Review: 'The Frolic of the Beasts' by Yukio Mishima, trans. by Andrew Clare

I'm still working away at my backlog and last week, while suffering from Covid, I re-discovered this little gem. Sometimes I could beat myself up over my own inability to get to amazing books like these straightaway. But then I was in the perfect mindset to read this puzzle box of a novel right now. Thanks to Vintage and NetGalley for giving me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. My apologies for the delay!

Pub. Date: 11/27/2018
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday; Vintage

Translated into English for the first time, a gripping short novel about an affair gone wrong, from the author of the Sea of Fertility tetralogy.

Set in rural Japan shortly after World War II, The Frolic of the Beasts tells the story of a strange and utterly absorbing love triangle between a former university student, Koji; his would-be mentor, the eminent literary critic Ippei Kusakudo; and Ippei's beautiful, enigmatic wife, Yuko. When brought face-to-face with one of Ippei's many marital indiscretions, Koji finds his growing desire for Yuko compels him to action in a way that changes all three of their lives profoundly. Originally published in 1961 and now available in English for the first time, The Frolic of the Beasts is a haunting examination of the various guises we assume throughout our lives, and a tale of psychological self-entrapment, seduction, and crime.

Before The Frolic of the Beasts most of the Japanese literature I had read was crime fiction and thrillers. I was really intrigued by the difference between what I will generally call "Western" thrillers and Japanese ones. Where the former is very focused on the internal lives of its characters and often explores their emotional highs and lows ad nauseam, I found that Japanese thrillers had a bit more of a remove, a bit more of a puzzlebox approach, which, at least for me, actually served to highlight the intense emotional states of their characters. Many of the thrillers were locked-room thrillers, which brings about a sense of doom, impossibility, and foreboding. But these locked rooms, to me at least, also seem to mirror the mindset of the characters. We are all locked rooms, unable to fully reveal ourselves to others, and yet so much goes on inside the locked rooms of our minds which impacts the world beyond. While The Frolic of the Beasts is not technically a thriller, I would say, it is equally full of suspense and it once again made me aware of how we can never fully grasp what another person really thinks or feels. And this inability to fully connect to and know someone else, to entirely understand them, to separate the real person from the one we have constructed in our mind, is the real tragedy of Mishima's novel for me.

The Frolic of the Beasts starts with Koji on his way to Ippei and Yuko, who now live in a remote area and run a plant nursery. They have a long history, or rather, a dramatic one, which is revealed to the reader in flashbacks. But there is also more drama to come, and so the novel and its characters are suspended between these two high moments of tension. As you can maybe tell, I am really trying not to spoil anything because the beauty with which Mishima reveals these moments, the insights it gives (or denies) into the characters, and how the inevitability of fate draws them on, is stunning. The novel is told primarily through the perspective of Koji, whose youth and initial naivety bring a kind of awe and urgency to the novel which really pushes it forward. There is also an epilogue which adds a whole new level to the novel, one which perhaps not everyone may appreciate, but which added a new appreciation for me.

I had never read anything by Yukio Mishima before and read up on him after finishing the novel. He lived a fascinating and complex life, one filled with adoration for traditional Japan, and it ended tragically at his own hand. He was very nationalistic and even founded his own militia, and yet his writing is filled with natural beauty and the complexity of human emotional life. I'm not saying these are necessarily opposites or contradictory, but I am intrigued at how they come together here. The Frolic of the Beasts is inspired by a 14th century Noh play, Motomezuka, which centres on a tragic love triangle, but it is really the masks of Noh theatre which seem to have inspired Mishima. As we only get Koji's perspective, it is almost impossible to get a read on Ippei and Yuko. Their faces are like masks and like Koji I don't think we ever entirely understand them and their motivations. This might make it an unsatisfying read for some, but for me this gave me the chance to consider my own feelings. We can't help but project ourselves onto blank canvases, after all. The Frolic of the Beasts is consumed by thoughts of shame and guilt, by the desire to keep up facades and yet also be truly free, by the riptide between death and life. All this human drama is surrounded by the serene and vivid landscape which Mishima summons up. I could get lost in his descriptions of nature, of his nuanced depiction of sunlight shining through a window. It makes The Frolic of the Beasts feel a little like a fever dream, this contrast between natural beauty and human turmoil, and I think perhaps that might be the effect Mishima intended it to have. Andrew Clare's translation is stunning, full of nuance, which on the one hand suggests the restraint of human society and on the other hand shows the depth and vulnerability of the human psyche.

I give this novel...

4 Universes!

The Frolic of the Beasts is perhaps not for everyone, but I was deeply intrigued by the way it unravels the story of its three protagonists through time-jumps and small details. While it is utterly dramatic, there is also a real restraint to much of it, which makes for a fascinating reading experience.