Authors: Yukio Mishima
Runaway Horses (24 page)
Baron Shinkawa had already passed his fiftieth year. In the surroundings of his Edwardian villa, the Baron was accustomed to reading the editorials in the
Times
each morning before turning to the Japanese newspapers. And like an English colonial official he would wear one or another of his half-dozen white linen suits every day. As for the Baroness, her intrinsic bent for chattering about herself had remained unchanged through the years. The lady was blessed with the ability to discover in herself ever fresh sources of wonder, though she was at the same time able to forego discovering that she was in fact little by little growing fat.
Times
each morning before turning to the Japanese newspapers. And like an English colonial official he would wear one or another of his half-dozen white linen suits every day. As for the Baroness, her intrinsic bent for chattering about herself had remained unchanged through the years. The lady was blessed with the ability to discover in herself ever fresh sources of wonder, though she was at the same time able to forego discovering that she was in fact little by little growing fat.
The Baroness had had quite enough of “New Thought.” The Heavenly Fire Group too, which had championed the Blue Stocking movement, had long since disbanded. The occasion for her perceiving the danger of “New Thought” was the suicide of her niece, who came out of a women’s college to join the Communist Party and, the very evening she returned home after being released from prison on bail, slashed her jugular vein.
However, since Baroness Shinkawa was as overflowing with energy as ever, she simply could not think of herself as being a member of a class “on its way to destruction.” When her husband, a chillingly cynical man who saw nothing as worth fighting for, was put on the right-wing blacklist, and she found that both far right and far left looked upon the two of them as their sworn foes, she felt as if she and her husband were fair-skinned people of a higher civilization compelled to live in some barbarian land. On the one hand she found the situation stimulating, on the other, she longed “to go home” to London.
“This Japan, it’s an altogether distasteful place, don’t you think?” the Baroness had taken to observing from time to time. Once a friend of hers who had been to India told her that an Indian acquaintance had lost her son when the boy plunged his hand into a toy box and was bitten by a poisonous snake hiding in the bottom of it. “That’s just how things are here in Japan,” the Baroness had commented. “All one has to do is plunge one’s hand in, intent only on a bit of amusement, and there’s a poisonous snake in there waiting. Ready to bite and kill a person who has done nothing to it, an innocent, harmless person.”
The evening was clear, and as the cry of cicadas echoed quietly across the lawn a distant rumble of thunder came from one corner of the sky. The guests, five married couples, were gathered in the garden. Marquis Matsugae sat in a rattan chair, and the brilliant red of the plaid blanket that his wife was arranging over his knees gave a touch of color to the dusk sweeping over the garden.
“I think it’s hardly likely that one or two more months will pass without the government’s recognizing Manchukuo,” said one man, who was the Minister of State. “For the Prime Minister really intends to do just that.” After which, turning to Marquis Matsugae, he remarked pleasantly: “That matter of Count Momoshima’s son which we spoke of, is it proceeding well?”
The Marquis uttered a noncommittal grunt. “This fellow,” he thought, “he talks to the others about Manchukuo, and then asks me about my adopting a son. What effrontery!”
After Kiyoaki’s death Marquis and Marquise Matsugae would not hear of adopting an heir, but lately they no longer felt the will to resist the arguments of the Bureau of Estates. Preliminary negotiations were now under way.
Mount Asama rose in the failing light, visible through a break in the trees where a path led down to a stream. It was hard to determine from which direction the distant thunder came. The guests, however, enjoyed watching the shadow of evening steal over their hands and faces while the thunder afforded the further pleasure of thrilling to a peril far removed from them.
“Well, since all the other ladies and gentlemen have arrived, I imagine that it must be just about time for Mr. Kurahara to make his appearance,” Baron Shinkawa remarked to his wife, loudly enough for everyone to hear and join in the laughter.
It had become Busuké Kurahara’s invariable practice to arrive last, a never-excessive tardiness that bespoke the immensity of his power.
He seemed totally indifferent to his personal appearance, without a hint that this might be a pose, and his inability to speak otherwise than with a stiff formality was rather appealing. He certainly in no way resembled the monopolistic capitalist who appeared in left-wing cartoons. When he sat down, he had the habit of choosing the chair upon which he had just laid his hat. The second button of his suit coat had a great affinity for the third buttonhole. He left off arranging his tie well before it was tucked beneath his collar. At the banquet table, he inevitably reached out to his right to seize the roll on his neighbor’s bread dish.
Busuké Kurahara spent his summer weekends in Karuizawa and all the others at Izusan, where he owned a tangerine orchard of five or six acres. He took pride in the luster of his tangerines and their sweet taste, and derived much pleasure from making gifts of them not only to his friends but to orphanages and welfare hospitals. It was hard to realize that he was indeed the object of widespread resentment.
No doubt it seemed astonishing that a man so cheerful in his private life could hold such dourly pessimistic views on public affairs. The guests gathered in Baron Shinkawa’s garden, however, were always thrilled and titillated to hear from the mouth of Japan’s supreme capitalist accounts of tragedy, of dire foreboding, and of evils to come.
More than the death of Prime Minister Inukai, Kurahara mourned the retirement of Finance Minister Takahashi. Prime Minister Saito, of course, had no sooner formed his cabinet than he was paying a call on Kurahara and protesting, perhaps a bit too much, that he could do nothing without Kurahara’s cooperation. Nevertheless, Kurahara sniffed something unsavory in the new prime minister’s manner.
Takahashi had indeed been an insider of the Inukai Cabinet which had imposed another embargo on the export of gold as one of its first acts, but, secretly influenced by classical hard-currency advocates, he acted to sabotage this newfangled government policy so that he could then contend that since this policy had not lived up to expectations and provided quick relief, since conditions were no better and prices still in the doldrums, failure to such a degree proved that the old ways were after all the best.
Baron Shinkawa, on the other hand, who avidly kept up with all that went on in London, had closely studied in the
Times
the details of England’s going off the gold standard in September of the previous year and had made up his mind at once. The Wakatsuki Cabinet had kept proclaiming that it would never enact an embargo on the export of gold, but with every government proclamation, dollar speculation had increased, despite the anger of the right wing, who branded all dollar buyers as plunderers of the nation. The Baron himself had been a dollar speculator, but after he had stored away all the money that would not bear scrutiny into Swiss banks, he was unwilling to wait for an overnight shift in government policy, and came to the side of those supporting the gold export embargo and the policy of “reflation.” Thus he had had enough of the halfway economic measures of the previous cabinet, and his hopes were bound up with the new cabinet. Beyond the issue of internal recovery through reflation lay the glittering prospect of the industrialization of Manchuria. Though the Baron’s air was as abstracted as ever, here in the midst of Karuizawa, whose volcanic soil was so barren of resources, the image of the underground wealth of Manchukuo rose up in his mind like a seductive phantom, those resources that were as rich and varied as a menu of the Café Royale. Surely, the Baron thought, he could even kindle an affection for stupid soldiers.
Times
the details of England’s going off the gold standard in September of the previous year and had made up his mind at once. The Wakatsuki Cabinet had kept proclaiming that it would never enact an embargo on the export of gold, but with every government proclamation, dollar speculation had increased, despite the anger of the right wing, who branded all dollar buyers as plunderers of the nation. The Baron himself had been a dollar speculator, but after he had stored away all the money that would not bear scrutiny into Swiss banks, he was unwilling to wait for an overnight shift in government policy, and came to the side of those supporting the gold export embargo and the policy of “reflation.” Thus he had had enough of the halfway economic measures of the previous cabinet, and his hopes were bound up with the new cabinet. Beyond the issue of internal recovery through reflation lay the glittering prospect of the industrialization of Manchuria. Though the Baron’s air was as abstracted as ever, here in the midst of Karuizawa, whose volcanic soil was so barren of resources, the image of the underground wealth of Manchukuo rose up in his mind like a seductive phantom, those resources that were as rich and varied as a menu of the Café Royale. Surely, the Baron thought, he could even kindle an affection for stupid soldiers.
Years before, Baroness Shinkawa had found it hard to countenance men carrying on a discussion all to themselves, but, as she grew older, her feelings altered. Now she was quite willing to let the men carry on with their talk, provided that the women were able to function as overseers.
“Well, they’re already well into it,” she said, turning to Mrs. Kurahara, Marquise Matsugae, and the other ladies, after noticing the men gathered around Kurahara. Marquise Matsugae’s eyebrows, whose tilt gave her face its sorrowful look, grew almost over to her hair, now noticeably gray and brushed down over her ears.
“Just this spring,” Baroness Shinkawa chatted on, “I wore a kimono to an affair at the British Embassy, and the Ambassador, who had only seen me in Western clothes, simply could not get over it. He outdid himself with his compliments, protesting how becoming a kimono was to me and all that. Really, how frustrating! Even a man of his refinement—he never notices Japanese women except as Japanese women. Of course, the kimono I wore that night, at the suggestion of my designer, was like a Momoyama Nō costume, red with a snow-covered willow and butterfly circle pattern, the whole thing worked in gold and silver lacquer thread, obviously quite showy. Because it flashed so brightly, I felt no more Japanese than if I were wearing Western clothes.” Intent on being hospitable, the Baroness began by offering herself as a topic of conversation.
“Junko, perhaps the Ambassador meant stunning clothing was becoming to you,” said the wife of the Minister of State. “When you wear Western clothes you’re not so daring, indeed you tend to be rather restrained.”
“How true!” replied Junko Shinkawa, quick to agree. “The colors of Western clothes are really so sober. And if one does wear some sort of gaudy flower pattern, it only makes one look older, like some grandmother from Wales.”
“But that dress is such a lovely color, Junko,” said Marquise Matsugae, offering the flattery that circumstances made imperative. The truth was that all that concerned the Marquise at the moment was the pain in her husband’s knee. This was a pain that seemed to her somehow associated with the pain that affected the entire Matsugae household, a malady that seemed on the verge of discommoding the joints of everyone involved. The Marquise gave a quick glance in the direction of her husband sitting with the blanket over his knees. The man who in the past had seemed so frank and unconstrained, so fond of monopolizing the conversation, now listened quietly to what people had to say.
Since it was Baron Shinkawa’s practice scrupulously to avoid controversy, he prodded Viscount Matsudaira to take on Kurahara. The Viscount was a young man who agreed with him and who, furthermore, was not in a position of real responsibility. And so this naughty boy, a member of the House of Peers and on friendly terms with the military, turned to Kurahara, his manner one of calm challenge.
“I don’t especially care for all this talk about whatever we do, we’re in danger, that this is a time of crisis, and so on,” said Viscount Matsudaira. “Everything has started to take a turn for the better. The May Fifteenth Incident was a tragic event, of course, but it has given the government the strength to act decisively so that Japan can be pulled out of this economic slump. And in the last analysis, I think that it will have the effect of putting Japan upon the right course. It will be this affair that changes our fortune from bad to good. Isn’t it in such a manner, after all, that history moves forward?”
“We will indeed be happy if it turns out as you say,” answered Kurahara plaintively, a quiet gruffness to his voice. “I, for one, have no such expectations. What is this reflation, after all? It can be termed a controlled inflation, the idea being that although the fierce beast of inflation is let out of his cage we can still breathe easily because he has a chain fastened to his neck. But that chain is not going to hold long. The vital thing is not to let the beast out of the cage. I can well imagine how things might go—save the farmer, rescue the unemployed, introduce reflation—all of which seem splendid at first, and no one wants to sing a contrary tune. But soon reflation will turn into an inflation based on the demand for military supplies. The fierce beast will snap his chain and run wild. And once he starts, no one will be able to stop him. When the military itself finally awakes to the peril, it will be too late to catch him again. The wise course, therefore, is to keep him shut in the shiny cage of gold reserves. For nothing could be more secure than such a golden cage. It has a tough flexibility. If the beast grows larger, the space between the bars grows larger. If he grows smaller, it narrows. If we keep our specie reserves adequate, we prevent a falling off of our exchange rate, and we gain the confidence of other nations. That is the only way for Japan to get along in the world. If you let the fierce beast out of his cage as a means of bringing about a recovery, you achieve only the most transitory of results and you dash Japan’s long-range hopes. However, even though what should be done, given this enactment of a second gold embargo, is to adopt a vigorous policy of strengthening the currency by supporting it with specie, with the aim of promptly returning to the gold standard, still, the government has been scared out of its wits by the May Fifteenth Incident and is rushing in the opposite direction. That is why I worry.”
“This is merely my opinion,” said the Viscount, unwilling to be shaken off, “but if the hardship of the farmers and the discontent of the workers continue as they are, it won’t be a matter of anything as mild as the May Fifteenth Incident. A revolution may well break out, and then it will be too late for all remedies. Did you see the farmers who pushed their way into the special session of the Diet in June? Are you aware of the strength embodied in the groups that presented the petition demanding an immediate moratorium on farmers’ debts? Furthermore, when they didn’t get what they wanted from the Diet, they went to the Army, and the result was that a joint petition of farmers and military men was drawn up and a report of it carried to the Throne itself by a regimental commander.
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