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Authors: Yukio Mishima
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Raging waves rose high above the breakwater, set up a tremendous roar, and then rushed on down. Because of the previous evening’s storm-warning, every last boat had been pulled up much higher on the beach than usual. When the giant waves receded, the surface of the water tilted steeply; it almost seemed as if the bottom of the sea inside the harbor-works would be exposed to view.
Spray from the waves, mixed with the driving rain, struck Shinji full in the face. The sharp, fresh saltiness ran down his flushed cheeks, down the lines of his nose, and Shinji recalled the taste of Hatsue’s lips.
The clouds were moving at a gallop, and even in the dark sky there was a restless fluctuation between light and dark. Once in a while, still deeper in the sky, Shinji caught glimpses of clouds charged with an opaque light, like promises of clear skies to come. But these would be effaced almost instantly.
Shinji was so intent upon the sky that a wave came right up to where he stood and wet the toe-thongs of his wooden clogs. At his feet there lay a beautiful small pink shell, apparently just washed up by the same wave.
He picked the shell up and examined it. It was perfectly formed, without even the slightest chip on its paper-thin edge. Deciding it would make a good present, he put it in his pocket.
Immediately after lunch Shinji began getting ready to go out again. Seeing him going out into the storm for a second time, the mother paused in her dishwashing to stare fixedly after him. But she did not venture to ask where he was going: there was something about her son’sback that warned her to keep silent. How she regretted she had not had at least one daughter, who would always have been at home to help with the housework.…
Men go out fishing. They board their coasting ships and carry cargo to all sorts of ports. Women, not destined for that wide world, cook rice, draw water, gather seaweed, and when summer comes dive into the water, down to the sea’s deep bottom. Even for a mother who was a veteran among diving women this twilight world of the sea’s bottom was the world of women.…
All this she knew. The interior of a house dark even at noon, the somber pangs of childbirth, the gloom at the bottom of the sea—these were the series of interrelated worlds in which she lived her life.
The mother remembered one of the women of the summer before last, a widow like herself, a frail woman still carrying a nursing child. The woman had come up from diving for abalone, and had suddenly fallen unconscious as she stood before the drying-fire. She had turned up the whites of her eyes, bitten her blue lips, and dropped to the ground. When her remains were cremated at twilight in the pine grove, the other diving women had been filled with such grief that they could not stand, but squatted on the ground, weeping.
A strange story had been told about that incident, and some of the women had become afraid to dive any more. It was said that the dead woman had been punished for having seen a fearful something at the bottom of the sea, a something that humans are not meant to see.
Shinji’s mother had scoffed at the story and had dived to greater and greater depths to bring up the biggest catches of the season. She had never been one to worry about unknown things.…
Even such recollections as these could not dent her natural cheerfulness: she felt boastful about her own good health, and the storm outside quickened her feeling of well-being, just as it had her son’s.
Finishing the dishwashing, she opened wide the skirts of her kimono and sat down with her bare legs stretched out in front of her, gazing at them earnestly in the dim light from the creaking windows. There was not a single wrinkle on the sunburnt, well-ripened thighs, their wonderfully rounded flesh all but gleaming with the color of amber.
“Like this, I could still have four or five children more.” But at the thought her virtuous heart became filled
Raging waves rose high above the breakwater, set up a tremendous roar, and then rushed on down. Because of the previous evening’s storm-warning, every last boat had been pulled up much higher on the beach than usual. When the giant waves receded, the surface of the water tilted steeply; it almost seemed as if the bottom of the sea inside the harbor-works would be exposed to view.
Spray from the waves, mixed with the driving rain, struck Shinji full in the face. The sharp, fresh saltiness ran down his flushed cheeks, down the lines of his nose, and Shinji recalled the taste of Hatsue’s lips.
The clouds were moving at a gallop, and even in the dark sky there was a restless fluctuation between light and dark. Once in a while, still deeper in the sky, Shinji caught glimpses of clouds charged with an opaque light, like promises of clear skies to come. But these would be effaced almost instantly.
Shinji was so intent upon the sky that a wave came right up to where he stood and wet the toe-thongs of his wooden clogs. At his feet there lay a beautiful small pink shell, apparently just washed up by the same wave.
He picked the shell up and examined it. It was perfectly formed, without even the slightest chip on its paper-thin edge. Deciding it would make a good present, he put it in his pocket.
Immediately after lunch Shinji began getting ready to go out again. Seeing him going out into the storm for a second time, the mother paused in her dishwashing to stare fixedly after him. But she did not venture to ask where he was going: there was something about her son’sback that warned her to keep silent. How she regretted she had not had at least one daughter, who would always have been at home to help with the housework.…
Men go out fishing. They board their coasting ships and carry cargo to all sorts of ports. Women, not destined for that wide world, cook rice, draw water, gather seaweed, and when summer comes dive into the water, down to the sea’s deep bottom. Even for a mother who was a veteran among diving women this twilight world of the sea’s bottom was the world of women.…
All this she knew. The interior of a house dark even at noon, the somber pangs of childbirth, the gloom at the bottom of the sea—these were the series of interrelated worlds in which she lived her life.
The mother remembered one of the women of the summer before last, a widow like herself, a frail woman still carrying a nursing child. The woman had come up from diving for abalone, and had suddenly fallen unconscious as she stood before the drying-fire. She had turned up the whites of her eyes, bitten her blue lips, and dropped to the ground. When her remains were cremated at twilight in the pine grove, the other diving women had been filled with such grief that they could not stand, but squatted on the ground, weeping.
A strange story had been told about that incident, and some of the women had become afraid to dive any more. It was said that the dead woman had been punished for having seen a fearful something at the bottom of the sea, a something that humans are not meant to see.
Shinji’s mother had scoffed at the story and had dived to greater and greater depths to bring up the biggest catches of the season. She had never been one to worry about unknown things.…
Even such recollections as these could not dent her natural cheerfulness: she felt boastful about her own good health, and the storm outside quickened her feeling of well-being, just as it had her son’s.
Finishing the dishwashing, she opened wide the skirts of her kimono and sat down with her bare legs stretched out in front of her, gazing at them earnestly in the dim light from the creaking windows. There was not a single wrinkle on the sunburnt, well-ripened thighs, their wonderfully rounded flesh all but gleaming with the color of amber.
“Like this, I could still have four or five children more.” But at the thought her virtuous heart became filled
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