with death. Several rejections from women and three disastrous marriages that ended in divorce also transformed him into an embittered man. He grew up to be a viciously misogynistic old man who wanted to get even with the women who broke his heart and with women in general. The opportunity for revenge came with a chance encounter with a young man named Minami while vacationing at an exclusive Japanese resort.

“Someone once said that homosexuals have on their faces a certain loneliness that will not come off. Besides, in their glances flirtatiousness and the cold stare of appraisal are combined. Although the coquettish looks that women direct at the opposite sex and the appraising glances they direct at their own sex have quite separate functions, with the homosexual both are directed at one and the same person.”

~ Yukio Mishima, Forbidden Colors

Yuichi is a gorgeous young man who easily captivates both men and women. Of humble origins and limited intellect, he was engaged to a conventional but naïve young woman named Yasuko. Unlike Yuichi, Yasuko was born to an affluent family and their pairing was socially approved; it was arranged by both sets of parents. The engagement would benefit Yuichi financially. However, as he confessed to the Shunsuke, he did not feel any physical attraction toward Yasuko. Yuichi, as Shunsuke would note, was incapable of heterosexual attraction. All of these factors made Yuichi the perfect candidate for carrying out Shunsuke’s revenge toward womankind. Without ado, Shunsuke formed a deal with the young man: Yuichi would become the sole heir of Shunsuke’s considerable estate in exchange for the young man’s help. Being the naïve young man that he is, Yuichi agrees.

Shunsuke managed to persuade the gullible young man by remarking that that his inability to feel any desire for women was not a weakness Without ado, Shunsuke encouraged Yuichi to bind himself into a loveless marriage. The older man also tutored the younger man on the arts of emotional betrayal and encouraged him to treat women badly. Shunsuke encouraged Yuichi to pursue extramarital affairs that involved both men and women of varying ages and from different social backgrounds. All the while, Yuichi stayed in his loveless marriage which was slowly transforming into a cruel experiment. Yuichi’s treatment of his wife is a microcosm of how Shunsuke wanted him to treat women in general. He provoked his wife’s jealousy with his thinly veiled affairs. Yuichi does not grant his wife any pleasure, refusing to share her enthusiasm and her domestic pleasures. He also cruelly rejected his wife’s affection and genuine love.

Apart from Yasuko, two females figured prominently in the story. Both women were former lovers of Shunsuke who prodded Yuichi to have an affair with them and drove them to distraction. Kyoko was a young and sophisticated society wife who equaled Yuichi in beauty. Mrs. Kaburagi, on the other hand, was an older bourgeois socialite. Mrs. Kaburagi fell in love with Yuichi only to find out later that her husband was also romantically involved with the young man. With each affair, Shunsuke’s hand was increasingly becoming palpable. Yuichi was his tool and Shunsuke was pretty much in control. The older man subtly arranged for all of Yuichi’s dalliances with his rivals and those who hurt him. All of these were orchestrated with malice, designed to inflict hurt on women.

On top of encouraging Yuichi in his extramarital liaisons and his exploitation of women, Shunsuke encouraged the young man to explore Tokyo’s underground gay scene. Yuichi has become a familiar presence in the postwar underground gay scene, inhabiting places frequented by homosexuals such as parks, bars, and tea shops catering mainly to gay clientele. He was slowly being swept into the heart of the gay scene. His physical beauty was magnetic and did not escape the notice of fellow gay men who fervently vied for his attention. At the center of unexpected attention, Yuichi was slowly becoming aware of the power his physical beauty held. The scale was tipping toward his favor as he was learning to venture more by himself. How will this light bulb moment change the dynamics between him and Shunsuke?

“Beauty has become a stimulus to garrulity. It has gotten so that on confronting the beautiful one feels duty-bound to say something in a great hurry. It has gotten so we feel we must convert beauty right away. If we don’t convert it, it’s dangerous. Like explosives, beauty has become a difficult thing to own. The power of possessing beauty through silence, this majestic power for which one would lay down his life, has been lost.”

~ Yukio Mishima, Forbidden Colors

Forbidden Colors‘ Japanese title sets out the premise of the story. Kinjiki refers to colors that were prohibited to be worn by people of various ranks in the Japanese court but it is also used as a euphemism for same-sex love. The book’s English title is derived from the two kanji characters comprising the book’s original Japanese title: 禁 which means forbidden and 色 which means erotic love. The latter can also mean color. One of the novel’s underlying themes is same-sex relationships. Mishima painted a vivid portrait of the gay scene in post-war Japan. Readers are spectators of the gay society of the time which, owing to the conservative and patriarchal nature of Japanese society, was forced to go underground. Young gay men like Yuichi frequent coffee shops where they wait for affluent men or foreigners to pick them up.

As has been the case in most conservative societies, homosexual Japanese men were forced to go underground and obscure their feelings from what society viewed as the norm for men. They found safe spaces in coffee shops that harbored them. They also meet under the added seclusion provided by the dark. Societal exclusion, however, was not limited to homosexual men. The three main female characters all struggle to find purpose in life. Despite her husband’s infidelities, Yasuko was resolute in playing the role of a loving wife. She opted to look the other way around. The state of LGBTQ+ in postwar Japan interestingly underlines subjects prevalent in Mishima’s oeuvre. It was palpable that the desirability of homosexual men is defined by youth. On the other hand, Shunsuke is an aging and cynical man. Beauty is also defined by youth. Yuichi is the epitome of beauty while Shunsuke is his antithesis. Shunsuke concludes that his ugliness repels women.

Despite society’s views of homosexuality, Yuichi was unashamed of who he was. This formed the mantel of the story and presented an opportunity for Shunsuke to manipulate and take advantage of him. Seen from a different lens, it can be surmised that Shunsuke’s outright misogyny is symptomatic of his own repressed homosexuality. As the story moves forward and Shunsuke gets more involved with Yuichi, he finds himself slowly being pulled by Yuichi’s magnetic beauty. Misogyny is the second major theme of the story. Shunsuke influences Yuichi’s view of women by telling the young man that women are supposed to be treated as lowly members of society. Shunsuke even kept a diary where he detailed his opinions of women. Lest anyone, particularly the women, finds the diary, Shunsuke wrote in French.

The book addressed same-sex relationships and misogyny while also tackling contrasting elements of beauty and ugliness, and aging and youth. These are, however, not the only main elements of the story. Infidelity is palpably attached to the subject of same-sex and loveless relationships. Couples are stuck in loveless marriages due to the practice of arranged marriages, like in the case of Yasuko and Yuichi. Revenge is another evident subject. Manipulation, hypocrisy, and shallowness provided glimpses into the inner world of the characters. One prominent subject was conformity. The rigid Japanese society coaxes everyone to conform to its norms and conventions. Denizens who do not belong to the mainstream are forced to live miserable lives. This is most evident in the case of the members of the LGBTQ+ who have no recourse but to live underground and behind masks.

“In a big city, there are always fires somewhere. And there are always crimes somewhere, too. God, despairing of burning away crime with fire, perhaps distributed crime and fire in equal quantities. Thus crime is never consumed by fire, while innocence can be burned up. That’s why insurance companies prosper. My guilt, however – in order that it might become a pure thing immune to fire, must not my innocence first pass through the fire?”

~ Yukio Mishima, Forbidden Colors

Narcissism pervaded Forbidden Colors, with the men the highest representations. The men were nasty and self-destructive. Death is also explored in the story, particularly in Shunsuke’s obsession with it. However, the story was not always bleak. The characters redeemed themselves, reaching cathartic moments as the story approached its conclusion. An empowered Yuichi liberated himself from Shunsuke’s influences, returning all the money he received from the old man. Although he remained incapable of loving them, Yuichi started to develop sympathy for women. The Kaburagis, meanwhile, were able to weather the storm. Their relationship, against Shunsuke’s estimation, became stronger. Mrs. Kaburagi even helped Yuichi hide his homosexuality from his wife.

As what Mishima has accomplished with his works, the premise of Forbidden Colors discomfited and stirred shock. It was, nevertheless, a groundbreaking work at the time of its publication. Mishima’s third novel is a multilayered story that addresses same-sex relationships and misogyny while exploring a plethora of contrasting subjects such as aging and youth; physical beauty; and even mortality. Forbidden Colors commands the reader’s attention as it is no mere exploration of same-sex relationships and misogyny. It also doubles as a social commentary with the inner world of the characters reflecting the maladies afflicting postwar Japan. Forbidden Colors is a complex yet memorable read from a masterful storyteller.

“This company – this choosing, craving, pursuing, joyfully seeking, sighing, dreaming, loitering company – this company with sentiments wedded by the narcotic of custom – this company whose desire had been changed to something ugly by an incurable esthetic disease exchange fixedly sad stares as its members roved under the dim light of the street lamps. In the night many, many, wide-open, thirsty glances met and melted into each other. At the bend of the path, hand in hand, shoulder against shoulder, eyes over shoulders, while the night breeze softly wrestled the branches; now coming, now going again, the appraising looks sharply cast crossed in the same place.”

~ Yukio Mishima, Forbidden Colors
Book Specs

Author: Yukio Mishima
Translator (from Japanese): Alfred H. Marks
Publisher: Vintage International
Publishing Date: March 1999
No. of Pages: 403
Genre: Literary

Synopsis

From one of Japan’s greatest modern writers comes an exquisitely disturbing novel of sexual combat and concealed passion, a work that distills beauty, longing, and loathing into an intoxicating poisoned cocktail. An aging, embittered novelist sets out to avenge himself on the women who have betrayed him. He finds the perfect instrument in Yuichi, a young man whose beauty makes him irresistible to women but who is just discovering his attraction to other men.

As Yuichi’s mentor presses him into a loveless marriage and series of equally loveless philanderings, his protege enters the gay underworld of postwar Japan. In that hidden society of parks and tearooms, prostitutes and aristocratic blackmailers, Yuichi is as defenseless as any of the women he preys on. Mordantly observed, intellectually provocative, and filled with icy eroticism, Forbidden Colors is a masterpiece.

About the Author

To learn more about Kimitake Hiraoka more popularly known by his pseudonym Yukio Mishima, click here.