The Decay of the Angel - Yukio Mishima

to indicate that the control of Japan by the aged
extends even to the world of deviates.”
The statement that his proclivities were not new but
that for some twenty years he had had numbers of
acquaintances among the voyeurs made Honda sure
who the informant had been. The police themselves
must have introduced the reporter to the little man. A
suit for libel would only add to the embarrassment.
It was a vulgar incident that deserved to be laughed
away; but Honda, who would have hoped that he no
longer had prestige and honor to lose, saw in the loss
of them that they were in fact still present.
It seemed certain that for rather a long time people
would associate his name not with his spiritual and
intellectual endowments but with the scandal. People
were not quick to forget scandals. It was not moral
indignation that made them remember. For
encapsulating a person a scandal was the simplest
and most efficient container.
The stubbornness of the cold told him that he was
crumbling physically. To have been a suspect was an
experience which, in the complete absence of
intellectual dignity, seemed to bring a collapse of flesh
and bones. Knowledge, learning, thought, could do
nothing for it. What good would it have done to
confront the detective with the fine details of the