The Form of Beauty
Hideo Kobayashi
Yukio Mishima
*
Motivational essays, Lyric poems
*
Kobayashi: It's been a long time since I've read a novel.
Mishima: I didn't realise that novels still existed. (laughs)
Kobayashi: I knew it ('The Temple of the Golden Pavilion') would be a work that would be subject to a great deal of criticism and praise. Hey...
Mishima: (laughs)
Kobayashi: Do we have to do anything in the way of criticism? Just a chat is fine, right? Well... Let's have it be something carefree like that.
Mishima: Did you see the Golden Pavilion on your recent trip?
Kobayashi: That's the reason I decided to go there. I heard it was going to be rebuilt this time and that it was very beautiful. So I woke up in the morning, and what happened was, ah, Kawamori was there. And we got into a conversation. I ran out of time, so I didn't go.
Mishima: People in Kyoto are very shy about it, but when they see it, they think it looks good.
Kobayashi: Because they built it exactly like the previous one, didn't they?
Mishima: Yes. It's shiny gold, and when the setting sun hits it, it feels like it's shining right on your skin…
Kobayashi: Is that real gold?
Mishima: It seems to be real gold. There was a theory among scholars that only the top layer or two were painted gold, and the rest was not gold. However, it was discovered during the process that all the layers were painted gold, so they changed the plan and painted all of the layers.
Kobayashi: There are some white walls in the middle, but most of them are gilded. Who told you that it cost twenty million yen? Twenty million yen.
Mishima: Yes, twenty.
Kobayashi: That's cheap.
Mishima: It's really cheap. Even if you build your own house now, if you install a little air-conditioning system, the price will immediately go up to twenty. (laughs) I'm sure that's what luxury was like in the olden days.
Kobayashi: One day, there was a man who burnt the Golden Pavilion, did you research and write about that?
Mishima: Yes, I did, but I didn't meet the person in question. I did a lot of research on his background.
Kobayashi: That's a problem. (laughs) It's Raskolnikov... When Dostoevsky wrote 'Crime and Punishment,' he was apparently very proud that Raskolnikov had appeared in St. Petersburg, but Mishima-kun, are you proud that Enryaku-ji Temple appeared in the work?
Mishima: It will be banned by now. (laughs) That, you know, seems to be an unrealistic motive. Young people come to see the temple, dressed beautifully, sometimes couples, and it makes them feel uncomfortable. They are made to eat cold food, they are miserably dressed, and their youth is lost. That's what it's like. There are rumours that the priests were involved in the incident, but they didn't have much of a motive.
Kobayashi: That's probably true. Mishima's novel is a novel of motive, so it must have been difficult. Raskolnikov hardly had any motive of any kind. It's a novel about what happens after the act is done. Yours is a novel about what happens before the act is done.
Mishima: I don't think he originally had any motive for doing what he did.
Kobayashi: I read it... And, well, what I felt when I read it was that it was more of a lyric poem than a novel. In other words, if you want to make it into a novel, you have to write about what happens after the burning. There are no real interpersonal relationships, no social relationships. Your Raskolnikov is trapped in the subjectivity of motivation, so lyrically there are very beautiful parts. I thought, for example, the father's funeral and the part about the Yura River were very good. I know the Yura River.
Mishima: Oh, I see. You were there?
Kobayashi: We went there by car for a long time. You've captured the feeling of that area very well.
Mishima: It's a lonely place.
Kobayashi: There's something strange about the scenery there.
Mishima: I heard that in the summer, the sea becomes vulgar because of the people there, but outside of summer it's completely...
Kobayashi: I went from Maizuru to Miyazu in Tango, and at that time I thought the river gave a strange impression.
Mishima: The novel stole some parts from Kobayashi's. That was something Kobayashi-san once wrote about, that beauty is not as beautiful as people think it is, that it is not beautiful at all.
Kobayashi: Ah, I suppose so.
Mishima: There is one such piece of writing that has been stolen.
Kobayashi: Well, I don't know about that.
Mishima: Was it Mozart, something you wrote...
Kobayashi: I see. Anyway, your Raskolnikov is a great aesthete. The word beauty is a strange word; the more aestheticians start using it, the more those who are passionate about the work of beauty dislike it. Cézanne never used it; instead of the word beauty he used the word intensé, or strength. He didn't like the idea of laughing at things like beauty.
Mishima: Isn't there a theory that Raskolnikov is a socialist criminal?
Kobayashi: There is. There is no question of beauty in him at all.
Mishima: No, there is not.
*
Talent and genius
*
Kobayashi: In the end, it is 'Karamazov' that treats the question of beauty seriously in Dostoevsky. Ivan's brother Dmitrii, you know, that one.
Mishima: In that chapter on confessions, he repeatedly emphasises that beauty is a frightening thing. The question of beauty does not exist in Raskolnikov. What Dostoevsky thought so much about there was probably written in the protagonist's confession at first. I thought I would do it, and I even had a draft. But it didn't work out, which meant I thought if I wrote it in confession, it wouldn't become a novel after all. So I decided not to do that. So, it's an ethical problem, but in the end you're writing about a madman who is possessed by a certain ethical idea. Therefore, the confession of a madman possessed by an idea cannot be a novel. So I had no choice but to write from the outside, with realism. When you write with realism, confession loses its subjective meaning. Besides, the protagonist can only rely on confession up to the point of murder. The protagonist is a person in the world of his confession.
Kobayashi: If you do, you can no longer live in solitary confession alone. Now he has to live in the world. This is where the motif of the novel is born, you instinctively thought. Your novel is the opposite. It completely emphasises the subjective meaning of confession. That's why, you know, there are all kinds of people in there, but they're not the main characters.
Mishima: Yes, yes, that's right.
Kobayashi: That's why, I don't know how to say it…
Mishima: No drama is established.
Kobayashi: It isn't. That's why it becomes a lyric poem. Of course, I think the author wrote it with that intention. So there's a lot of very beautiful lyricism in it. There's almost too much. I read it, and frankly speaking, if there is anything to fear in you, it is your talent.
Mishima: (laughs)
Kobayashi: In other words, they would say that all you have is talent. He doesn't have anything else. When you have an extraordinary talent like yours, when you have too much of it, some kind of weird power appears. It's like magic. Your talent is so excessive that it becomes a kind of magic. That's what attracted me. The invention of the image that just comes out of nowhere. You don't need anything else, do you?
Mishima: No, nothing.
Kobayashi: In other words, you have to avoid realism, and stop trying to deal with substance. You tried to invent everything from your head, didn't you? It's your talent. It's the excess of that talent. This is interesting. And by interesting, I mean good. That's why I wasn't bored, not at all. Yes, you carried people, you carried them along. I recognised the power in that. That's how I felt when I read it. I felt it when I read 'Shiosai,' but this was richer, more exacting, more passionate. I think he loves his talent. The degree to which you trust and love your talent is much stronger. That's what it was like.
Mishima: Genius versus talent. It's not like genius loves me.
Kobayashi: When you say it like that, I don't understand, but I guess it's just a feeling.
Mishima: Mozart...
Kobayashi: Mozart, his beauty...
Mishima: Genius doesn't love herself at all, does she? For example, musicians or painters like that...
Kobayashi: I create things unconsciously.
Mishima: Yes, yes. But once you become aware of it, does that mean you start to love it?
Kobayashi: Mozart's consciousness was a consciousness of sound, not of words. Well, Kierkegaard thought of that kind of intentionality as the unconsciousness of sensuality. So, when something like consciousness appears, this is not the world of music. It is the world of literature. The idea that consciousness is not love, but love is consciousness, is a problem that Kierkegaard thought of separately. So, what you wrote, it did not have to be a question of beauty. In other words, you were describing the path of a man who is possessed by stereotypes and is driven into a corner.
Mishima: Yes. So it doesn't have to be beautiful. It doesn't have to be beauty at all. A novel about naturalism is a novel about a man trapped by the stereotype of acid. I wrote a novel about a man trapped by the stereotype of beauty as a symbol of an artist. I was told by one critic that although it was an artist's novel, it was interesting and eccentric to have the protagonist as a shaved head. Yes, I had some intention to do that.
Kobayashi: But I don't think it was a novel.
Mishima: Yes, yes, I understand.
*
Sho-ji Temple
*
Kobayashi: It depends on the definition of a novel. If that is the case, then the people who appear in the novels, even the strange people, become a problem. The strange woman is not even written in the novel, and she doesn't have any sense of reality at all. If you read it as a kind of lyric poem, each of them would have a vivid image. I think you have something like a new Riichi Yokomitsu, in the way you feel and in the nature of your talent. How did he decide to die in the end?
Mishima: I was a bit caught up in the actual story. The story says that he wanted to kill himself, so he bought medicine and did something like that. The length of the knife's blade was exactly the same as in the story. Why did he want to kill himself? (laughter)
Kobayashi: Well, I think it would have been better if he'd just died. You didn't write about it until he died, did you? Why didn't you kill him?
Mishima: Ah, I've had plenty of experience killing people in novels, but killing someone is difficult.
Kobayashi: In novels, it's easy. It's as easy as burning down the Golden Temple.
Mishima: There have been cases where plans have gone awry because people have been killed where they should have been kept alive or kept alive where they should have been killed. It would have been better to kill him, wouldn't it?
Kobayashi: But it's a monologue, and it's presented in a way that it could only be written if he were alive, so he must have been troubled. (laughs).
Mishima: He died this spring.
Kobayashi: Did he commit suicide?
Mishima: No, originally he had a bit of a chest problem. It seems that it was discovered after he was in prison. Then his mental state gradually became deranged, and he started praying to his nurse, Arakawa, as the Arakawa Kannon, and to MacArthur, asking for forgiveness for his sins. He had two illnesses, and they said that applying electricity for schizophrenia is good, but electrical therapy is bad for the lungs. He was a madman, so when they tried to give him nutrition for his lungs, he didn't take it, so both of his conditions got worse and worse, and he was sent to a hospital, and at the end he was paroled and died this spring... But I was kind of aiming for the idea that prison is the only place a human being can live from now on. In Jean Genet's novels, you live only in prison. Living for forty or fifty years means spending time in prison, and no matter how much I wrote, I couldn't compete with a guy like that. If he had lived, he might still be in prison at seventy or eighty.
Kobayashi: ...
Mishima: Kobayashi-san, did you stay at any temples in Kyoto?
Kobayashi: No.
Mishima: That's the first time I stopped at a Zen temple because I was doing research. Kinkaku-ji is a place where writers are afraid to step over the threshold. Of course, we couldn't enter the Golden Pavilion, but they also wouldn't let us into the main hall. So, we had no choice but to stay at Myoshin-ji Temple, which is a little bit different from the other temples.
Kobayashi: So his life is pretty much as you describe it?
Mishima Yes, yes, that's the way it is. But Zen temples are all the slums of Japan, where the yakuza and ronin are.
Kobayashi: Why is that?
Mishima: They are very yakuza-like. For example, if a traveling monk comes and asks to be let into the dojo, they won't let him in at first, and they have to wait in the garden. They stay quietly at the entrance for about a night. Then they stay quietly in another room for a day, and they're only given food. This is similar to the mannerisms that yakuza use when letting in or stopping travelers. It is very yakuza-like. It seems to me that everything in Japan, from the military to the arts, is derived from Zen. Recently, when I was looking at the life of the boxing club, it seemed a bit like a Zen temple... (laughs)
Kobayashi: It might be related.
Mishima: Yes, I think it could be.
Kobayashi: I used to think that the yakuza were derived from the Suikoden, but I guess that's not true. (laughs) I don't know about the current Chinese Communist Party, but it is true that Suikoden is still alive among the intellectuals in China. This is still alive. When this kind of Suikoden was introduced in the Tokugawa period, it must have been very popular in Japan because it resonated so well. So, I was thinking that the yakuza were very much influenced by that kind of thing, but now they are said to be volatile, so maybe that is part of it. It might be so. That's strange, I don't know.
Mishima Have you read Yasuhiro Takeda's novel, 'The Deformed One?'
Kobayashi: I don't know it.
Mishima: It's a story about a dojo of other forces, and it seems that you yourself have had experience with that.
Kobayashi: What do you mean by "other forces"?
Mishima: It must be Shinshu.
*
The problem of beauty and the pursuit of form
*
Kobayashi: You wrote about the life of a Shinshu Buddhist monk.
Mishima: Yes, that's right. I met a boy at Myoshin-ji Temple who came to the temple because his marriage had failed and he had become neurotic. They weren't old enough to be called fathers, but that kind of solution still exists in places like Kyoto. It is unthinkable in Tokyo, isn't it? If you get neurotic, you go to a temple. In Kyoto, people go to temples.
Kobayashi: Hmmm.
Mishima: Yokomitsu-san was mentioned earlier, but Kobayashi-san praised and praised 'Machine.' After that, he said it was no good any more, and Yokomitsu-san was completely ruined.
Kobayashi: I wouldn't say that it was no good. It's just that I liked Yokomitsu-san as a person, and he was an admirable man, but he kept going down that road, and I felt it was too hard for me to keep up with him. It was hard for me to see his talent, which wasn't really his talent, going in that direction, and I couldn't keep up. So I stopped reading from that point on. So I don't know anything about the rest. I still don't read them, I don't know them.
Mishima: Isn't it a shame that he has no misconceptions about his talent and just goes around in circles in the same place?
Kobayashi Don't misunderstand?
Mishima: For example, to put it bluntly, I think Satomi-san and Nagai Kafū-san have this tendency, but when they catch the shape of their talent in one place, if they go here it doesn't suit their talent, if they go there it doesn't suit them, so it gradually becomes narrower, right? A life that moves automatically...
Kobayashi: But that is not automatic, is it?
Mishima: Yes, it is.
Kobayashi: Yes, because within a certain mould, things become more and more complicated.
Mishima: Would it be happier that way, after all?
Kobayashi: I don't know if I can say that it is happy or not. It's more expressive that way.
Mishima: That's true.
Kobayashi: I'm going to go off on a different tangent, but I think that people nowadays underestimate the issue of beauty. The reason I write so much about painting is that, in the end, modern painters are always pursuing the problem of beauty. They are pursuing beauty in various ways. That's why they are making such revolutions, such rebellions against society. I am interested in that kind of revolution, that kind of rebellion against society, that kind of pursuit. They are very intense in their demand for new technologies, techniques, and so on. Such a movement, such a strong demand for things, has been seen in other worlds, especially in the world of literature. Only there is no compromise. In literature, poetry is becoming more and more isolated. The world of prose grows so large that it flourishes in the form of the novel. It thrives by compromising with contemporary social conventions. Even if it says something somewhat new, it is always compromising with the so-called new public opinion of the time, with the new progressive ideas, with the common sense of the time. Only painting is still in defiance. It is the legacy of that very violent revolutionary movement from the middle of the nineteenth century. A rebellion in the name of beauty. This is very interesting. So, I wonder why these kinds of problems don't become larger, more general problems.
Mishima: That's true. In the case of novels, I think it's because the phenomenon is too heavy.
Kobayashi: That is something I don't really understand. When I think about it, in the end, what an artist like that is thinking about is probably form, isn't it?
Mishima: Yes, form.
Kobayashi: Form is an absolute value. Form is all we seek, and we aim for new forms. However, in the world of prose, form is no longer what we aim for.
Mishima: Yes, yes.
*
Novelist's eye
*
Kobayashi: However, if there is no form at all, it is not art, and although I feel some kind of nostalgia for form, other things are becoming more important. It is better to criticise an object than to intuitively perceive its form, better to say it is true than to say it is beautiful. That's how it's come to be. That tendency has become very strong, on the one hand. I think that humans have these two tendencies of perception. There are two ways of perceiving things. They have always been at odds with each other throughout history. The world of novels has always been a world that destroys form, a world dominated by that kind of perceptual power. Modern man has become accustomed to a world that is in tune with the method of science, which denies form. So, although everyone wants to have an understanding of art as a form of culture, there is no awareness great the world of art actually exists as a major force of resistance against modern culture.
Mishima: For example, here is a shrimp. (Pointing to a plate on the table) When did the idea that the shrimp that look like this are not real shrimp come about?
Kobayashi: Realism?
Mishima: Yes, well. Did it come out of Impressionism?
Kobayashi: Of course, I am an Impressionist.
Mishima: Novelists came to have the idea that the shrimp I am looking at is not really a shrimp from the Impressionist school...
Kobayashi: Just at the time when the Symbolist school of painting was flourishing, the Realism movement was flourishing. However, at that time, the method of Realism was very new and revolutionary in comparison with Romantic literature. Therefore, it offered vivid images that could be called Impressionism in literature as opposed to Impressionism in painting. This is why Zola became a sympathiser of the New Artists' movement. But originally the two approaches were completely different. I came to understand that as I worked. It was Cézanne who first saw through this. Therefore, the breakup between Cézanne and Zola was not just a personal feud. It was a divergence in the type of perception.
Mishima: That's how it's been described by Shiga-san. In Japan, however, it is still said that a novelist is a person who sees things, and that the eye is important.
Kobayashi: So you are still following the Gautier tradition. A writer is a person for whom the "outside world" exists. This is the idea of impressionistic realism.
Mishima: Then, if form is not the issue for the novelist, if truth and criticism are the only issues, then, as paradoxical as it may sound, it is not necessary to be blind.
Kobayashi: Yes. You don't need to be blind to see. That is why it is true. Critics are blind. Critical writers are also blind.
Mishima: Kobayashi-san, what do you think about when you think about a novel? What do you think about form? Do you think of a novel from that point of view, where form is inevitably a problem, or do you say that it doesn't matter if you can't see...?
Kobayashi: That's what I don't understand. I even want to ask you what you think about it. I can understand very well the inevitability of the emergence of anti-impressionism among today's painters, like Picasso or Braque. But that can only be achieved if you can see. They have the eyes of a traditional painter. The form comes out like that, but the roots are changing. The essence lies in being able to see with your eyes. More and more. But in any case, you can see things. There are a lot of imitators who can paint without being able to see, and they are gathering there. Then, the confusion of contemporary painting is that we really can't tell what we think is really good and what we feel is totally different. That's the situation now. I am in such a state now. How many years will remain in this kind of atmosphere? Just at the time of the rise of Impressionism, everyone became an Impressionist. Why does only Monet remain among them? Whose wisdom was it that only Monet remained among so many? Who made the decision? I don't know, but it was probably someone who could see. I want to say that this was decided, but it's a difficult thing to say. In my opinion, beauty is nothing more than a belief in existence. If you ask who will remain out of the various schools of thought that exist today, it's probably someone who can see. In that sense, I think that form is following the same trend. So, if we think of literature and painting as a whole as forms, it is not okay to be blind.
Mishima That's right.
*
Form and formalism
*
Kobayashi: That's why Gautier's impressions gradually became critical, and realism became analytical observation. In the end, he developed a kind of prose in which it was difficult to tell whether he was writing about the outside or the inside. This was inevitable, but what kind of new forms would emerge in this kind of environment? It was becoming quite difficult to distinguish. Therefore, we can no longer judge a novel in simple terms such as whether it depicts human beings or not. There is a thread of such words, though it is not possible to do so. We still have the ability to intuitively perceive forms, and we are still in touch with the invisible form of the novel, aren't we?
Mishima: I don't know if I can see it with my own eyes or not, but I have a stronger than average admiration for form, or rather, I am interested in such things. However, formalist prose art is probably the greatest degradation of prose art, and I have serious doubts about to what extent the genre of the novel should be interested in form, and to what extent it should consider form.
Kobayashi: I understand that very well. I am sure that you are capable of writing novels that depict people very well, such as the old-fashioned private novels, or even Maupassant's novels. I think you are a person who can write such novels. You just don't write them. So you do something deliberately different, don't you? This may be selfish, but that's how I think it is, and form has nothing to do with formalism. It's wrong to translate form as "the shape." It's better to translate it as "the appearance." Words only have form when they become poetry. Your interest is in poetry. You always capture the image you like. You don't observe, you consciously create the image. That's why it's a completely poetic method.
Mishima: But it's also a kind of stubbornness. It's a more straightforward way of looking at things...
Kobayashi: Isn't that what all performers are like? If that's the will of a performer, that's fine. This is not criticism or anything like that. That's why I can no longer criticise certain works.
Mishima: Novels themselves are very confusing, and I don't think there are any standards.
Kobayashi: No, I don't.
Mishima: But in France, there are tragedies, and I think that form of tragedy has had a lot of influence on the novel. For example, in the novels of Mauriac, the form of Racine's plays has been preserved to a great extent.
Kobayashi: ...I think that is the case for everyone. For example, even Sartre...
Mishima: Sartre is a mess.
Kobayashi: However, when I read Valéry, there is something new about the form of prose. The charm of prose is that it breaks all the forms and a new poem emerges. I feel that there is a mysterious form.
Mishima: Yes, that's true. I wonder if that's all we have right now.
Kobayashi: I don't know. But when I read Sartre, he was very much influenced by Dostoevsky. He just didn't write about it, but he was influenced by it. I can see that the prototype of this woman is a certain character from Dostoevsky. The man in the prototype was made into a woman, and so on. But why is it that I can smell a kind of human odour in Dostoevsky's work, and only feel the conception of Sartre's characters? I wonder what it is that makes me feel this way. I don't know. I don't know, not at all. Is it that there's something old inside me that I just can't get rid of, or is there something wrong with him?
Mishima: I don't understand art or poetry, so I only think about prose, but is it possible for prose to break down and remain in that state?
Kobayashi: That's possible, isn't it? I'm sure that's possible.
Mishima: I don't think you can say that Valéry's prose has collapsed.
*
Valéry and Balzac
*
Kobayashi: That's what he's breaking down. All of his prose is deliberately broken. I don't think anyone has written such prose. You can look at any of his later works, but they're all there. There are novels. There is poetry, there is psychology, there is philosophy, there is everything. It's not as if it's just something you think about. Here you get the image of a novel, then you read a bit more and you get the image of psychology, then the image of philosophy, and so on. That's the style of his prose. His essays aren't just anything, they're not something that you can cram any content into. His prose-writing technique is something even more incredible. He also has journalistic skills. Read 'Degas's Dance Drawings.' It really ranges from jokes to philosophy. When he jokes, he writes in the style of a joke. No one has written prose like that before him, and no one after him either.
Mishima: When I read Valéry, I get the feeling that no matter how much you crush calcite, the crystals stay the same shape. Just like that, no matter how much you crush it, the form doesn't change. Compared to Valéry, Balzac's works may seem to have fallen apart when viewed piece by piece. However, the whole is a single synthesis of prose. Valéry's works seem to be the same crystallized form, even if they are broken down. Perhaps this is the difference between the eras.
Kobayashi: Balzac wrote in tune with the times. Valéry writes in a world that relies on no one but himself. That's why he's so sensitive about what he writes, even about what he publishes. But apparently he has more unpublished notes than Balzac's entire oeuvre. We don't know what will come out from now on.
Mishima: I know I seem to be too focused on the novel, but when I think about the novel, I think Balzac's style is the best example. From the jokes to philosophy that you just mentioned, everything is possible to contemplate. Each part of the novel may be very long-winded or sloppy or messed up, but the whole of the novel is in prose, and it seems to me that his prose is forever rippling. I think that kind of style is the most novelistic.
Kobayashi: I wonder if that's true.
Mishima: When he wrote it, it must have been called a very bad style.
Kobayashi There were many people who spoke ill of it.
Mishima: Do you dislike Balzac?
Kobayashi: No, not at all. It's good.
Mishima: I think Hoffmanstahl's theory of Balzac is very good.
Kobayashi: Is it published in Japan?
Mishima: Yes, it is, in translation. Hoffmanstahl says that Balzac wrote with transparent paint, no matter how dirty he wrote. He writes that there is poetry in everything... But even if you think about novels all the time, like I do, you can't help but write something that is not a novel. (laugh).
Kobayashi: You don't have to think about such things. I've recently found it difficult to think about general things. Maybe it's always been like that, but I can only think about what I'm doing. I'm sure everyone feels the same way.
Mishima: Ah.
Kobayashi: That's why I'm in trouble when it comes to issues like that. You really don't know until you write it down. I'm not very good at it. I have a penchant for philosophy, but I don't have the talent. (laughs)
Mishima: What do you mean?
obayashi: After all, I am a performer, and if I don't write about things I like and arrange the words in order, my brain just doesn't work. (laughs.) So when it becomes a big problem, I'm ruined.
Mishima: I don't like big problems because I think they are very vulgar. (laughs) Valéry is talking about great problems. For example, if he talks about the decline of Europe, it would be in Valéry's hands. That would be a big problem. I think Valéry is a critic who never dealt with big problems, even in the end.
Kobayashi: That man, in short, doesn't have a furoshiki. That is why he cannot unfold a furoshiki and wrap things in it.
Mishima: Well, the novelist who is dealing with the biggest problem right now is Yoshie Hotta.
Kobayashi: What is it?
Mishima: Anyway, everything I write and do is a big problem. I believe that a novelist is an artist. As long as they are artists, I don't think that big problems can be the subject matter. I think that where there is art, there are no big problems, to put it extremely simply.
Kobayashi: Yes.
Mishima: Does Mozart have a big problem?
Kobayashi: A "big problem," your word is... Descriptive writing has disappeared from the novel.
Mishima: I say that in a journalistic sense.
Kobayashi: Oh, I see. Is that what a journalist would call a big problem?
Mishima: Yes, yes. And then there is the big problem of the people in general, the people of today. Of course, it's a little different from what you just said.
Kobayashi: Form cannot be a big problem, after all.
Mishima: Yes, I think so too. I completely agree.
Kobayashi: Form is not a furoshiki, you know.
Mishima: I think you are absolutely right.
Kobayashi: But it's not that novels don't have form, it's more that people don't recognise form in novels anymore, especially among today's readers.
Mishima: No, they don't.
Kobayashi: In the end, when people read novels, they have fantasies about the lives of the people in the novels, just as a child reads a story. That is why novels are so popular, but the pleasure of having such fantasies is not the pleasure of directly intuiting the form of the novel. For example, if you love Dostoevsky's novels and read them over and over again, you will recognise the form of his soul. There are no words for that. To put it into words requires the invention of another form, and explaining it to people is not inventing a form. It's about appealing to people's judgement. There are some things that cannot be explained. It is better to draw Dostoevsky's spiritual form like a painter, and to devise a form that can be seen at a glance. That kind of thing is something that only special critics can write. There's no one who is interested in seeing form in prose these days. So, even if you insist that prose has a form, it is because you are a performer, and you care about that, but that is not the fate of prose today. Everyone is looking for the fun of judgment and criticism in prose. Some of that criticism may be sentimental and some of it may be rational, but the sadness of fantasy that you get from fiction is this pleasure of sentimental criticism and judgement. It's just that the performer is not so aware of it. The big problem, as you call it, is the product of critique and judgement. Judgment upon judgment, criticism upon criticism, this is the big problem of our time, isn't it? We judge that the problem is the most serious problem of modern life. There will be no form in it. So this furoshiki can wrap up any number of universes. That's what I mean. That is why today's culture places so much value on the big furoshiki.
Mishima: The question is, to what extent should novels follow such a world of judgement?
Kobayashi: To the fullest extent, right?
Mishima: Yes, as far as possible. In Balzac's time, I think the world of judgement and the world of the novel were in harmony. Now they're separated, so I don't know how far I should pursue them, or where I should go.
Kobayashi: Balzac's psychological portrayal was easy, but once Freud came along, the novelists would try to cure Freud.
Mishima: Yes, that's right. It's no good that novels have the ability to chase after something so easily.
Kobayashi: So why not change it?
Mishima: I agree.
Kobayashi: That's why I think novels will disappear, but they don't seem to be disappearing. (laughing together.) Because films have come out, and prose has to be written in a different way... Descriptions are disappearing from novels, you know.
Mishima: They are gone. Then, let's talk about plays.
Kobayashi: I've never seen Mishima-san's plays, and I only have very old-fashioned ideas about the music, so no. (laughs) But my child wanted a TV, so I bought her one. That's why I'm watching TV. The other day, I was impressed by a play from Osaka, I don't know the name of it. The reason I was impressed was because it was performed in the Osaka dialect, which is very interesting.
Mishima: I think it was the form of the language.
*
Standard language, Modern,Language
*
Kobayashi: The lines are alive. Everything they say is alive. However, the lines they use in modern new plays these days are standard Japanese, but that standard Japanese is a dead language at the moment. I hate it. It's the same with films. The lines in the film, they are lifeless. I don't know who the original culprit was. I think it was Kaoru Oyamauchi, but there is a theatrical language that originated from him. This is a language that will never gain its passion. They're all the same. It tends to get worse and worse. It's a kind of Esperanto. They use the same lines. That's why they're dying, all of them.
Mishima: They're dying from it. The more you try to make it sound like everyday conversation, the more dead the words become.
Kobayashi: That's your fault, isn't it? (Mishima laughs) I mean, you're the one writing the plays and directing them, aren't you? It's your fault. Those words are dead. It's so obvious. When you do it in Osaka dialect, everything comes alive. After all, you have to grasp the living language. The actors use different words when they go home. I'm not asking you to use Edo-mae words. This is difficult. You can't teach them even if you try. This is no good. But, you know, when you go home, you use different words... I'm just waiting for a great actor to come along!
Mishima: That's right.
Kobayashi: I think so.
Mishima: You're not here, are you? The dialogue in films is even worse. Two scenes have to be combined into one for time reasons, and lines have to be told in a certain number of seconds. This is no longer Japanese. You start attaching relative pronouns in strange places. By connecting them, the stanzas are chilling. The lines in Shingeki still sound like they are written in Japanese. There are still many lines in Shingeki. You can see it in (Tsunehisa) Fukuda-san's plays and everything else.
Kobayashi: Fukuda is also a talented man. I saw 'Kitty Typhoon.'
Mishima: Even if I gave you a ticket, you probably wouldn't see it anyway.
Kobayashi: That's not true.
Mishima: Then, I'll give it to you.
Kobayashi: Are you doing yours?
Mishima: Yes, 'The Rokumeikan.'
Kobayashi: I'll look at it, please give me three copies. (laughs) You really are a demon of talent. It's okay to fall. You mustn't flinch.
Mishima: You never know when you're going to fall, it's like riding a horse.
Kobayashi: If you are wrong for the sake of your talent, you must be happy about it. I really wasn't bored reading this book. It's a devil of talent. It's the beginning, right up until he decides that he must burn the Golden Pavilion at the Yura River. But to say that you forgot to kill him is not right. It is wrong for an author to forget to kill. But, well, it's a novel that you might actually forget. (laughs)
Mishima: (laughs) The conclusion has been reached.
(‘Bungei,’ January 1957)