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Negotiating Existential Concerns Through the Grotesque in Yukio Mishima’S Forbidden Colours

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Negotiating Existential Concerns Through the Grotesque in Yukio Mishima’S Forbidden Colours ISSN: 2637-0875 Journal of Language and Communication, 8(1),30-44 (2021) ©Universiti Putra Malaysia Press NEGOTIATING EXISTENTIAL CONCERNS THROUGH THE GROTESQUE IN YUKIO MISHIMA’S FORBIDDEN COLOURS Seach Jin Beng1 and Arbaayah Ali Termizi2* Department of English, Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication Universiti Putra Malaysia 43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia Email: [email protected] ; [email protected] *Corresponding Author ABSTRACT The grotesque and existential concerns are rarely studied alongside each other in the field of literature. History has it that the grotesque is always associated with aspects which denote negative connotations, such as deformity, death, violence or monstrosity. Additionally, the grotesque is also popularly employed as an approach to challenge traditions and deviate from what is accepted as the norm. Meanwhile, the origins of existentialism can be traced back to as early as the 19th century. The existentialists’ main concerns have always been seeking the meaning of life and they are constantly looking for ways to justify one’s existence in a world where pessimism rules. Thus, this paper aims to establish a connection between existentialism and the grotesque by primarily focussing on how the two male protagonists, Yuichi and Shunsuke, in Yukio Mishima’s Forbidden Colours (1951), employ the grotesque as a way to deal with their existential concerns of death and meaninglessness as posited by Irvin Yalom. Grotesque elements, such as misogyny, pederasty and carnivalesque, will be studied alongside two existential concerns, which are death and meaninglessness. This is meant to show how the male protagonists are able to rely on the grotesque to subdue their fears and anxieties brought upon by their existential concerns in order to justify their sense of existence. Keywords: existential concerns; Forbidden Colours; grotesque; post-war Japan; Yukio Mishima ARTICLE INFO Article history Received: Oct 10, 2020 Accepted: Feb 21, 2021 Published: March 31, 2021 Volume 8 Issue 1 © Penerbit Universiti Putra Malaysia ISSN: 2637-0875 Journal of Language and Communication, 8(1),30-44 (2021) ©Universiti Putra Malaysia Press INTRODUCTION Mishima Yukio was born in the Yotsuka district Tokyo, Japan on January 14, 1925, and was a prolific writer whom many literary critics still regard as one of the most significant and influential Japanese novelists of the 20th century. Kenne (2015), in Five Modern Japanese Novelists, notes that, outside his own country, Mishima was probably the most famous Japanese who had ever lived. Europeans and Americans, who would have difficulty naming even one Japanese emperor, politician, general, scientist, or poet, are acquainted with Mishima’s name, if not his works. In large part, of course, this is the result of his spectacular suicide but, even before this event, he was the only Japanese chosen by Esquire magazine in its selection of one hundred leading figures of the world, and the only Japanese who appeared on internationally televised programs (45). Mishima’s Forbidden Colours was published between 1951-1953 and the novel centres around the themes of homosexuality, betrayal, beauty and aging. The Japanese title kinjiki is a euphemism for homosexuality in Japan which can also be understood as erotic love. Piven suggests that Forbidden Colours (Kinjiki) refers to the ecstatic stratifications of homoeroticism. The Japanese word for colour, jiki or shiki, connotes sexuality, and the word kin denotes precisely forbidden sexuality in this work. The novel expresses Mishima’s repetitive and compulsive fantasies but, in this work, he amplifies dimensions of these fantasies with intense, graphic, and prolix detail (135). The novel is a timeless classic in both Japan and many Western regions because it discusses homosexuality in post-war Japan openly. McLelland points out that, although same-sex eroticism is celebrated in much of premodern Japanese art, poetry and literature, it has little relevance for the way in which homosexuality is understood today either by the wider society or by homosexual men themselves (18). He further explains that information about male homosexuality during this post-war period is relatively sparse. In Forbidden Colours, Mishima’s treatment of homosexuality is marked by an undercurrent of anxiety and self- doubt, even self-hatred. The alienation of homosexual men from mainstream society is emphasised in scenes contrasting the hidden, furtive activities of gay men which take place behind closed doors in bars or in ‘closed’ public spaces, such as park bushes and toilets, with the open manner in which heterosexual people, particularly families, go about their business (26-27). Piven goes on to explain that Forbidden Colours bears all the hallmarks of Mishima’s signature elements that include beauty, the misery one feels from such beauty and the pain of aging and being ugly. Another scholar, Flanagan, notes that Forbidden Colours had seen the ultimate defeat of the misanthropic old novelist and the triumph of the beautiful young man, whom Mishima was both enthralled by and desirous to turn himself into (122). Forbidden Colours’s English translation was eventually made available in 1968 by Alfred H. Marks. As a professor of early American literature at the State University of New York at New Paltz, Marks had published works on Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) and Walt Whitman (1819-1892). Interestingly, he also served in Japan during World War II as part of the military intelligence as well as being a Fulbright scholar in Kanazawa in 1965. Marks also translated Mishima’s 1950 novel entitled Thirst for Love, and, since then, the same English versions of these novels have been used by non-Japanese scholars to examine the texts. This study aims to examine Forbidden Colours in respect of Irvin Yalom’s existential concerns specifically with regard to death and meaninglessness seeing that the main characters- Shunsuke and Yuichi struggle in their lives to find meaning to justify their existence and values. In the existentialists’ point of view, the problem dealing with the meaning in life is a significant one that all must frequently confront. Forbidden Colours has been extensively studied by numerous scholars in its overt representations of male beauty, queer identities and unconventional masculinities. Despite the fact that there is a strong presence of existential ideas, the novel is rarely studied in the area of existentialism. Hence, 31 Journal of Language and Communication, 8(1), 30-44, March(2021) this study will bring new insights into the understanding of the novel by examining it through the existentialist and grotesque points of view. In order to meet the objective of this study, a textual analysis on the selected text will be carried out to show how the grotesque plays a role in helping the two main characters deal with the existential concerns that they are encountering, namely death and meaninglessness. EXISTENTIALISM AND THE GROTESQUE As a literary trope or concept, the grotesque and existentialism have been examined quite extensively in the field of literature. However, it is crucial to note that the grotesque and existential philosophy are hardly applied and studied jointly. One of the reasons could be because the general consensus is that the grotesque brings negative connotations. The field of existentialism usually examines how meanings of life can be created through ways which are more conventional and overall positive. For instance, it is more prevalent to examine how our sense of existence can be strengthened through religion, love, friendship, nature or even patriotism. Consequently, the therapeutic effects of the grotesque for overcoming existentialism are often the last to be regarded. Although the combination of the grotesque and existentialism may seem unconventional, an attempt to establish a connection between the two will be a worthwhile attempt as it will certainly shed new lights to the field of knowledge relevant to the two. Significantly, the origins of existentialism as a movement or a concept can be traced back to as early as the 19th century. Generally, existentialists emphasise on the individuality and subjectivity about the existence of human and they, too, acknowledge the pessimistic elements in human existence. Consequently, elements of life, such as anxiety, freedom, death and responsibility, among others, are often given paramount importance in the field of existentialism. For instance, Reynolds observes that pessimism, freedom, death and rationality are the primary focus of existentialists (3). As a philosophy, Gravil (2007) explains that Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, as well as the major 20th century philosophers, such as Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, were important figures who have contributed to the existentialist ideals (7). As many philosophers have contributed to this field, the ideas surrounding existentialism are vastly proliferated. However, existentialists do share one commonality. Gravil also notes that existentialists set about trying to answer the fundamental questions that lie at the heart of all philosophy: Why do we exist? What is our purpose in life? What is our relation to the world, and to other people? (7). Hence, existentialism is about finding the meanings to validate our very existence and to examine a text through the existentialists’ lens; thus, it is important to focus on how the idea of human existence is dealt with. Flynn (2006) asserts
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