My 2015 Reading Journal: July 2015

Japanese author
3rd in tetralogy, "The Sea of Fertility"
Originally published in 1970
Vocabulary:

Bangkok....bang=town, kok= olives
ecstasy: enthusiasmus=being god possessed, exstasis=exiting the self
isinglass: mica, especially in thin translucent sheets
cryptomeria: a coniferous tree, Cryptomeria japonica, of China and Japan, with curved needle-like leaves and small round cones

Setting:

Part I: 1941, just as WWII is about to start, Honda age 46
Part II:Spring 1952, Gotemba vvacation home, Honda age 57
Japan to Bangkok to India and home to Japan

Characters:

Honda: age 46, an attorney, travels from Bangkok to India to Japan seeking answers
Princess Chantrapa (Moonlight), Ying Chan: 6 years old, Indian princess, believes she is a reincarnated Kiyoaki
Hishikawa: Honda's guide in Bangkok, had a talent "for smelling out rottenness in human matter faster than anyone else
Rie: Honda's completely submissive, nondescript wife
Keiko Hisamatsu: neighbor in Gotemba, beautiful and worldly woman, friend of Honda, Isao's youthful love
Makiko Kito: poetess, tutor to Mrs. Tsubakihara
Mrs. Tsubakihara: grieving death of son in WWII, studying poetry
Mr.Imanishi: guest, expert in German literature, writing "Millenium of Sex", which ttakes place in "The Land of the Pomegranate", where "reading is strictly forbidden. It spoils natural beauty....".
Iinuma: Isao's father, failed when committing sepokku
Katsumi Shimura: Keiko's nephew, chosen to deflower Ying Chan so Honda could verify the three moles and her being the reincarnation of Kiyouaki and Isao

Quotes:

p.13..."Like the wings of a hummingbird which change into rainbow colors as it flutters about sucking the honey from flowers, the world shows us a brief glimpse of its potentiality for soaring; all things in the evening glow fly rapturous and ecstatic...and then in the end fall to the ground and die."
p.14..."They formed a multicolored pagoda whose every level was crushed with layers of dreams, expectations, prayers, each being further weighted down with still other stories, pyramid-like, progressing skyward.".....Princess Moonlight's palace
p.18..."Kiyoaki and Isao had died contrasting deaths on contrasting battlefields"
p.32..."He who never contacted the external world without first filtering it through rational thought, here felt through his skin..."
p.37..."The beauty of these people is the beauty of fruit; fruit should ripen lazily and gracefully. There's no such thing as diligent fruit."
p.45..."To be beneath a clear blue sky and perceive so clearly a world of rain meant that different time periods and different spaces coexisted. The rain cloud permitted a glimpse of the gap between separate times, and the vast distance involved testified to the hiatus between the two spaces
p.74..."The plain itself had a tranquilizing effect on Honda whose heart had been seared by frightening and ominous flames. Instead of the spatter of sacrificial blood, a virginally white heron fluttered up from the jungle."....white and red seem significant throughout
p.80..."His mind was at rest, but he carried a heavy load of terrifying impressions from his journey, and he remained leaning against the railing of the upper deck throughout the voyage, the cargo groaning deep in the hold of his heart."
p.88..."Whether in success or in failure , sooner or later time must lead to disillusionment ; and if foresight of this disillusionment remains only that, it is mere pessimism. The important thing is to act on this foresight even by dying. Isao achieved that magnificently. Only by action can one see through the glass walls erected at various points in time--glass walls insurmountable by human effort, but which can be sen through equally from both sides. In eager desire, in aspiration, in dreams, in ideals, the past and future become equal in value and in quality; they are coordinate."
p.106..."Enthusiasmus and extasis merged in this philosophy of transitory unity, according to which one was all, one came from the all, and all from the one."
p.113..."But Honda saw an indescribable beauty in the parable which Nagasena used to explain samsara and transmigration, that of a sacred taper, whose flame is not quite the same in the evening, at midnight, and at dawn, and yet no different either as it continues on the same wick burning throughout the night. The karmic existence of an individual is not substantive existence but merely a succession of phenomena similar to the flame."
p.118..."It was surely not an unusual event, even in the mind of a child, that a flood of dreams should invade reality, that past and future, breaking their dikes, should overflow into this world."
p.123..."Thus it was clear that what migrate in samsara and reincarnation, what passed from one life to the next was the vast flow of selflessness of the alaya consciousness."
p.128..."The true meaning of Yuishiki is that the whole of the world manifests itself now in this very instant. Yet this instantaneous world already dies in the same moment and simultaneously a new one appears."
p.133..."yes, he must grasp in his mind the instant-by-instant, inevitable total destruction and prepare for the carnage of an uncertain future."
p.210..."He was neither self-satisfied nor secure. And yet he was no longer ignorant either. He had seen only the borderline between the knowable and the unknowable; still it was enough to make him aware."
p.256..."...anything born of necessity is accompanied by bitterness...".
p.258..."...his own need to turn away from her charms, he could not help but change her into an unlovable creature."
p.261..."Falling in love was a special privilege given to someone whose external, sensuous charm and internal ignorance, disorganization, and lack of cognizance permitted him to form a kind of fantasy about others. It was a rude privilege."
p.291..."Life strove mightily to exile orthodoxy, hospitalize heresy, and trap humanity into stupidity. It was an accumulation of used bandages soiled with layers of blood and pus. Life was the daily changing of the bandages of the heart that made the incurably sick, young and old alike, cry out in pain."
p.297..."It now became clear that Honda's ultimate desire, what he really, really wanted to see could exist only in a world where he did not. When a voyeur recognizes that he can realize his ends only eliminating the basic act of watching this means his death as such."...the final peephole sighting
p.297..."Incited by his perceptions, he dreamed about the supreme bliss of the moment of suicide, when the Ying Chan who had been seen by no other person would appear in all her brilliant, pure amber nudity like a resplendent moon rising."
p.316..."Nothing was more unattractive than the fact that both the forces moving one to the noblest or most just of deeds and that inspiring the most obscene pleasure and the most ugly of dreams should spring from the same source and be accompanied by the same warning palpitations."
p.322...."Where Honda had discovered reality, Rie had found out her illusions."
p.327..."The huose had turned into kindling and life had become fire."...as in the purification rites in India

Notes:

As always, water imagery and water journeys abound
Didactic in terms of Buddhism, Hinduism and their relationship
death before disillusionment or after, only two choices, chosen by intuition
1939....Siam became Thailand
Benares, five rivers meet there, sacred location in India
the wheel of samsara like a ferris wheel lit up in the carnival of the gods
Sunrise is most godlike manifestation of Brahma, also, Isao had seen a sun repeatedly in his suicide dreams
Buddhism seen as primitive religion leading to him order to see what he truly wished to he must die her form in Hinduism
Honda's focus on samsara and transmigration
Fascinating notion of a cycle of "Natural Savagery" to "Premeditated Savagery", and after centuries of progress, a s\civilization must "necessarily perish".
Wisdom reborn as a god, ignorance reborn as man, and anger reborn as and animal...p.115
Notion of a 7th sense, all mental powers that perceive self and individual identity
The world is born and dies in every instant
I liked the way writing poetry was just a natural part f events and daily life
p.196...juxtaposition of geishas looking across the river at hospital for maimed American soldiers from WWII
Ying Chan was "a rainbow bridging the firmament of death. If not knowing was the first factor in eroticism, the ultimate had to be the eternally unknowable...death."
p.259...tradition of tying a red cord across bride's sleeves to keep them down...https://www.google.com/search?q=japanese+wedding+tradition+of+tying+red+cord&espv=2&biw=1422&bih=666&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0CCoQ7AlqFQoTCITPhvC3ycYCFQEzPgodstYLbg..............One story featuring the red string of fate involves a young boy. Walking home one night, a young boy sees an old man (Yue Xia Lao) standing beneath the moonlight. The man explains to the boy that he is attached to his destined wife by a red thread. Yue Xia Lao shows the boy the young girl who is destined to be his wife. Being young and having no interest in having a wife, the young boy picks up a rock and throws it at the girl, running away. Many years later, when the boy has grown into a young man, his parents arrange a wedding for him. On the night of his wedding, his wife waits for him in their bedroom, with the traditional veil covering her face. Raising it, the man is delighted to find that his wife is one of the great beauties of his village. However, she wears an adornment on her eyebrow. He asks her why she wears it and she responds that when she was a young girl, a boy threw a rock at her that struck her, leaving a scar on her eyebrow. She self-consciously wears the adornment to cover it up. The woman is, in fact, the same young girl connected to the man by the red thread shown to him by Yue Xia Lao back in his childhood, showing that they were connected by the red string of fate.
1962....Tokyo, Honda meets Ying Chan's twin sister, who tells that Ying died at age 20 from cobra bite, while under a phoenix tree with vermilion flowers

Strange moments:

p.49..."He wished it was possible for him to hold the Princess' smooth brown thighs in his hands as she urinated."...WHAT?
p.179..."He thought the look in her eyes was that of an innocent little girl who craved to be raped."
Peephole in his bedroom
p.195..."Boiling water of passion would overflow and the dancing ashes of death would fly up to blind him."
p.290...The peeping tom who uses his ivory cane to lift the skirt of entwined loves in the woods
Review: This is the third book of a tetralogy, "The Sea of Fertility". As was true in the first two books, Mishima's prose is elegant, evocative, and full to overflowing with magnificent metaphors. Honda, our protagonist, focuses on reincarnation and the teachings of Buddhism and Hinduism. I felt that Mishima was overly didactic in some sections, which diminished pleasure of the rhythm of the story. However, a surprise ending, which was perfectly written, left me eagerly anticipating the fourth and final volume. Mishima was a fascinating and gifted writer.

My 2015 Reading Journal

Sunday, July 12, 2015

"The First Honeymoon: New and Selected Stories" by Lyn Coffin *****

"Midnight Road" by Tom Piccirilli ***

Tuesday, July 7, 2015

"The Temple of Dawn" by Yukio Mishima *****

Saturday, July 4, 2015

"Society's Child: My Autobiography" by Janis Ian ****