The Decay of the Angel - Yukio Mishima

on the act of observing. He resumed this role, and the
viewers became the viewed.
There was a sea, there was a great pine, its trunk
roped off: the pine of the heavenly robe. The gentle,
sandy slopes leading up to it thronged with
spectators. Under the cloudy sky the several colors of
their dress were uniformly somber, the wind in their
hair made them look like a rotting upturned pine.
There were clusters of people, there were couples off
by themselves; and the great white eye of the sky
crushed down upon them. And in the wall that was
their foremost rank laughter was forbidden. They
gazed at Honda with a stony blankness.
Women in kimono, shopping bags in their hands,
middle-aged men in badly cut suits, boys in greencheckered
shirts and plump-legged girls in blue
miniskirts, children, old men, Honda saw them gazing
at their own death. They were waiting for something,
some occurrence so amusing that it must have its
own grandeur. Lips were relaxed in good-natured
smiles. Eyes were aglow with a naked bestiality.
“Quiet!” The cameraman raised his hand.
Keiko promptly withdrew her head from the hole.
She stood before the multitude stately as a knight
commander. Jirōchō, shaking her head, had become
a person in serpentine pantaloons and a black