Spring Snow (9 page)

Read Spring Snow Online

Authors: Yukio Mishima

“Hello, is this the Ayakura residence? Please may I speak to Miss Satoko?” Kiyoaki asked, after the familiar voice of an old woman had answered. From distant Azabu, her voice expressed a certain displeasure, though remaining agonizingly polite.
“It’s young Master Matsugae, I believe? I’m terribly sorry, but it’s so late, I’m afraid.”
“Has Miss Satoko gone to bed?”
“Well, no, I don’t believe she has retired yet.”
After Kiyoaki persisted, Satoko finally came to the phone. The sound of her warm, clear voice cheered him immensely.
“Kiyo, what in the world do you want at this time of night?”
“Well, to tell the truth, I sent you a letter yesterday. Now I must ask you something. When it comes, please, whatever you do, don’t open it. Please promise me that you’ll throw it right into the fire.”
“Well really, Kiyo, I don’t know what you’re talking about . . .” Something in Satoko’s apparently calm voice told Kiyoaki that she had started to weave her usual net of ambiguities. And her voice on this cold winter night was as warm and ripe as an apricot in June. He said impatiently, “I know you don’t. So just please listen and promise. When my letter comes, throw it in the fire right away without opening it, please?”
“I see.”
“Do you promise?”
“Very well.”
“And now there’s something else I want to ask you . . .”
“This certainly seems to be the night for requests, doesn’t it, Kiyo?”
“Could you do this for me: get tickets to the play at the Imperial Theater for the day after tomorrow for yourself and your maid.”
“A play . . . !”
The abrupt silence at the other end made Kiyoaki afraid that Satoko might refuse, but then he realized that, in his haste, there was something he had forgotten. Given the Ayakuras’ present circumstances, the price of a pair of tickets, at two yen fifty sen apiece, would represent quite an extravagance.
“No, wait, excuse me. I’ll have the tickets sent to you. If your seats are next to ours, people might talk, but I’ll arrange it so that they are somewhere nearby. I’m going with the two princes from Siam, by the way.”
“How kind of you, Kiyo! Tadeshina will be delighted, I’m sure. I’d love to go,” said Satoko, making no effort to conceal her pleasure.
7
 
T
HE NEXT DAY AT SCHOOL
, Kiyoaki asked Honda to join him and the Siamese princes at the Imperial Theater the following night; Honda was pleased, and accepted at once, although not without a vague sense of awkwardness. Kiyoaki, of course, did not choose to tell his friend the part of the plan that provided for the chance encounter with Satoko.
At home that evening during dinner, Honda told his parents about Kiyoaki’s invitation. His father had some reservations about the theater, but felt that he should not restrict the freedom of an eighteen-year-old in matters of this sort.
His father was a justice of the Supreme Court. He saw to it that an atmosphere of decorum reigned in his household. The family lived in a large mansion in Hongo with many rooms, some of which were decorated in the oppressive Western style popular in the Meiji era. Among his servants were a number of students, and books were to be found everywhere. They filled the library and study and even lined the hallways, in an expanse of brown leather and gold lettering.
His mother, too, was the opposite of frivolous. She held office in the Women’s Patriotic League, and she was rather pained that her son should have struck up a close friendship with the son of Marquise Matsugae, a lady who had no taste for such worthwhile activities. Aside from this, however, Shigekuni Honda’s school record, his diligence, his health, and his unfailing good manners were a source of constant pride to his mother, and she never tired of singing his praises to other people.
Everything in the Honda household, down to the most trivial utensil, had to meet exacting standards. Starting with the bonsai in the front entrance, the screen behind it with the painted Chinese ideogram for harmony, the cigarette case and ashtrays laid out in the drawing room, the tasseled tablecloth, and ending with the rice bin in the kitchen, the towel rack in the toilet, the pen holders in the study, and even the various paperweights in the study—each item was perfection of its kind.
And this same care extended to the conversation of the household. In the homes of Honda’s friends, one or two old people could always be counted on to come up with absurd stories. In all seriousness, for example, they might recall the night when two moons had appeared at the window, one of them a badger in disguise who immediately resumed his normal shape on being roundly abused, and lumbered away. And there would always be an appreciative audience. But in his own home, a severe glance from his father would make it clear even to the oldest of the maids that to indulge in such ignorant nonsense was out of the question.
In his youth, his father had spent some years studying law in Germany, and he revered the German respect for logic.
When Shigekuni Honda compared his own home with Kiyoaki’s, one aspect of the contrast particularly amused him. Although the Matsugaes seemed to lead a Westernized life and although their house was filled with objects from abroad, the atmosphere of their home was strikingly and traditionally Japanese. In his own household, on the other hand, the day-today life-style might be Japanese, but the atmosphere had much that was Western in spirit. And then his father’s regard for the education of his student houseboys was in marked contrast to Marquis Matsugae’s attitude toward his.
As usual, once he had finished his homework, which tonight was French, his second foreign language, Honda turned to some law digests. These were written in German, French, and English, and he had had to order them through the Maruzen bookstore. He read these every night in anticipation of the future demands of college work, and also, more significantly, because he had a natural bent to trace everything to its source. Lately, he had begun to lose interest in the European natural law that had exercised such a fascination on him. From the day of the Abbess of Gesshu’s sermon, he had become more and more aware of such a system’s inadequacies.
He realized, however, that although natural law had been comparatively neglected in recent years, no other system of thought displayed such a capacity for survival: it had flourished in different forms suited to each of the many epochs in two thousand years of history—from its apparent origins in Socrates and its powerful influence on the formulation of law in the Roman era through the medium of Aristotle’s writings, to its intricate development and codification during the Christian Middle Ages and its renewed popularity in the Renaissance; this indeed reached such a peak that the period could be called the Age of Natural Law. In all probability, it was this recurrent philosophy that preserved the traditional European faith in the power of reason. Still, Honda could not help thinking that despite its tenacity, two thousand years of its strong, bright, Apollonian humanism had barely sufficed to hold off the assaults of darkness and barbarism.
Nor was the assault limited to these forces. Another, more blinding light had also threatened it, since natural law had to rigidly exclude the very possibility of a concept of existence based on romantic and irrational nationalism.
However that might be, Honda did not necessarily cling to the historical school of law, which was influenced by nineteenth-century romanticism, nor to the ethnic school. The Japan of the Meiji era, indeed, needed a nationalistic type of law, one that had its roots in the philosophy of the historical school. But Honda’s concerns were quite different. He had first been intent on isolating the essential principle behind all law, a principle which he felt must exist. And this was why the concept of natural law had fascinated him for a time. But now he was more concerned to define the outer limits of natural law, which were inadvertently pointed up by its claims to universality. He enjoyed giving his imagination free rein in this direction. If the law, he thought, was to do away with the restrictions that natural law and philosophy had imposed upon man’s vision of the world since ancient times, and break through to a more universal principle (granted that such exists) would it not reach a stage where the law itself, as we know it, would cease to exist?
This was, of course, the kind of dangerous thinking that appealed to youth. And given Honda’s circumstances, with the geometrical structure of Roman law towering so formidably in the background to cast its shadow over the modern operative law that he was now studying, it was no wonder that he found its orthodoxy rather tedious; from time to time, he therefore put aside the legal codes of Meiji Japan, so scrupulously based on Western models, and turned his eyes in another direction—to the broader and more ancient legal traditions of Asia.
In his present skeptical mood, a French translation by Delongchamps of the Laws of Manu, which had arrived from Maruzen at an opportune moment, contained much that he found strongly appealing.
The Laws of Manu, probably compiled over the period from 200
B.C.
to 200
A.D.,
were the foundation of Indian law. And among faithful Hindus, it maintained its authority as a legal code right up to the present. Within its twelve chapters and 2,684 articles were gathered an immense body of precepts drawn from religion, custom, ethics, and law. It ranged from the origin of the cosmos to the penalties for robbery and the rules for dividing an inheritance. It was imbued with an Asian philosophy in which all things were somehow one, in remarkable contrast to the natural law and world view of Christianity, with its passion for making distinctions based on a neatly corresponding macrocosm and microcosm.
However, the right of action in Roman law embodied a principle that contradicted the modern concept of rights. Just as Roman law held that rights lapse when there is no possibility of redress, so too the Laws of Manu, according to the procedural rules in force in the great courts of the rajahs and Brahmins, restricted the suits that might be brought to trial to cases of nonpayment of debts and some eighteen others.
Honda was fascinated by the uniquely vivid style of the Laws. Even details as prosaic as court procedure were couched in colorful metaphors and similes. During the conduct of a trial, for example, the rajah was to determine the truth and falsehood of the matter before him “just as the hunter searches out the lair of the wounded deer by following the trail of blood.” And in the enumeration of his duties, the rajah was admonished to dispense favors on his people “as Indra lets fall the life-giving rain of April.” Honda read right to the very end, including the final chapter, which dealt with arcane matters that defied classification either as laws or as proclamations.
The imperative postulated in Western law was inevitably based on man’s power of reason. The Laws of Manu, however, were rooted in a cosmic law that was impervious to reason—the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. This was set out in the Laws as a matter of course:
“Deeds proceed from the body, speech, and the mind, and result in either good or evil.”
“In this world, the soul in conjunction with the body performs three kinds of act: good, indifferent, and evil.”
“That which proceeds from a man’s soul shall shape his soul; that which proceeds from his speech shall shape his speech, and deeds that proceed from his body shall shape his body.”
“He who sins in body shall be a tree or grass in the next life, he who sins in speech shall be a bird or a beast, and he who sins in soul shall be reborn at the lowest level of caste.”
“The man who retains a proper guard over his speech, his mind, and his body with regard to all living things—the man who bridles his lust and his anger—shall achieve fulfillment. Total liberation shall be his.”
“It is fitting that every man should employ his inherent wisdom to discern how the fate of his soul depends on his adherence or nonadherence to the law and that he should exert himself wholeheartedly in the faithful observance of the law.”
Here, just as in the natural law, to observe the law and to do good deeds were taken as being the same thing. But here the law was based upon the principle of the transmigration of souls, a doctrine that short-circuited normal rational inquiry. And rather than making an appeal to human reason, the Laws seemed to play on the threat of retribution. And thus as a doctrine of law, it placed somewhat less trust in human nature than did the Roman law with its reliance on the powers of reason.

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