The Decay of the Angel - Yukio Mishima

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“The sin is ours, Kiyo’s and mine, and nobody else’s,” she had said on the way back from Kamakura. Sixty years had gone by and the words were still in his ears. Were he to visit Satoko she would probably after a quiet laugh talk easily about the chain of memories. But the journey was too much for him. Old and ugly and stained with sin as he was, the complications seemed only to increase. The Gesshuuji itself, gently enveloped in a spring snow, was layer by layer more distant, with memories of Satoko, as the years passed. More distant, but not with a distance as of withdrawing into the heart. As he sought to remember it, the Gesshuuji was on a snowy pinnacle, like a temple in the Himalayas, its beauty turned to harshness, its softness to a day of wrath. The ultimate in clarity, a moon temple quite at the ends of the earth, dotted a single dot with the purple cassock of an aging and ever more delicately beautiful abbess, seemed to send off an ice-light, as if it stood at the very limits of awareness and reason. Honda knew that he could be there in no time by airplane or express train. But the Gesshuuji had become not a temple for a man to visit and look upon, but a ray of moonlight through a rent in the extremities of his consciousness.
It seemed to him that if Satoko was there then she must always be there. If he was chained to eternal life by consciousness then she must be up there an infinite distance from his hell. Doubtless she could see through it at a glance. And he felt that the deathless hell of a straitened and fear-ridden consciousness and her celestial immortality had struck up a balance. He could wait three hundred years, a thousand years, to see her. He made all manner of excuses, and in the course of time all the excuses in the world came to seem like excuses for not visiting the Gesshuuji. He was like a person denying beauty that was certain to bring destruction. His refusal to visit the Gesshuuji became more than procrastination. He knew that to visit it had become an impossibility, perhaps the narrowest of the gates in his life. If he were to insist upon a visit, might the Gesshuuji not withdraw from him, disappear in a mist of light? All the same he came to think that, matters of an undying consciousness aside, senility had ripened the moment for a visit. Probably he would make his visit as he was about to die. Satoko had been a person whom Kiyoaki must meet at the risk of his life; and a young and beautiful Kiyoaki calling out still to Honda forbade a meeting unless Honda, witness to the cruel
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Table of Contents Cover Copyright A
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This eBook is copyright material an
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Isle of Houghton, Corner of Boundar
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BY YUKIO MISHIMA THE SEA OF FERTILI
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and then blue distance once more. T
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Very strange. The whole vast space
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maru, due to make port at four. He
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ut now his eye caught, the rustic p
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Receiving and dispatching of ships
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and a cot completed the furnishings
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“Hello. This is Teikoku Signal. Y
Page 24 and 25: the eye that had nothing to create,
Page 26 and 27: This orphan, one of the elect, diff
Page 28 and 29: Tōru shoved the stubby pencil he h
Page 30 and 31: great beauty might permit herself,
Page 32 and 33: downtown any more. Every man I pass
Page 34 and 35: eautiful woman that keeps hell at a
Page 36 and 37: Kinué came upon a basic but elusiv
Page 38 and 39: direction, and the stern and prow l
Page 40 and 41: second mate, on watch. Tōru could
Page 42 and 43: 4 AT ABOUT the same time Honda, at
Page 44 and 45: heavenly stream of sanctification.
Page 46 and 47: a man swimming in from the ocean mi
Page 48 and 49: lungs. Three thirty, and there was
Page 50 and 51: the vanished rose, clouds scattered
Page 52 and 53: ustle in the new houses beyond the
Page 54 and 55: 7 HONDA and Keiko Hisamatsu were pe
Page 56 and 57: would have been her uncle, anyhow i
Page 58 and 59: their liking. There were no tourist
Page 60 and 61: humanity. His unhappiness she made
Page 62 and 63: “That’s it. I was between life
Page 64 and 65: after each player had received elev
Page 66 and 67: The lump of mucus, like bêche-de-m
Page 68 and 69: enjoyment. There was a strange sadn
Page 70 and 71: It was a chore even to reach for th
Page 72 and 73: “You tell me to have it repaired,
Page 76 and 77: impossibility, gambled his own life
Page 78 and 79: as Keiko’s gentleman friend. He w
Page 80 and 81: 8 AT THE OPENING of Robe of Feather
Page 82 and 83: forth music so beautiful that no mu
Page 84 and 85: Within the pavilion are angels in p
Page 86 and 87: had in the cab that had brought him
Page 88 and 89: them were quite devoid of sanctity.
Page 90 and 91: Serpent-twined legs spread wide, ha
Page 92 and 93: sombrero. The crowd clapped. Keiko
Page 94 and 95: her. On their return they looked in
Page 96 and 97: 10 WAS THERE nothing more to see, w
Page 98 and 99: the light was behind it to send dow
Page 100 and 101: might have a look around for our ed
Page 102 and 103: trance-like mating of the sea and t
Page 104 and 105: a somewhat worn silver coin; and th
Page 106 and 107: world to destruction while seeking
Page 108 and 109: desk. Now he stood up and moved to
Page 110 and 111: “Very useful work. Keep at it.”
Page 112 and 113: Asia Line, three yellow crowns on a
Page 114 and 115: Perhaps there was nothing of the ac
Page 116 and 117: cigarette. Cigarette in hand, she w
Page 118 and 119: knows what you know can never be be
Page 120 and 121: Scotch. Honda had kept one thing fr
Page 122 and 123: Viennese psychoanalysis; but he cou
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Kinué stopped by in the morning, a
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ystander and now all of a sudden he
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for the sake of a beautiful woman.
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the Denmark-maru, and the Kōyō-ma
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green changed, rose and swelled int
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surface. Five o’clock. The white
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oom. He followed the great hull of
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The ship’s agent answered. “Hel
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embers of two cigarettes were brush
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“The Daichū is coming into three
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There was no concept for which he h
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in which industrious young men were
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investigations.” Tōru frowned. H
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conclusion to cynicism. Tōru had o
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and so long as it was to the Tōru
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15 TŌRU WAS off duty the next day.
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16 SURPRISED to learn that Tōru’
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take the risks. In the decade since
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end of economic growth or with a Co
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een a still-young Honda who had nam
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human volition sought to make histo
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preferred not to. Instead he took a
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He is of course single. Ideological
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17 HONDA CHOSE a day late in Octobe
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“I don’t feel any great need fo
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no virtues more highly prized in Ja
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18 THE THREE TUTORS were all highly
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happiness for him; but he did not f
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“I had no idea there was such a p
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the half circle of coffee dregs. Th
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the body floating there. We all kno
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clouds drifted by. The wind carried
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decorated with a cheap flower desig
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grapefruit. A carefully scrutinized
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felt like a liberated child spittin
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Sometimes he almost thought, after
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heart. Tōru came almost to have ho
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policies calculated to give Tōru a
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For two or three weeks the seventy-
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guard examining a pass. His questio
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22 SUPPOSE YOU keep company with he
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heavy. “How perfectly dreadful. T
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23 RELUCTANT TO LEAVE Tōru by hims
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him. Why had the two of them come i
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“A far more inappropriate simile,
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enches. Honda could see from the an
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and closer, spread color on hard, t
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I know well enough that the more fi
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The little present Momoko gave me i
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and I grow weary of pressing the co
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world. I was too busy receiving oth
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was aware of the situation. Had any
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have looked for a reason. I have fo
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former nurse. Momoko looked aside i
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till four. I urged Momoko inside. T
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There were autumn cicadas in the ev
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I saw how complicated their movemen
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imagine rather older women, but suc
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attract a certain sort of woman wit
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is something that the winter sky ha
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She had given me a little silver ch
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I cannot be sure whether Momoko rea
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Western staircase. Only from it do
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or going out to look, but an overpo
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from outside. If only I could raise
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“Make me a girl who does not love
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moment’s dalliance is a matter of
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25 TŌRU BEGAN preparatory school a
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the position best for the Hondas, f
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All he had to do was enjoy the move
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moved the unresting bustle of the h
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“But you were very sweet while it
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26 THE VERY QUESTION was indignant
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Shimizu and installed her in the ga
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The cold water would liven his puls
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man’s still alive.” That was hi
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nature of things. He had taught the
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stupid crowds, cut through the mass
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none. The garden had been made over
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Time went past along the indefinabl
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had made it possible for Honda to e
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were even now engaged in close comb
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the left loomed the round wall of t
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shirts scattered through the groves
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Although the little man showed no d
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scream. The man sprang up and looke
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Before the woman confronted him, Ho
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concepts he had acquired in India?
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27 LATE IN NOVEMBER a splendid engr
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immorality, retreated trembling beh
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“Turn around. Oh, it’s very nic
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Georgette stole, draped down over t
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“Just sit down there quietly, if
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he had taken a liking? What did you
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will die at twenty?” “I think p
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unable to remember the exact day. M
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would call a simulator. I doubt mys
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have seen and think you have seen i
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28 REMARKABLY, Tōru came to Honda
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and now it was the blind Tōru who
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of water hit his shining flesh like
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elements, to dissolve into the corp
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the entrails than from reason, a lo
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“Day after tomorrow at three? I d
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dinner. The middle-aged housekeeper
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him from air-conditioning. It was a
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his ears. No doubt other people, sa
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And there was no smell of flowers.
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Honda had noticed numbers of Kyoto
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green platform was like a doll stan
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30 THEY COULD perfectly well drive
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coolness of its shadows. There was
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among leaves like young swallows’
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slumber. They made him think of Tha
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A steward probably in his sixties,
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If, after so much, the Abbess were
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ightness and darkness. For Honda it
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girlish curiosity in her eyes, and
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Honda was groping through a fog. Hi
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Footnote ∗ Translator’s note: t
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Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Ch
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The Decay of the Angel - Yukio Mishima

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