The previous article showed how Yukio Mishima used a Taiheiki passage to demonstrate that “action is grasped from outside; the actor themself knows nothing of it.” This article sets Mishima’s analysis aside and returns to the original text to see how prose of action description is actually built. (The Taiheiki is treated here as a public-domain primary source.)
The battle on the bridge
The passage Mishima quotes is a scene of combat on a bridge, from Scroll 15 of the Taiheiki.
“Whoever thinks themself a match, come together and see the measure of my strength” — and at that, scattering here and there, running back and forth across the bridge, two or three of the fallen sakamogi atop the moat trodden underfoot, raising the right foot, thrusting an eight- or nine-inch crossbar spanning two lengths against the side of the gate. Both men went running swiftly back across the bridge… (Taiheiki, Scroll 15)
A run of verbs
Pull out just the verbs (and verb-like elements) from this passage, and the list looks like this:
- to think (a match)
- come and see
- run back and forth
- tread and stumble
- raise
- thrust
- run back and forth
Seven separate actions, chained together without a break, in a single short passage. The subject is given only as “whoever” and “both men”; almost no word describing that person’s thoughts or feelings appears. “Thinks themself a match” belongs to the challenge addressed to an opponent, not to a description of the speaker’s own inner life.
Contrast with psychological description
Set this against the tradition of psychological description in Japanese literature, read in Chapter 2 and the article on psychological description, and a sharp difference emerges. Psychological description, there, synthesized mind, feeling, mood, atmosphere. This Taiheiki passage has almost none of that. What it has is only physical movement — “run,” “tread,” “raise,” “thrust.”
Mishima’s claim that “action is grasped from outside; the actor themself knows nothing of it” can be checked directly against the way this sentence is built. A reader can find out nothing at all, from this passage, about what the two soldiers running across the bridge were thinking or feeling. All a reader can learn is what they did.
Worth checking as you read
First, this “count the verbs” approach is ToL’s own way of engaging directly with the original text. Mishima himself does not break the passage down this way.
Second, the Taiheiki as a genre — the war chronicle itself — exists to narrate action. That this passage is devoted entirely to action description is partly a matter of genre; it is best read as a representative example chosen to demonstrate Mishima’s point.
Summary
| Point | Content |
|---|---|
| Quoted passage | The battle on the bridge, Taiheiki, Scroll 15 |
| Run of verbs | Seven unbroken actions — “run back and forth,” “tread and stumble,” “raise,” “thrust” |
| Contrast with psychology | Almost no word for mind, feeling, or mood appears |
| What this confirms | Mishima’s claim that “action is grasped from outside” can be read directly in the sentence’s own structure |
In short — the Taiheiki passage moves forward on nothing but a chain of verbs, never touching the actors’ inner life. Mishima’s phrase “action is grasped from outside” is genuinely rooted in how this sentence is made.