On The Dust of Battle, by Mishima Yukio
"Has Japanese culture gone extinct, then? I will say here only that it is solely through the shock of the revival of those untimely “forms” that the possibility of rebirth remains."
On The Dust of Battle
Mishima Yukio
I got the opportunity to read The Dust of Battle when Nakatsuji Kazuhiko, lead editor of The Ronsō Journal, encouraged me to read a draft that he had been entrusted with. Reading it made a deep impression on me.
At the time of publication there was talk of changing it into postwar style. I insisted on the original text, and fortunately got my way.
I did not insist on the original text as an act of unnecessary individual meddling. I did so because I thought it was entirely a question of “culture.”
The one-sided treatment of culture since the war has for the longest time provoked doubts in me. The works about the war that have gained the right to be passed down as works of literature have all been by men of letters. As one would expect of people who make it their profession, the writing is of course excellent. They have both literary depth and universal persuasive power. Regrettably, however, their individual experiences of war are limited, and however fair they may be, war as it appears to the eyes of someone who was a writer prior to participating in combat naturally has limitations of perspective. It is a matter of course that even the greatest of wars is an individual experience for each, but at the same time it is undeniable that the essence of war of the pure combatant has been lost.
Please do not misunderstand me. I am not making the criticism that accounts of war by men of letters lack breadth and keenness of experience. I only doubt whether judging the quality of accounts and works concerning that war solely by purely literary evaluation might, from a broader standpoint, actually be a non-literary, and by extension a non-cultural act.
The Dust of Battle is the perfect example of this. It is clear at first reading that it neither aims at being a work of literature nor is the work of someone with considerable literary training. But depicted in it is the tragedy of the end of a single great culture and cultural form.