Yukio Mishima's Novel The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea

Yukio Mishima once said, “It is my firm belief that our basic Japanese character was stunted by Westernization” (Fox). This quote captures the central idea of Mishima’s novel The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea. The story revolves around the realm of values from a constant post-war perspective where a clash between tradition and contemporary ideals is evident. Mishima, a man with samurai ancestry and ardent defender of Japan's traditional values, embodied the contrasting traits of the Japan he was raised in and the country in which he died. Through the characters Ryuji and Fusako Mishima demonstrates the changing nature of Japanese culture. The stark transformation of Ryuji after his enchantment with Fusako in Mishima’s novel represent the struggle between the duality of the east and the west that existed in Post World War II Japan and Mishima’s life. The novel serves as an allegory to Mishima’s poltical beliefs regarding Japan and criticizes the western influence that pushed Japan to modernize and change after the war.

In the first part of the novel, Ryuji is introduced as a solitary sailor who Noboru and his gang initially idolize as a heroic drifter of the vast sea, uncontaminated by sentimentality and an embodiment of strength. This depiction of Ryuji is affirmed as it is revealed that he became a sailor due to his antipathy to land and that “his body looked... more solid than any landsman's: it must have been cast in the matrix of the sea” and that “his flesh looked like a suit of armor that he could cast off at will” (Mishima 11). This simile and emphasis on physical attributes portrays Ryuji as a samurai, a symbol of Japan’s past and a figure of honor and respect. Furthermore, Noboru’s admiration of Ryuji asserts...

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...al identity. Through his novel The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea he promoted traditional values over those which he perceived as “Western” or corrosive to Japan. In the novel, Ryuji who symbolized old and transitioning Japan gradually transforms to join Fusako in representing postwar Japan that valued western culture more than its own. Ryuji no longer portraying the glory that he and Japan could have achieved dies at the hands of Noboru and his gang. On the other hand, Mishima in his war to revive the traditions of Japan conducted a revolution and took his own life driven by the need of the heroic death that Ryuuji had dreamed of but had been denied. Mishima’s carefully staged death was his final defiant move against westernization as he voluntarily chose to die with honor rather than succumb more and more into Western influence in his war with himself.