is a 1961 novel by Yukio Mishima. It is considered a minor work from Mishima's middle period. Drawing inspiration from Noh plays, specifically the 14th-century Motomezuka, the novel centers on a tragic love triangle depraved by adultery and violence. It is a short novel in length and has a nonlinear narrative structure. The novel was first serialised in thirteen parts in the weekly magazine Shukan Shincho between 12 June 1961 and 4 September 1961. It was published in hardcover format by Shinchosha on 30 September 1961. It was published in paperback by Shincho Bunko on 10 July 1966. The novel was translated into Italian by Lydia Origlia and published by Feltrinelli in September 1983. The novel was translated into English by Andrew Clare and published in paperback in the United States and Canada by Vintage International on 27 November 2018. Clare's translation was later published in paperback in the United Kingdom by Penguin Modern Classics on 4 April 2019. The English translation was re-released in the United Kingdom on 2 November 2023 as part of Penguin's Japanese Classics series.
In 1964 the novel was adapted by Sōkichi Tomimoto as a film starring Ayako Wakao.
Background
The Frolic of the Beasts is a parody of the classical Noh play Motomezuka, written in the fourteenth century by the father of modern Noh theatre, Kiyotsugu Kan'ami.Persuasively argued by former Emeritus Professor of Japanese literature, Jin'ichi Konishi. 小西甚一; 三島文学への垂跡 －「獣の戯れ」と「求塚」; 日本文学研究資料新集ー 三島由紀夫 美とエロスの論理; 有精堂 (May 1991). In the play, a priest from the western provinces, travelling to Kyoto, stops with his companions in the isolated village of Ikuta ("Field of Life") in Settsu Province. They meet a group of village girls who tell them the story of Unai. In the story, two men, Sasada and Chinu, declare their love for Unai. Unwilling to incur the jealousy of one by favouring the other, Unai declined to make a choice. Her parents make the two suitors compete for her hand, but each contest results in a draw. In torment, Unai drowns herself in Ikuta River. After her funeral, Sasada and Chinu were inconsolable, and they commit suicide by stabbing each other to death. Unai's ghost bears the karmic responsibility for their demise. The priest intones prayers for her soul. She hears the prayers, but they are of no avail; she is unable to escape from the Burning House (a Buddhist metaphor for the secular world) and the Eight Great Hells, through which she is eternally tormented by her demons. In another version of the story, Unai is depicted as being pulled in different directions by the deceased lovers in a metaphorical tug of war. There is a clear allusion to Yūko's relationship with Ippei and Kōji. The love triangle among Unai, Sasada, and Chinu corresponds to that of The Frolic of the Beasts with Yūko, Ippei, and Kōji, as well as in Kiyoshi's and Matsukichi's quarrel over Kimi's love. It is interesting to note that in the traditional Noh theatre, immorality was always regarded as a sin which would lead to eternal damnation in the fires of hell (echoing Unai's fate in Motomezuka and Yūko's anguish in prison).
The name Motomezuka is likely to be a corruption of Otomezuka (the "Maiden's Grave"), the original story being contained in an episode of the Yamato Monogatari, a tale combining narrative fiction with waka poetry from the mid-tenth century. The earliest references to the story appear in poem form in the Manyōshū, the oldest and greatest anthology of Japanese poems, compiled during the late Nara period.
Noh theatre performances are characterised by their use of meticulously designed masks that represent specific characters and facial expressions. Noh masks are referenced throughout The Frolic of the Beasts. At the beginning of the novel's first chapter, Kōji humours himself with the thought that his own face "is like a well-crafted, carved wooden mask." In the novel's prologue, Ippei's expression is described as an "interminable smile", which recalls the fixed expression of Noh masks. Also, the "dark grape luster" of Yūko's "characteristic thick lipstick" is likely a direct reference to the archetypal "young woman" (Wakaonna) character portrayed in Noh productions. In his review for The Japan Times, Damian Flanagan also compared the "jumbled" nature of the novel's nonlinear narrative as creating a "transcendent unearthliness" similar to that of a Noh play.
Miyoko Tanaka, the commentator in the original Shinchosha paperback edition of the novel says that both in the form of the story, which is "like a dream rising from weed-infested ruins," and from the descriptions of the faces of the characters, "we Japanese clearly recognize vestiges of the traditional Noh theater performance."
Mishima was infatuated with the Noh theater and he wrote several Noh plays himself (adapted from ancient Noh performances). All of his plays were performed in Japan and some of them in other cities around the world, including New York. There is some speculation that Mishima was partly influenced in his choice of subject matter by the theme of Noh masks running through Fumiko Enchi's novel, Masks. It seems certain that Mishima rated Enchi highly and described this book as an "esoteric masterpiece." Enchi's novel was published in 1958, three years before The Frolic of the Beasts.
The story is considered to be a variation on the theme of Mishima's stream of consciousness novel, Thirst for Love (1950), in that it portrays a dysfunctional family unit, whose members have been thrown together with ultimately tragic consequences. The Frolic of the Beasts has also been compared to Mishima's novel Forbidden Colors (1951, 1953), which portrays the messy relationship between the much-older Shunsuke and the youthful Yuichi. It has also been compared to the intense existential crises of the characters in Mishima's 1959 novel .
Plot Prologue In a photograph, three smiling individuals–Ippei Kusakado, his wife Yūko, and the youthful Kōji–are seen standing on the harbor wall in Iro Village, a rural fishing port in the western part of the Izu Peninsula in Shizuoka Prefecture. The photograph was taken on a hot summer day. It was taken only days before "the final wretched incident". It was immediately sent to the chief priest of Taisenji temple. In Iro, there are also rice paddies as well as the Kusakado greenhouses, located beside the Kusakado family home. On the mountainside lies a new graveyard, reaching halfway up the slope of the mountain from its base. In spite of opposition from the villagers, the chief priest of Taisenji temple erected the new graves with the money that was entrusted to him. Ippei's grave lies on the right, Kōji's on the left, and Yūko's in the center. Yūko's, however, is only a "living monument", reserved for her eventual death.
Chapter 1 Kōji is released from prison. He travels by boat from Numazu to Iro Village, where Yūko is waiting for him. Kōji tells himself that he has repented and is a different person, but once he arrives he is immediately told by Yūko that he hasn't changed. Yūko had become his guarantor upon his release, but they both question whether they have made a mistake in Kōji coming to Iro. Yūko closed the Tokyo shop a year ago, moved to Iro, and started the Kusakado greenhouse, which Kōji will work in. The two of them walk through Iro to the Kusakado house. Greeted by villagers on the way, Kōji is ashamed knowing rumours of his past will spread but Yūko tells him to keep his head up. Kōji is seized by fear when he sees Ippei in front of the gate of the house.
Chapter 2 Two years earlier, when he was a 21-year-old university student, Kōji was hired to work at a Western ceramics shop in Ginza, Tokyo. Ippei Kusakado, a 40-year-old man, is the owner and manager of the ceramics shop but also translates and reviews German literature in his spare time. While drinking together at a bar, Ippei tells Kōji about his unhappiness with his wife Yūko's lack of jealousy. He says he has tried everything to make her jealous, confessing to his numerous affairs. Kōji, jealous of Ippei's "corrupt heart", falls in love with Yūko that night, despite not having met her before. Kōji begins a secret affair with Yūko. One night, Yūko told Kōji that she knows Ippei has been adulterous, showing him documentation from a private investigator who tracked his infidelity. She cried, but told Kōji not to tell her husband of her suffering. On a summer's day, six months after he first met Yūko, Kōji is waiting for Yūko outside a hospital. He spots a black wrench lying on the ground and puts it in his jacket pocket. Much later while in prison, Kōji reflected on the wrench, viewing it as a manifestation of "will" that had become a material phenomen which sought to "upset the very foundations" of the order of his world. That evening, Yūko and Kōji walk in on Ippei and find him with a lover, Machiko. Yūko simply asks Ippei to "return home quietly". Kōji expected a grand confrontation, where "the truth of perverse human nature begins to shine". He instead sees it as "nothing other than things he had grown utterly tired of seeing: the mediocre concealment of human shame, the irony of keeping up appearances." Yūko, crying and jabbering, is struck across the cheek twice by Ippei. Kōji immediately reacts without "emotion, objective, or motive", and repeatedly bashes the left side of Ippei's head with the wrench he had placed in the pocket of his jacket.
Chapter 3
In Iro, Kōji meets Ippei for the first time since he was imprisoned. Kōji's assault leaves Ippei with a fractured cranium and a cerebral contusion. Ippei is diagnosed with aphasia and paralysis on his right side, and is left with an "interminable smile". Kōji explains his assault as driven by an extreme unease with enduring that "world bereft of logic", and chose to impart the "cold, hard, black logic of iron" of the wrench. Kōji works in the Kusakado greenhouse with fellow gardener Teijiro. One day, Kōji, Yūko and Ippei go for a picnic at the nearby waterfall and greet Kakujin, the priest of Taisenji temple, on the way. They stop at the village shrine to make a peace offering with a lily, but Yūko is unimpressed with the shrine's appearance and size. Yūko's sacrilege scares Kōji. Yūko suddenly begins to taunt Ippei, asking him if he understands "sacrifice". Ippei replies that he does not understand and Kōji tries to defend him but Yūko cuts Kōji off and calls Ippei an idiot. Yūko throws the lily into the plunge pool, and Ippei's face displays "a look of pure anxiety born of being cut off from all understanding". She asks Ippei if he understands the word "kiss", then passionately kisses Kōji in front of him. Kōji scolds Yūko for using him for Ippei's sake. She answers, asserting she has used Kōji from the beginning and that he surely likes it. Kōji strikes Yūko across the cheek and turns to Ippei, who has a fixed smile on his face. Terrified, Kōji embraces Yūko to erase the fear from his mind, but her kiss "had lost completely its exquisite taste".
Chapter 4