Raw Purity: Yukio Mishima’s the Sound of Waves

Anyone who is familiar with one of Japan’s most acclaimed modern authors, Yukio Mishima, would know about how the themes of humanities, human’s psyche, youthfulness, spirituality, poetic justice, and many others shaped the prevalence of his works. From the Freudian tragedy of The Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea to the homosexuality and identity crisis of Confessions of a Mask. The literary world that Mishima built often felt curiously exhilarating yet suffocating. Waves of emotions often accompany the readers through a profound grayness that, when we have finished reading the last word of a Mishima that we read, we slump back to our seat, recounting everything that we have just read back in our head, for we need to be ready to spend hours upon hours gazing through what Mishima wanted from us and if it is right to demand what we wanted back to Mishima. But, among all of the branches that fill his tree, the return to simplicity, with waves of emotions that are straightforward and calm, Yukio Mishima’s The Sound of Waves delivers Mishima and his writing philosophy of purity into its truest state despite its rawness.

Broken down into simplicity, The Sound of Waves reads like a coming-of-age romance between two timid youths, the poor fisherman boy named Shinji and the most beautiful pearl-diver girl named Hatsue. Bridging through the societal and economical gap, Shinji is determined to be in an eternal bond with Hatsue. He faces his adversaries because of a rumor that got spread around of promiscuity between him and Hatsue. But in the end, after proving his righteousness to Hatsue, her father, his mother, and generally everyone else in the village, they live happily ever after. All in all, stripping away the name of Yukio Mishima and adding new descriptions, you could fool anyone thinking this can be any other book. Although, the choice of simplicity favors how Mishima’s fascination with purity can attribute the exploration and placement of purity as its truest state into the novel’s thematic thesis.

When the theme of purity comes up in Mishima’s stories, it often lends itself as a theme disengaged from its semantics. Its linguistics is subtracted to give room for philosophy, psychology, and literature to engage in perspective and explanation of ‘purity’. The Sound of Waves does not dwell in subversion, it wants to have the readers sit through a heartwarming, truthful, as well as youthful story. It neither questions nor engages, but rather reminds us that, maybe, it is still possible for us to be a figure like Shinji. His purity is a culmination of the physical, metaphysical, spiritual, and psychological harmony of one’s character that has not yet and does not need to go through perversion from its master (Mishima).

Another deliberate choice made by Mishima to extend the likeliness of Shinji holding to that raw purity was to make him a humble poor fisherman of the island Uta-Jima. The island and its inhabitants live peacefully far away from the post-war modern city society. It is not the first time that Mishima places his subjects in Japan’s countryside, but they often have intermingled with the values of modernity which follow the thesis of impurity according to Mishima’s outlooks. The Japanese traditional values glued Shinji and purity together. Although he dreams of traveling out of Uta-Jima, he has fully realized a living principle based on what the island had sculpted into his veins. Based on observation after finishing the book, it is impossible Shinji falls into traps of impurities which happened with Chiyoko.

Overall, The Sound of Waves has as high of literary qualities as other works from Yukio Mishima. Yet, this novel has the positive of being the most accessible first-time read of Mishima. It may not dives into such great tragedies as the like of The Frolic of the Beasts, The Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea, or The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, but Mishima still shines through with his delicate proses, delivery of scenes, characterizations, and most importantly, the messages. For those who are still hesitant to start reading Mishima, consider swimming through The Sound of Waves.