Yukio Mishima is a legendary Japanese novelist born in Tokyo, Japan, on June 14, 1925. He is credited with more than thirty literary works, critical essays, and plays in Japanese classical theatre and films. He promoted the theory of nihilism in his artworks. Some of his most interesting novels where he promoted the theory include the “Confessions of a Mask” and the “The Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea.” Nihilism is the view that there is no such thing as truth or knowledge and that, thus, all values are meaningless. It’s frequently linked to a kind of doom and gloom, a radical cynicism that finds everything in life a waste of time. A real nihilist would be without faith, allegiance, or goals other than the desire to destroy everything. (Kahn, 2020). Therefore, nihilism denies all moral and religious principles in the idea that life has no meaning. “Confessions of a Mask” was Mishima’s second book and identified him as one of the Japanese avant-garde ancestor movements. The work examines issues of identity, militarism, and societal pressure, in Japanese society.
Kochan, the protagonist in the book “Confessions of a Mask,” is a teenage boy tormented psychologically by his growing attraction to fellow men. Kochan is a meek-like boy and, therefore, unable to engage in more athletic-related activities, which his classmates often enjoy (Kahn, 2020). He starts to become aware of his increased attraction to several of the lads in his class, notably the physique of his buddy Omi who is entering puberty (Ilis, 2020). He pursues a relationship with a woman, Sonoko, to conceal the fact that he is gay; however, his attraction to males strengthens. Kochan is thinking about Japan’s future and his role inside its deeply ingrained sense of propriety as the war news spreads in Tokyo.
Mishima’s coming of age after the Japanese war is reflected in Confessions of a Mask, which he wrote. Young Yukio Mishima’s work was published in English that was lauded by luminaries like Gore Vidal, James Baldwin, and Christopher Isherwood. Kochan is the name of the main character in the narrative. Kochan is a miniature of the author’s name, Kimitake. Because he was brought up during Japan’s period of imperialism and right-wing militarism, he has had difficulty fitting in with society from a very young age. Kochan, like Mishima, was born with a less-than-ideal body in terms of robustness and physical fitness. He struggles passionately to conform to Japanese society during the novel’s first section (Ilis, 2020). Kochan is a weak homosexual, and as he is raised, he is kept far away from the boys his age, so he is not revealed to the norm. It is possible that his seclusion contributed to his future preoccupations and dreams involving death, same-sex and violent encounters.
One of the most universal and natural human traits that bring us together and give our lives purpose is our appreciation of aesthetics. On the other hand, its nuances may be lost on or emphasized by different persons, leading to a wide range of conflicting and nuanced emotional responses. Kochan, the protagonist of “Confessions of a Mask,” is appreciative of and attracted to beauty. However, he experiences a very different response to female and male beauty because he was denied to have male friends as a child. As a result, Kochan feels compelled and possessed to be around other men even though he tries to resist such attraction (Kahn, 2020).
Kochan’s formative years spent under his overprotective grandmother’s care profoundly impacted his development. He develops into a thoughtful and perceptive young man. Kochan is generally left alone by his grandmother, who is afraid that other boys may ruin her grandson. Because of this, he has to turn within for comfort and enjoyment instead of engaging with the world around him. Being alone allowed him to explore parts of his psyche that would be taboo to most of his contemporaries. His feelings go deeper than most boys of his age, leading him to a tragic realization that beauty is inextricably linked to violence and death.
He admires the irrationality of violence, the underlying danger of soldiers, the contradiction between their toned and able bodies, and the destructive power they represent. Plus, he cannot wait to smell their perspiration and hear them march, which he justifies by saying he wants to steal “the banned cartridges from them.” His connection with society, himself, and his body is further defined by the striking contrast between agony, beauty, and suffering in the painting of St. Sebastian, which both stimulates and feeds his fantasies.
Kochan’s views on women’s attractiveness evolve and provoke debate as the book progresses. Upon learning that the image depicting a knight in armor is really of Joan of Arc, he gets enraged as well as loses interest in it. He considers seeing a woman dressed in male garb to be offensive. He is also a huge fan of the Japanese magician Shokyokusai Tonkatsu and the American movie star Cleopatra for her feminine attractiveness. When juxtaposed with the more subdued aesthetic of traditional Japanese performance, they create an exotic and foreign duo. He feels pressured by their taste in cloth and puts on his mother’s clothing and experiment with her cosmetics. However, when he does so, the maid and his mother respond negatively, further complicating his path to discovering who he is and coming to terms with his natural disposition. Gill (2015) asserts that because of fear of rejection, through the humiliation of his innocent experiments with his gender presentation and forbidding the femininity in him, his family members unknowingly push and shove him into his first closet, thus leading to the growth of nihilism in him.
Kochan is often fascinated by his fellow men due to their destructive force, dirt, and innate aggressiveness, yet the women in his life do not have these qualities. He recognizes and appreciates their attractiveness but has no strong feelings of attraction or lust. He is self-aware of his homosexuality and strives to overcome it by willpower alone. That realization furthers the ladies’ separation since he naturally regards himself as unworthy of their affection. When he first sees Sonoko, he likens her to light trembling; just being in her presence cleanses him. He says, “Never before in my life has the image of beauty and loveliness in a lady so affected my heart.”
Upon first meeting Sonoko, he experiences an overwhelming sense of loss that he is unable to explain to himself until much later, when he realizes that, at that very moment, he has already known that he would not be able to love her deeply, become her husband, or build traditional relationships of any kind. Kochan tries to conceal his homosexuality within the setting of Imperial Japan. In the novel’s beginning, Kochan does not quite come out and say that he has a crush on guys, but he does say that he admires power and masculinity and has no desire to be with a woman. This category includes a fondness for statues and sculptures of muscular Roman males (Ilis, 2020). Some have hypothesized that Mishima’s struggle to overcome his originally weak physique and become a phenomenally fit bodybuilder and male model explains the author’s adoration of masculinity.
Kochan is often inspired by the painting called “Guido Reni’s Saint Sebastian.” In the book’s opening section, Kochan thinks back to being four years old and remembering a picture book he had. Even at that tender age, Kochan saw a single photo of a chivalrous-looking European knight riding on horseback nearly as pornographic, staring at it ardently before concealing it away in embarrassment when anybody else came to see him.
Kochan creates a fictitious character to portray to the public, thus the noun “mask.” From a young age, he has often been amazed by his friend Omi’s changing physical changes throughout puberty. He thinks that everyone around him is engaging in a “reluctant masquerade” of sorts by concealing their genuine emotions from one another. Another of Yukio Mishima’s novels, “Confessions of a Mask,” similarly depicts his advocacy for nihilism (Kahn, 2020). His “masquerade” is a metaphor for his existence “in the closet,” which, in queer theory, refers to hiding one’s gay identity for reasons ranging from comfort to safety.
The Closet Epistemology, written by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, a leading queer theorist, and considered a classic in 1990, describes the closet as “the defining framework for homosexual subjugation” in the 20th century. For my part, I contend that early Shwa Japan’s cultural and social standards reflected this systemic oppression and led to the marginalization of individuals who did not comply. Concepts of heteronormativity, hegemonic masculinity, and gender roles are only some of the conventions that contribute to the building of Kochan’s closet in “Confessions of a Mask.” Kochan’s abrupt and hollow disillusionment with the world results from the emotional violence he inflicts on himself throughout the novel.
It was not Yukio Mishima’s intention to stage the “right-wing coup d’etat” that ultimately failed and resulted in his suicide through harakiri 14 in November of 1970 depicting nihilism, nor did he realize at the time that his legacy would survive as one of Japan’s most talented and prolific modern era authors (Ilis, 2020). “Confessions of a Mask” was published in 1949 as the nation and the people of Japan struggled to heal from the World War II carnage (O’Brien, 2019). He did realize that both his work “Confessions of a Mask” and his subsequent novel, “Forbidden Colors (1951)”, became landmarks for the LGBT community in postwar Japan.
The ending of “Confessions of a Mask” is abrupt and unpleasant, more like the events of the day of Mishima’s death, and it raises more questions than answers. ” Confessions of a Mask” is essential as a queer tale in the aftermath of Mishima’s death if he used Kochan to securely express his gay desires inside the world of fiction, as academics widely assume he was (Kahn, 2020). More than twenty years after Kochan’s narrative was published, Mishima may have given us the genuine ending, leaving us to lament the death of two disturbed but bright people who could not survive what Kochan termed “the unwilling mask.”
Conclusion
The truthfulness of Kochan’s experiences is what gives Confessions its lasting significance. The fact that Kochan’s suffering, isolation, and othering are still issues today should frighten, upset, and outrage us. The fact that Mishima accurately captured an aspect of the contemporary queer experience, in which queer people are threatened and dominated by the hegemonic masculinity establishment, gender norms, and heteronormativity establishments, makes it moot whether he was speaking from experience or not when writing the Confessions.
References
Kahn, R. (2020). Masks, culture wars, and public health expertise: Confessions of a mask’expert’. University of St. Thomas Law Journal, Forthcoming, U of St. Thomas (Minnesota) Legal Studies Research Paper, (20 08).https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3644610
O’Brien, D. (2019). John Marmysz (2017) Cinematic Nihilism: Encounters, Confrontations, Overcomings. https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/full/10.3366/film.2019.0101
Ilis, F. (2020). THE MASK AVATARS IN THE WORKS OF MISHIMA YUKIO AND ROLE PLAYED BY THE SUBJECT-OBJECT RELATION. Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai-Philologia, 65(1), 27-40. https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=840348
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