“Thank you very much,” she said. “Now I can serve my time in peace. Please convey my best wishes to the priest.” Yūko’s words broke off, and taking a handkerchief from her pocket, she busily dabbed at her eyes. “I can put my mind at rest, now that you have done this for me. We truly were close friends, you know. The closest there can be. You can understand that, I’m sure. Only the priest knew about it. You understand, don’t you?”
Before long, the warden announced that visiting time was up. In tears, Yūko nodded repeatedly, placed the card-size photograph in her pocket, and picked up her handkerchief without returning it to her pocket to prevent the photograph getting wet. From somewhere nearby, the high-pitched chirr of a cicada sounded irritatingly in my ear.
Yūko stood up, bowed deeply to me, and went through the door the warden had opened. Through the glass I could still see her blue casual clothes and the white nape of her neck. For an instant, it drifted distinctly by on the other side of the vibrating glass. But the door at the back had been opened, and when it closed again, Yūko’s form had gone from my sight.
Translator’s Note: The Origins of The Frolic of the Beasts
Yukio Mishima was an avowed fan of traditional Japanese Noh theater, and in fact, he wrote several Noh plays himself. The Frolic of the Beasts is considered a parody of the classical Noh play Motomezuka, written in the fourteenth century by the playwright Kiyotsugu Kan’ami.
Motomezuka tells the story of a priest and his companions who journey from the western provinces to Kyoto but stop en route in the village of Ikuta in Settsu Province. There they encounter several village girls who relate to them the story of the maiden Unai.
In the girls’ telling, Unai is courted by two young men from the village, Sasada and Chinu. Loath to declare her love for one and disappoint the other, she ignores their overtures. Her parents intervene and attempt to resolve the impasse by having the suitors compete for her hand, but each contest ends in a draw. Finding herself in an impossible quandary, Unai plunges into the Ikuta River and kills herself. Brokenhearted, Sasada and Chinu follow suit, stabbing each other to death and descending to hell.
The priest chants prayers for the repose of Unai’s soul but to no avail; she is powerless to break her attachment to the Burning House (a Buddhist metaphor for the secular world) and the Eight Great Hells, through which she must endure unending torment by her demons.
The love triangle between Unai, Sasada, and Chinu is mirrored in the novel in the relationship between Yūko, Ippei, and Kōji, as well as in Kiyoshi’s and Matsukichi’s courtship of Kimi.
Noh productions are characterized by their use of highly stylized masks that represent specific characters, and references to these masks can be found throughout The Frolic of the Beasts. Kōji remarks that his own face “is like a well-crafted, carved wooden mask,” and the “interminable smile” worn by Ippei recalls the fixed expression of a Noh mask. Similarly, Yūko’s defining feature, her thick, dark lipstick, is likely a direct reference to the quintessential “young woman” character found in Noh theater.
About the Author
Yukio Mishima was born in Tokyo in 1925. He graduated from Tokyo Imperial University’s School of Jurisprudence in 1947. His first published book, The Forest in Full Bloom, appeared in 1944, and he established himself as a major author with Confessions of a Mask (1949). From then until his death, he continued to publish novels, short stories, and plays each year. His crowning achievement, The Sea of Fertility tetralogy—which contains the novels Spring Snow (1969), Runaway Horses (1969), The Temple of Dawn (1970), and The Decay of the Angel (1971)—is considered one of the definitive works of twentieth-century Japanese fiction. In 1970, at the age of forty-five and the day after completing the last novel in the Fertility series, Mishima committed seppuku (ritual suicide)—a spectacular death that attracted worldwide attention.
Also by Yukio Mishima
Spring Snow
Runaway Horses
The Temple of Dawn
The Decay of the Angel
Confessions of a Mask
Thirst for Love
Forbidden Colors
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
After the Banquet
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
Five Modern Nō Plays
The Sound of Waves
Death in Midsummer
Acts of Worship
Newsletter
Copyright
A VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL ORIGINAL, NOVEMBER 2018
English translation copyright © 2018 by Andrew Clare
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in Japan as Kemono no Tawamure by Shinchosha, Tokyo, in 1961. Copyright © 1961 by Yukio Mishima Estate.
Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage International and colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress.
Vintage International Trade Paperback ISBN 9780525434153
Ebook ISBN 9780525434160
Cover design by John Gall
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