In the previous article, we saw Mishima Yukio contrast Mori Ōgai’s Kanzan Jittoku and Izumi Kyōka’s Nihonbashi as “Apollonian” and “Dionysian.” In this article, we set Mishima’s analysis aside and return to the two originals themselves, to check where in the prose that contrast actually shows. (Both are treated as public-domain originals. English renderings of the quotations are ToL translations.)
Ōgai — a sentence without a subject
Let us look again at the passage of Kanzan Jittoku Mishima quotes.
閭は小女を呼んで、汲立の水を鉢に入れて来いと命じた。水が来た。僧はそれを受け取って、胸に捧げて、ぢつと閭を見詰めた。清浄な水でも好ければ、不潔な水でも好い、湯でも茶でも好いのである。不潔な水でなかったのは、閭がためには勿怪の幸であった。
(Ryo called the servant girl and ordered her to bring freshly drawn water in a bowl. The water came. The monk received it, held it up to his chest, and gazed fixedly at Ryo. Clean water would do; dirty water would do just as well; hot water or tea would do too. That the water was not dirty was, for Ryo, an unlooked-for stroke of luck.)
Counting through this short passage, the sentences break down as follows.
- Ryo called the servant girl and ordered her to bring freshly drawn water in a bowl.
- The water came.
- The monk received it, held it up to his chest, and gazed fixedly at Ryo.
- Clean water would do; dirty water would do just as well; hot water or tea would do too.
- That the water was not dirty was, for Ryo, an unlooked-for stroke of luck.
Sentence 2, “the water came” (mizu ga kita), is five characters in Japanese. No subject is given. Who carried the water, or how, is not written. Between sentence 1’s “ordered” and sentence 3’s “received,” the entire passage of time — the drawing of the water, its being carried — is omitted altogether. This is the omission Mishima called “stripping away everything superfluous.”
Kyōka — a string of nouns
Izumi Kyōka’s Nihonbashi, by contrast, opens like this.
腕白ものの十ウ九ッ、十一二なのを頭に七八人。春の日永に生欠伸で鼻の下を伸して居る、四辻の飴屋の前に、押競饅頭で集った。手に手に紅だの、萌黄だの、紫だの、彩った螺貝の独楽。
(Naughty boys of nine or ten, seven or eight of them led by one of eleven or twelve. On a long spring day, yawning, noses drooping, they had gathered, jostling each other, before the candy shop at the crossroads. In their hands, red, yellowish-green, purple — painted spinning tops of conch shell.)
Here, even where a sentence breaks is ambiguous. “Naughty boys of nine or ten, seven or eight of them led by one of eleven or twelve” has no predicate. “In their hands, red, yellowish-green, purple — painted spinning tops of conch shell” has no predicate either. Nouns, and the names of colors (red, yellowish-green, purple), are laid out one after another, joined by commas.
Where Ōgai’s sentences arrange events in temporal sequence, cut down to the bone, Kyōka’s sentences arrange, spatially, the many things within a single scene — the number of children, the candy shop, the colors of the tops. What Mishima called “a flood of color” is exactly this stringing-together of nouns and color words.
Setting the two passages side by side
How far does Mishima’s analysis hold?
Mishima’s judgment — Ōgai simple and lucid, Kyōka splendid and colorful — can, within this short excerpt, genuinely be read from the structure of the prose itself. Ōgai’s sentences carry only the “plot” of events, in the fewest possible sentences. Kyōka’s sentences pile up the “things” of a single scene, one after another. This difference can be confirmed from the shape of the sentences alone, without needing Mishima’s figures of speech (Apollonian, Dionysian).
On the other hand, Mishima’s further judgment — that Ōgai and Kyōka each arrive, by separate roads, at what he calls, quoting Herbert Read, “perception of totality” — is not something that can be read directly off the structure of the prose. This is Mishima’s own literary evaluation, and a reader working from this short excerpt alone need not necessarily reach the same conclusion.
What to keep in mind when reading
First, the analysis of “sentence breaks” in this article is ToL’s own way of reading the originals. Mishima himself does not break down the sentences this way in his book.
Second, this article makes no value judgment about which prose is superior. Ōgai’s omission and Kyōka’s accumulation are both techniques, and their success can only really be judged within a longer stretch of text.
Summary
| Point | Detail |
|---|---|
| Ōgai’s structure | Arranges events in temporal order, boldly omitting the process (“the water came”) |
| Kyōka’s structure | Strings together things and color words, predicate-less, joined by commas |
| What can be confirmed | The contrast of simplicity and splendor can be read from the sentence structure itself |
| What cannot be confirmed | The “perception of totality” judgment is Mishima’s literary evaluation, beyond structural analysis |
In a nutshell — Ōgai’s “the water came” is five characters compressing time; Kyōka’s opening is a string of nouns filling space. Mishima’s contrast is genuinely rooted in this difference of sentence-making.