The Paradox of Beauty: Yukio Mishima's 'Forbidden Colours'

Beauty, sexuality, death. Any reader who opens a Yukio Mishima (三島 由紀夫) novel will inevitably encounter these abstract subjects. Known for controversial works such as The Sound of Waves, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, and The Sea of Fertility tetralogy, Mishima was a novelist with uncompromising ethics and a stalwart belief in right-winged, nationalist ideals. His writings are sometimes considered emotionally barren and overtly intellectual, distancing the reader from the authorial voice. Forbidden Colours (禁色, 1951-3) is that exception, where the reader, if he chooses to, can almost hear Mishima himself meditate on the power of absolute beauty and the bane of homosexuality in post-war Japan.

The novel’s two main protagonists, Shunsuke (an aged misogynistic, heterosexual writer) and Yuichi (a guileless homosexual youth blessed with unparalleled beauty), are the driving forces behind the intriguing plot, which finds Shunsuke, towards the end of an illustrious literary carrier, seeking revenge against old lovers by convincing the young but irresistible Yuichi to help him realise his goal. The many twists and turns of the plot are not my concern here. What lifts this work above pedestrian “gay fiction” is its treatment of the above-mentioned subjects.

Mishima’s dissection of beauty is both illuminating and paradoxical, showing the author’s troubled relationship with aesthetics (if one may be so bold as to read Shunsuke as a sort of projection of his future self). Shunsuke’s descriptions of Yuichi, of which there are many throughout the 429-page novel, are in every sense hyperbolic. The very first time the reader is introduced to Yuichi, he is treated to this:

It was an amazingly beautiful young man. His body surpassed the sculptures of ancient Greece. It was like the Apollo moulded in bronze by an artist of the Peloponnesus school. It overflowed with gentle beauty and carried such a noble column of a neck, such gently sloping shoulders, such a softly broad chest, such elegantly rounded wrists, such a rapidly tapering tightly filled trunk, such legs, stoutly filled out like a heroic sword.  (26)

Shunsuke’s descriptions leave little to the imagination. There is a strong indication that he perceives Yuichi as a superhuman phenomenon, one that may stir up a tempest in the cavities of the heart. He calls Yuichi a “young, beautiful wolf,” underlining his (still latent) predatory nature. Ironically, Mishima goes on to say that Shunsuke “hated all the beautiful men of the world. Yet beauty struck him dumb whether he liked it or not” (26). This is the first sign that Shunsuke’s perception of beauty is a paradoxon, and it is precisely this dissonance that will turn Yuichi into an obsession for him – even though he is a tried and true heterosexual. Mishima writes: “Yet what silenced his resentment here was perhaps not the perfect beauty of the youth, but what he surmised to be his complete happiness” (27). The idea of beauty being a source of personal happiness will return in the final pages of the novel, but here it serves as an introduction to Shunsuke’s mental landscape.

In two other disparate passages, we find Shunsuke ruminate on the power of beauty. In the first, he claims that beauty “has become a stimulus to garrulity” (112). The author feels that modern society cannot cope with the mere presence of beauty; its instant reaction is to respond to beauty verbally and to transform it into speech. This is done because we subconsciously understand pure beauty to be dangerous, and if we do not convert it into words, it cannot be manageable. The result of this conversion is often a negative one. It gave birth to the Age of Criticism, in which every Tom, Dick, and Harry can claim to understand and possess beauty, thereby defiling its noble, divine status:

Thus today’s evil times of talk begetting talk, of ears being deafened by it, began. Beauty makes men everywhere chatter. In the end, thanks to this loquaciousness, beauty is artificially [what a strange way to express it!] propagated. (112)

Shunsuke concludes this rumination with the observation that “the mass production of beauty has begun.” It is thus bourgeoisification that Shunsuke is blaming for the denigration of beauty. In a later passage, Shunsuke mentions how bourgeois society has redefined morality to the point of undesirable explicitness. Holding the ancient Spartans up as a shining example of good taste, he says:

Ancient morality was simple and strong, and thus magnificence was always on the side of subtlety, and humour always on the side of coarseness. Nowadays, however, morality has been separated from aesthetics. Thanks to cheap bourgeois principles, morality has taken sides with mediocrity … Beauty has taken an exaggerated form, become old-fashioned, and it is either magnificent or a joke. These days it doesn’t matter which; the two have the same meaning. (336)

According to this line of reasoning, one can say Shunsuke (Mishima) is of the opinion that modern society has lost the ability to appreciate pure beauty. Our sensitivities, unsophisticated compared to those of the Ancient Greeks, cannot interpret the subtle nuances of beauty. As a consequence, we have become blind to the sublime properties of beauty, failing to connect with what is perhaps the single most remarkable life-force in the universe.

That beauty is overwhelming but necessary to every human life is spelt out in the finale of the novel, when Shunsuke makes a decision that will change the game he has been playing with Yuichi for good. To Shunsuke, religion and science are always about “the other side,” meaning that the two disciplines primarily concern themselves with the future, an unrealised something that requires patience and imagination. Beauty, however, is “always on this side.” It is “in this world, in the present, firm; it can be touched with the hand” (424). It is also the only phenomenon that our sexual appetites can taste. Because of beauty, we are permitted to experience sensuality. However, beauty is unreachable because “the susceptibilities of sense … block attainment of it” (424). Shunsuke bemoans the fact that he is only a novelist, not a Greek sculptor who could at least express beauty. The passage ends on a frustrated note: “Among men, it [beauty] controls men most deeply. It is beauty that defies mankind. Thanks to beauty, spirit cannot get a moment of decent rest” (424).

By this time, it is painfully clear to Shunsuke and the reader that Yuichi, the perfect youth, has a mind of his own and is unattainable. Shunsuke’s utterance is self-referential, but it should not surprise anyone that Mishima’s spirit is alive and well in these words. As a gay man who had to go on to live a double life like his protagonist Yuichi (Mishima married in 1958 and had two children), it is easy to see why he should have thought pure beauty would be forever beyond his reach.

Mishima, Yukio. Forbidden Colours. London: Penguin Books, 2008.