The appendix of Bunshō Tokuhon is “Questions and Answers.” Fifteen questions are lined up, and Mishima answers each. Where the main text is an argument carried through chapter by chapter, this part is in a much freer tone. (English renderings of the quotation and the summaries are ToL translations. Page numbers follow the edition described in the overview article.)
The fifteen questions
| No. | The question | Gist of Mishima’s answer |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Prose that intoxicates | Even logical prose invites intoxication. There are high and low kinds of intoxication |
| 2 | How far may erotic description go? | What literature gives is an ideational stimulus |
| 3 | “Style is the man” | Only when prose becomes one with the writer can it be called prose |
| 4 | Does prose depend on living environment? | A matter of resolve and ideal. Dislikes the trend to rate prose by class |
| 5 | Good prose depicting animals | Names Shiga Naoya’s Kinosaki nite. Matter-of-fact description reaches symbol |
| 6 | The most beautiful travel writing | The prose of Kinoshita Mokutarō |
| 7 | On children’s prose | Charm in oddness and vividness, but it fades with years |
| 8 | Who is the first beauty of fiction? | In fiction, if you write “the first beauty,” she is. The abstractness of language |
| 9 | The number of women a hero conquers | Numbers of fact can exceed those of art. Fiction borrows numbers |
| 10 | Inspiration when writing | Lists odd habits of poets and writers |
| 11 | Difference of humor and satire | Humor has no poison; satire has poison |
| 12 | On characterization | Since the twentieth century, the concept of character has become less important in fiction |
| 13 | On dialect in prose | Dialect is the bond of language and land. Hardest to translate |
| 14 | What is a good metaphor? | A fitting metaphor livens the reader’s image, but can scatter the unity of a novel |
| 15 | What is a coined word? | A writer’s coinage is meaningless without earnestness |
In this article we look at five of them in a bit more detail.
Question 13: dialect in prose
As an example of the power dialect has in literature, Mishima cites Tanizaki Jun’ichirō’s Sasameyuki. Imagine, he says, how different it would be if it were written in Tokyo speech. Tanizaki is a born Edo native, but after moving to the Kamigata region he was captivated by the interest of dialect, Mishima says.
Dialect, Mishima says, is “a specialty product in which language and land are bound together,” and the hardest part of fiction to translate. And to command dialect takes about as much labor as mastering a foreign language. Mishima tells of his own experience.
私の如きなまけ者は、『潮騒』という小説を書くときは、いったん全部標準語で会話を書き、それをモデルの島出身の人に、全部なおしてもらったのであります。（p.222）
(A lazy man like me, when I wrote the novel Shiosai, wrote all the dialogue once in standard speech and had it all corrected by a person from the island that was the model.)
On dialect in drama, on the other hand, he is scathing. Using strange dialects to put on stage a world not limited to any country is a kind of heresy, an illusion that dialect alone gives reality, a drug to the audience’s ears. Mishima regards new playwrights who write plays in such dialect as “a technical escape” (p. 222–223).
Question 14: a good metaphor
Mishima says metaphor has both an advantage and a danger. A fitting metaphor rescues the prose of a novel from being too abstract and dry, enlivens the reader’s image, and lets one grasp the essence of a thing in an instant. But the flaw of metaphor is that it scatters into various realms of imagination the world that the novel has unified, simplified, and crystallized. Overuse of metaphor makes it frivolous and blows the solid world of the novel apart like fireworks, he says.
Mishima gives some metaphors from Cocteau’s novels. (The text is not quoted in this article.)
Question 11: humor and satire
Saying he’ll put it very simply, Mishima says humor is without poison, satire has poison. Satire aims at the grotesque effect that arises when one looks at things afresh with an unprejudiced eye and no preconception. And he says it often borrows the eyes of the non-human or the unusual — an animal’s eyes, a dwarf’s eyes, a foreigner’s eyes. Gulliver’s Travels and Montesquieu’s Persian Letters are given as examples.
Humor, on the other hand, Mishima says, is like a lubricant within human life. In tension, it loosens the cramped nerves. Humor is “the gentlest form of intellect,” he says.
Question 8: who is the first beauty of fiction?
Mishima begins, “This is a very easy question.” In a novel, if you write, “She was the first beauty among all the women who have appeared in fiction of all ages and lands,” she becomes the first beauty. Because language has an abstract nature, he says. This is the essential difference between fiction on one hand and drama and film on the other.
Fiction is a “microcosm” that stands on its own, needing no backing of fact as history does. But the most nearly divine beauty he has read, Mishima answers, is Villiers de l’Isle-Adam’s “Véra.”
Question 15: coined words
A coined word, Mishima says, is a word not in the dictionary. As an example, he cites “bikushō” (a wry smile) that Kume Masao invented, which today everyone knows. This is a case where a novelist’s sense caught an unmistakable human expression and gave it a new word.
But a writer’s coinage differs from a fashionable word. Unless there is the utmost earnestness of trying to express, even bending words, what existing words cannot express, it means nothing, Mishima says. That a new writer’s fiction uses new coinages at every turn is itself lacking in sincerity, he says.
What to keep in mind when reading
First, this appendix has stronger assertions than the main text. There are many places that state things briefly, as in “This is a very easy question.” The grounds of the answers are often not shown, so it is best read as Mishima’s view.
Second, we have not touched questions involving sex or violence (Q2, Q9, etc.) in this article. Mishima’s answers can be read within the frame of this book, but here we gave priority to questions bearing on the craft of prose.
Third, many of the works Mishima cites (Tanizaki, Shiga, Ōe, and others) are still in copyright. This article does not quote their texts.
Summary
| Point | Detail |
|---|---|
| Nature of the appendix | Mishima’s brief answers to fifteen questions. A freer tone than the main text |
| Dialect | The bond of language and land. He wrote Shiosai’s dialogue in standard speech and had an islander correct it |
| Metaphor | Livens, but risks scattering the novel’s unity |
| Satire and humor | Satire has poison and borrows non-human eyes. Humor is a lubricant |
| Coinage | Meaningless without earnestness |
In a nutshell — In the appendix, Mishima speaks of the craft of prose through concrete questions — dialect, metaphor, coinage — showing his tastes more frankly than the main text.