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What Transforms This World Is - Knowledge. Do You See What I Mean? Nothing Else Can Change Anything In This World. Knowledge Alone Is Capable Of Transforming The World, While At The Same Time Leaving It Exactly As It Is. When You Look At The World With Knowledge, You Realize That Things Are Unchangeable And At The Same Time Are Constantly Being Transformed.

-Yukio Mishima

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What Transforms This World

Yukio Mishima

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What Transforms This World Is - Knowledge. Do You See What I Mean? Nothing Else Can Change Anything In This World. Knowledge Alone Is Capable Of Transforming The World, While At The Same Time Leaving It Exactly As It Is. When You Look At The World With Knowledge, You Realize That Things Are Unchangeable And At The Same Time Are Constantly Being Transformed.

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Isao Had Never Felt That He Might Want To Be A Woman. He Had Never Wished For Anything Else But To Be A Man, Live In A Manly Way, Die A Manly Death. To Be Thus A Man Was To Give Constant Proof Of One's Manliness-to Be More A Man Today Than Yesterday, More A Man Tomorrow Than Today. To Be A Man Was To Forge Ever Upward Toward The Peak Of Manhood, There To Die Amid The White Snows Of That Peak.

It Is A Common Failing Of Childhood To Think That If One Makes A Hero Out Of A Demon The Demon Will Be Satisfied.

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The Mind, By Its Very Nature, Persistently Tries To Live Forever, Resisting Age And Attempting To Give Itself A Form... . When A Person Passes His Prime And His Life Begins To Lose True Vigor And Charm, His Mind Starts Functioning As If It Were Another Form Of Life; It Imitates What Life Does, Eventually Doing What Life Cannot Do.

A Man Isn't Tiny Or Giant Enough To Defeat Anything.

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A Father Is A Reality-concealing Machine, A Machine For Dishing Up Lies To Kids, And That Isn't Even The Worst Of It: Secretly He Believes That He Represents Reality.

..and Certain That Life Consisted Of A Few Simple Signals And Decisions; That Death Took Root At The Moment Of Birth And Man’s Only Recourse Thereafter Was To Water And Tend It; That Propagation Was A Fiction; Consequently, Society Was A Fiction Too; That Fathers And Teachers, By Virtue Of Being Fathers And Teachers, Were Guilty Of A Grievous Sin.

In The Pale Light Of Daybreak The Gravestones Looked Like So Many White Sails Of Boats Anchored In A Busy Harbor. They Were Sails That Would Never Again Be Filled With Wind, Sails That, Too Long Unused And Heavily Drooping, Had Been Turned Into Stone Just As They Were. The Boats' Anchors Had Been Thrust So Deeply Into The Dark Earth That They Could Never Again Be Raised.

When Silence Is Prolonged Over A Certain Period Of Time, It Takes On New Meaning.

However, As Words Become Particularized, And As Men Begin - In However Small A Way - To Use Them In Personal, Arbitrary Ways, So Their Transformation Into Art Begins. It Was Words Of This Kind That, Descending On Me Like A Swarm Of Winged Insects, Seized On My Individuality And Sought To Shut Me Up Within It. Nevertheless, Despite The Enemy's Depredations Upon My Person, I Turned Their Universality - At Once A Weapon And A Weakness - Back On Them, And To Some Extent Succeeded In Using Words To Universalize To My Own Individuality.

Perfect Purity Is Possible If You Turn Your Life Into A Line Of Poetry Written With A Splash Of Blood.

According To Eshin's Essentials Of Salvation, The Ten Pleasures Are But A Drop In The Ocean When Compared To The Joys Of The Pure Land.

His Emotion Evident In The Glitter Of His Eyes.

The Instant That The Blade Tore Open His Flesh, The Bright Disk Of The Sun Soared Up And Exploded Behind His Eyelids.

Suddenly The Full Long Wail Of A Ship's Horn Surged Through The Open Window And Flooded The Dim Room—a Cry Of Boundless, Dark, Demanding Grief; Pitch-black And Glabrous As A Whale's Back And Burdened With All The Passions Of The Tides, The Memory Of Voyages Beyond Counting, The Joys, The Humiliations: The Sea Was Screaming.

To See Human Beings In Agony, To See Them Covered In Blood And To Hear Their Death Groans, Makes People Humble. It Makes Their Spirits Delicate, Bright, Peaceful. It's Never At Such Times That We Become Cruel Or Bloodthirsty. No, It's On A Beautiful Spring Afternoon Like This That People Suddenly Become Cruel. It's At A Moment Like This, Don't You Think, While One's Vaguely Watching The Sun As It Peeps Through The Leaves Of The Trees Above A Well-mown Lawn? Every Possible Nightmare In The World, Every Possible Nightmare In History, Has Come Into Being Like This.

We Had Stretched Out Our Arms To Each Other And Supported Something In Our Joined Hands, But This Thing We Were Holding Was Like A Sort Of Gas That Exists When You Believe In Its Existence And Disappears When You Doubt. The Task Of Supporting It Seems Simple At First Glance, But Actually Requires An Ultimate Refinement Of Calculation And A Consummate Skill.

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Anything Can Become Excusable When Seen From The Standpoint Of The Result

An Ugliness Unfurled In The Moonlight And Soft Shadow And Suffused The Whole World. If I Were An Amoeba, He Thought, With An Infinitesimal Body, I Could Defeat Ugliness. A Man Isn’t Tiny Or Giant Enough To Defeat Anything.

Let Us Remember That The Central Reality Must Be Sought In The Writer's Work: It Is What The Writer Chose To Write, Or Was Compelled To Write, That Finally Matters. And Certainly Mishima's Carefully Premeditated Death Is Part Of His Work.

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Actually The Action Called A Kiss Represented Nothing More For Me Than Some Place Where My Spirit Could Seek Shelter.

Within Those Confining Walls, Teachers - A Bunch Of Men All Armed With The Same Information - Gave The Same Lectures Every Year From The Same Notebooks And Every Year At The Same Point In The Textbooks Made The Same Jokes.

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Mine Was The Unbearable Jealousy A Cultured Pearl Must Feel Toward A Genuine One. Or Can There Be Such A Thing In This World As A Man Who Is Jealous Of The Woman Who Loves Him, Precisely Because Of Her Love?

The Highest Point At Which Human Life And Art Meet Is In The Ordinary. To Look Down On The Ordinary Is To Despise What You Can't Have. Show Me A Man Who Fears Being Ordinary, And I'll Show You A Man Who Is Not Yet A Man.

I Am One Who Has Always Been Interested Only In The Edges Of The Body And The Spirit, The Outlying Regions Of The Body And The Outlying Regions Of The Spirit. The Depths Hold No Interest For Me; I Leave Them To Others, For They Are Shallow, Commonplace. What Is There, Then, At The Outer Most Edge? Nothing, Perhaps, Save A Few Ribbons, Dangling Down Into The Void.

For Clearly It Is Impossible To Touch Eternity With One Hand And Life With The Other.

If We Value So Highly The Dignity Of Life, How Can We Not Also Value The Dignity Of Death No Death May Be Called Futile.

I Want To Make A Poem Of My Life.

Quite Possibly, What I Call Happiness May Coincide With What Others Call The Moment Of Imminent Danger

It Seems To Me That Before The Photograph Can Exist As Art It Must, By Its Very Nature Choose Whether It Is To Be A Record Or A Testimony.

I Had No Taste For Defeat - Much Less Victory - Without A Fight.

We Live In An Age In Which There Is No Heroic Death.

For An Artist To Do Creative Work, He Needs At Once Physical Health And Some Physiomental Ill Health. He Needs Both Serenity And Gloom.

We Are Not Wounded So Deeply When Betrayed By The Things We Hope For As When Betrayed By Things We Try Our Best To Despise. In Such Betrayal Comes The Dagger In The Back.

The Past Does Not Only Draw Us Back To The Past. There Are Certain Memories Of The Past That Have Strong Steel Springs And, When We Who Live In The Present Touch Them, They Are Suddenly Stretched Taut And Then They Propel Us Into The Future.

Human Beings - They Go On Being Born And Dying, Dying And Being Born. It's Kind Of Boring, Isn't It?

What Transforms This World Is - Knowledge. Do You See What I Mean? Nothing Else Can Change Anything In This World. Knowledge Alone Is Capable Of Transforming The World, While At The Same Time Leaving It Exactly As It Is. When You Look At The World With Knowledge, You Realize That Things Are Unchangeable And At The Same Time Are Constantly Being Transformed.

I Had Long Since Insisted Upon Interpreting The Things That Fate Forced Me To Do As Victories Of My Own Will And Intelligence, And Now This Bad Habit Had Grown Into A Sort Of Frenzied Arrogance. In The Nature Of What I Was Calling My Intelligence There Was A Touch Of Something Illegitimate, A Touch Of The Sham Pretender Who Has Been Placed On The Throne By Some Freak Chance. This Dolt Of A Usurper Could Not Foresee The Revenge That Would Inevitably Be Wreaked Upon His Stupid Despotism.

…the Samurai Ethic Is A Political Science Of The Heart, Designed To Control Such Discouragement And Fatigue In Order To Avoid Showing Them To Others. It Was Thought More Important To Look Healthy Than To Be Healthy, And More Important To Seem Bold And Daring Than To Be So. This View Of Morality, Since It Is Physiologically Based On The Special Vanity Peculiar To Men, Is Perhaps The Supreme Male View Of Morality.

All My Life I Have Been Acutely Aware Of A Contradiction In The Very Nature Of My Existence. For Forty-five Years I Struggled To Resolve This Dilemma By Writing Plays And Novels. The More I Wrote, The More I Realized Mere Words Were Not Enough. So I Found Another Form Of Expression.

As Usual, It Occurred To Me That Words Were The Only Thing That Could Possibly Save Me From This Situation. This Was A Characteristic Misunderstanding On My Part. When Action Was Needed, I Was Absorbed In Words; For Words Proceeded With Such Difficulty From My Mouth That I Was Intent On Them And Forgot All About Action. It Seemed To Me That Actions, Which Are Dazzling, Varied Things, Must Always Be Accompanied By Equally Dazzling And Equally Varied Words.

I Seemed Like A Baby Bird Keeping Its Truly Innocent Animal Lusts Hidden Under Its Wing. I Was Being Tempted, Not By The Desire Of Possession, But Simply By Unadorned Temptation Itself.

Possessing By Letting Go Of Things Was A Secret Of Ownership Unknown To Youth.

What I Wanted Was To Die Among Strangers, Untroubled, Beneath A Cloudless Sky. And Yet My Desire Differed From The Sentiments Of That Ancient Greek Who Wanted To Die Under The Brilliant Sun. What I Wanted Was Some Natural, Spontaneous Suicide. I Wanted A Death Like That Of A Fox, Not Yet Well Versed In Cunning, That Walks Carelessly Along A Mountain Path And Is Shot By A Hunter Because Of Its Own Stupidity.

Time Is What Matters. As Time Goes By, You And I Will Be Carried Inexorably Into The Mainstream Of Our Period, Even Though We’re Unaware Of What It Is. And Later, When They Say That Young Men In The Early Taisho Era Thought, Dressed, Talked, In Such And Such A Way, They’ll Be Talking About You And Me. We’ll All Be Lumped Together…. In A Few Decades, People Will See You And The People You Despise As One And The Same, A Single Entity.

He Was In A Room Of The Gesshuuji, Which He Had Thought It Would Be Impossible To Visit. The Approach Of Death Had Made The Visit Easy, Had Unloosed The Weight That Held Him In The Depths Of Being. It Was Even A Comfort To Think, From The Light Repose The Struggle Up The Hill Had Brought Him, That Kiyoaki, Struggling Against Illness Up That Same Road, Had Been Given Wings To Soar With By The Denial That Awaited Him.

The Special Quality Of Hell Is To See Everything Clearly Down To The Last Detail.

History Knew The Truth. History Was The Most Inhuman Product Of Humanity.it Scooped Up The Whole Of Human Will And, Like The Goddess Kali In Calcutta, Dripped Blood From Its Mouth As It Bit And Crunched.

The Images Which The [press] Photographer Has Filtered From Reality, Whether Particular Events Or The Anguish Of Human Reactions To Them, Already Bear A Stamp Of Authenticity Which The Photographer Is Powerless To Alter By One Jot Or Tittle; The Meaning Of The Objects, By A Process Of Purification, Itself Becomes The Theme Of The Work.

Is There Not A Sort Of Remorse That Precedes Sin? Was It Remorse At The Very Fact That I Existed?

At No Time Are We Ever In Such Complete Possession Of A Journey, Down To Its Last Nook And Cranny, As When We Are Busy With Preparations For It. After That, There Remains Only The Journey Itself, Which Is Nothing But The Process Through Which We Lose Our Ownership Of It.

Nobody Even Imagines How Well One Can Lie About The State Of One’s Own Heart.

When People Concentrate On The Idea Of Beauty, They Are, Without Realizing It, Confronted With The Darkest Thoughts That Exist In This World. That, I Suppose, Is How Human Beings Are Made.

The Period Of Childhood Is A Stage On Which Time And Space Become Entangled.

Dreams, Memories, The Sacred--they Are All Alike In That They Are Beyond Our Grasp. Once We Are Even Marginally Separated From What We Can Touch, The Object Is Sanctified; It Acquires The Beauty Of The Unattainable, The Quality Of The Miraculous. Everything, Really, Has This Quality Of Sacredness, But We Can Desecrate It At A Touch. How Strange Man Is! His Touch Defiles And Yet He Contains The Source Of Miracles.

Pain, I Came To Feel, Might Well Prove To Be The Sole Proof Of The Persistence Of Consciousness Within The Flesh, The Sole Physical Expression Of Consciousness. As My Body Acquired Muscle, And In Turn Strength, There Was Gradually Born Within Me A Tendency Towards The Positive Acceptance Of Pain, And My Interest In Physical Suffering Deepened.

Men Had Been Living A Proud Life, Having Felt No Need For The Spirit-until Christianity Invented It.

He Had Never Looked Forward To The Wisdom And Other Vaunted Benefits Of Old Age. Would He Be Able To Die Young—and If Possible Free Of All Pain? A Graceful Death—as A Richly Patterned Kimono, Thrown Carelessly Across A Polished Table, Slides Unobtrusively Down Into The Darkness Of The Floor Beneath. A Death Marked By Elegance.

The Only People In This World I Really Trust Are My Fans - Even If They Do Forget You So Fast.

Other People Must Be Destroyed. In Order That I Might Truly Face The Sun, The World Itself Must Be Destroyed.

I Still Have No Way To Survive But To Keep Writing One Line, One More Line, One More Line.

Young People Get The Foolish Idea That What Is New For Them Must Be New For Everybody Else Too. No Matter How Unconventional They Get, They're Just Repeating What Others Before Them Have Done.

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