Yukio Mishima - The Decay Of The Angel

That Keiko should be here with him was a little incongruous.

He had rather strong doubts about Keiko’s understanding of Japanese culture. There was something admirable all the same in her expansive half-knowledge. She quite avoided pretense. She went her rounds of the Kyoto temples, and, like artistically inclined foreign ladies stuffed with misconceptions from a first visit to Japan, she would shrill forth her pleasure at objects that no longer interested most Japanese, and arrange them in false nosegays. She was fascinated with Japan as with the Antarctic. She would spread herself out with all the awkwardness of a stockinged foreign lady as she viewed a rock garden. All her life she had known only Occidental chairs.

She was in genuine intellectual heat. She fell into the habit of holding forth with her own peculiar notions about Japanese art and literature, albeit neglecting a detail here and there.

It had long been one of her indulgences to invite the foreign ambassadors in turn to dinner. Now they became the audiences for her proud lectures on Japanese culture. Older acquaintances had not dreamed that Keiko would one day honor them with discourses on gold-leafed screens.

“But they’re passers in the night with no sense of gratitude at all.” Honda warned her of the futility. “They’ll go on to their next posts with not a thought left in their heads for this one. What’s the point in even seeing them?”

“The birds of passage are the ones you don’t have to be on your guard with. You don’t have to worry about ten years from now, and a new audience every night is rather fun.”

But she was taking herself seriously, congratulating herself in a naïve way on furthering international cultural exchange. She would learn a dance and immediately unveil it before ambassadorial guests. It gave her strength to know that her audience was not likely to detect the flaws.

However assiduously Keiko might refine her knowledge, it was not up to plumbing the darkness where stretched the deepest roots of the Japanese. The dark blood springs that had agitated Isao Iinuma were far away. Honda called Keiko’s store of Japanese culture a freezer full of vegetables.

Honda had become recognized at the embassies as Keiko’s gentleman friend. He was always invited with her to dinner.

It angered him when at one embassy the footmen were in formal Japanese dress. “Displaying the natives, nothing more. It’s an insult.”

“I don’t feel that way at all. Japanese men look better in Japanese clothes. Your dinner jacket does nothing for me at all.”

When, at a diplomatic black-tie dinner, the guests would start for the dining room with a gentle stir, the ladies in the lead, and the flowers on the table would throw deep shadows from a forest of silver candlesticks, and outside there would be quiet summer rain, the shining sadness of it all was most becoming to Keiko. She allowed not a flicker of the ingratiating smile so common among Japanese women. There was grand tradition in the grand glowing back of the retreating figure. She even had the husky, melancholy voice of the old Japanese aristocrat. In the company of ambassadors whose weariness was showing through the gilt and of cold-blooded counselors each with his own special affectations, Keiko was alive.

Since they would be separated at the table, Keiko spoke to him quietly in the procession. “I brought up Robe of Feathers . But I’ve never been to Mio. Take me there some day soon. There are so many places I’ve never been.”

“Any time. I’ve just been to Nihondaira Heights, but I wouldn’t mind going again. I’ll most happily be your escort.”

His stiff shirt insisted on pressing at his chin.

8

AT THE OPENING of Robe of Feathers , two fishermen, one of them the deuteragonist, are engaged in conversation. “The boatmen call out as they make their way up the tempestuous Mio channel.” There comes a description of the journey. “Suddenly, a thousand leagues off, the friendly hills are enshrouded in clouds.” A fine long robe of silk hangs on the pine at center rear. Hakuryō starts off with it, thinking to make it his own. The protagonist, the angel, appears. He ignores her pleas that he return it. She is desolate, unable to fly back to the heavens.

“Hakuryō clutches the robe. She is helpless. Her tears like the dew in her jeweled hair, she weeps. The flowers fade, the five signs of the decay of the angel come forth.”

On the express from Tokyo Keiko was humming the prologue. “And what,” she asked with sudden earnestness, “are the five signs of the decay of the angel?”

Honda was well informed. He had looked into the matter of angels after that dream. The five signs are the five marks that death has come to an angel. There are variations, depending on the source.

Here is the account in the twenty-fourth fascicle of the Ekottara-augama: “There are thirty-three angels and one archangel, and the signs of death in them are fivefold. Their flowered crowns wither, their robes are soiled, the hollows under their arms are fetid, they lose their awareness of themselves, they are abandoned by the jeweled maidens.”

And The Life of the Buddha , fifth fascicle: “There are five signs that the allotted time has run out. The flowers in the hair fade, a fetid sweat comes from under the arms, the robes are soiled, the body ceases to give off light, it loses awareness of itself.”

And the last fascicle of the Mahāmāyā-sūtra: “And at that time Mahā gave forth in the heavens five signs of her decay. Her crown of flowers wilted, a sweat poured from under her arms, her halo faded, her eyes came to blink without pause, she lost all satisfaction with her rightful place.”

So far the similarities are more striking than the variations. The Abhidharma-mahāvibhāsā-sāstra describes the five greater signs and the five lesser signs in considerable detail. The five lesser signs are first.

As an angel soars and pirouettes it usually gives forth music so beautiful that no musician, no orchestra or chorus can imitate it; but as death approaches the music fades and the voice becomes tense and thin.

In normal times, day and night, there floods from within an angel a light that permits of no shadows; but as death approaches the light dwindles sharply and the body is wrapped in thin shadows.

The skin of an angel is smooth and well anointed, and even if it immerses itself in a lake of ambrosia it throws off the liquid as does the leaf of a lotus; but as death approaches, water clings and will not leave.

At most times an angel, like a spinning wheel of fire, neither stops nor is apprehensible in one place, it is there when it is here, it dodges and moves and throws itself free; but when death approaches, it lingers in one spot and cannot break free.

An angel exudes unblinking strength, but as death approaches the strength departs and blinking becomes incessant.

Here are the five greater signs: the once-immaculate robes are soiled, the flowers in the flowery crown fade and fall, sweat pours from the armpits, a fetid stench envelops the body, the angel is no longer happy in its proper place.

It will be seen that the other sources enumerate the greater signs. So long as only the lesser ones are present, death can still be put off, but once the greater signs appear the issue is not in doubt.

In Robe of Feathers , one of the greater signs has already made its appearance, and yet the angel will recover if the robe is returned. It may be imagined that Zeami allowed himself a poetic hint of decay and decline and did not worry about the meticulous letter of the law.