First published 1962. Translated by Stephen Dodd 2022, Penguin paperback, 2023, pp 270, c.87,000 words.
What an odd book this is. It isn’t science fiction – there is no science in it, and it is not even set in the future. It is a meditation on humanity. There is almost no plot, and very little character development.
The story, such as it is, centres around two small groups of people who have decided they come from other planets. They claim to have been communicated with by flying saucers from those planets, but none of those claims are supported by any evidence. The first group is a classic family: father, mother, boy and girl. The children are just becoming adults. The second group are three mis-fit men: an academic, a barber and a student. Each believes they are here on Earth to perform some kind of mission to save or destroy mankind. As one says: ‘The end of human beings on Earth is already in sight.’ [p7]
This book was published only seventeen years after atom bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki which ended the second world war and Japanese militarism. Mishima would have been around seventeen at the time and surely was profoundly affected by the times in which he lived. Here he sets up the dichotomy between the desire to save and the desire to destroy. This is also a meditation on illusion. All the characters are deluded to some degree, and yet they are all profoundly human. They have human desires and emotions and use their assumed alien identity as justification for their actions and to cover up their simple human self-centred actions.
There are some beautiful meditations on everyday experiences. For example, there is a lovely paragraph on one characters’ thoughts on trees that concludes: ‘Perhaps it was precisely because trees were delicate streams pouring down from the heavens in crystallised form that their abundant branches and leaves also stretched upwards, struggling to find their way back to the celestial realm.’ [p10]. The next paragraph is a meditation on scissors which include the sentence: ‘Scissors are simply something you hold in your hand, but they readily bisect the world, forming spaces that incorporate mountains, cities and oceans.’ [p10]. Sometimes the descriptions are downright bizarre: ‘And there was something about him that made you think of the June breeze passing through the acacia treetops, or the smell of an unmade bed in a third-class dormitory.’ [p46]. Occasionally a simple phrase is captivating: ‘a pen tray holding a line of anxiously sharpened pencils.’ [p100]. And about an apple being peeled by a woman: ‘Its firm exposed flesh exuded a scent laced with sweet anxiety.’ [p102]
Towards the end [pp197-244], there is a confrontation between the two groups where they have a long discussion on what mankind’s fate should be. It is mostly a lot of unfocused thoughts, cod-existentialist philosophy, and with acres of incoherent nihilistic ramblings.
Much of the writing has an almost child-like simplicity, e.g. ‘our family’s mission is nothing less than to ensure it doesn’t happen.’ [p7], which might have been taken from any teenager’s fantasy story. In a translation it is hard to know if this is the author’s style or the translator’s, particularly, as in this case, between languages that have such different structures as English and Japanese. One can say that the translation is clear and easy to read. Only at one point was I disturbed by an English colloquialism: ‘You’ve got your head screwed on’ [p36].
The role of women is accepting life as homemakers: ‘But whatever planet she found herself on, she would probably end up in charge of the kitchen’ [p22], which was normal when this was written and still a very prevalent view in Japan to this day.
If you come to this book expecting elegant and ethereal meditations on what it means to be human then you won’t be disappointed. If you want an SF thriller with a driving plot, you will.
Wikipedia biography of Mishima: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukio_Mishima
Others’ reviews of the book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57951419-beautiful-star?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=slkkkRnrqg&rank=1
© William John Graham, March 2024