The Decay of the Angel - Yukio Mishima

9
THERE WAS one matter weighing on Honda’s
mind as he escorted Keiko to the pine grove at Mio.
He feared ruining her good spirits by showing her the
utter vulgarity to which this most beautiful of Japanese
scenic spots had been reduced.
It was a rainy weekday, but the huge parking lot
was jammed with automobiles, and the dirty
cellophane in the souvenir shops caught an ashen
sky. They did not seem to bother Keiko in the
slightest.
“Beautiful. Perfectly lovely. Smell the fresh air and
the salt. The sea is so near.”
As a matter of fact the air was strangled with
gasoline fumes and the pines were on the point of
asphyxiation. Honda felt better. He had visited the
place some days before, and he had known what
Keiko would see.
Benares was sacred filth. Filth itself was sacred.
That was India.
But in Japan, beauty, tradition, poetry, had none of
them been touched by the soiled hand of sanctity.
Those who touched them and in the end strangled