we went to the mishima museum yesterday. it was very surreal. for one, it’s on what seems to be a less popular lake of mt fuji (yamanakako). on the way you pass by kawaguchi, which is the popular lake town that was filled with not only foreign tourists but plenty of japanese families celebrating golden week. yamanakako in contrast was much sleepier, a bit more rural and frankly a bit less striking.
the museum is in a “forest path of literature,” which makes the second path of literature i’ve walked this trip. you walk a short trail crossing streams and passing by large moss covered rocks before arriving at the building which is ostensibly modeled after mishima’s house.
the exhibition itself is very small—only one room. my wife and i stayed there a good hour or more and were only joined by one other person who left shortly after entering. pictures weren’t allowed for stated copyright reasons, but i still managed to take some:
the first question the museum asks is “why did we build this in yamanakako?” the answer is that mishima briefly wrote about it in two of his books and drew a small map of the area once.
the unique logic displayed there set the tone for the rest of the museum. you’d be shown notes and rough drafts of confessions of a mask with a placard that states “this novel is where mishima wrestled his homosexuality,” then a little down the way you’d be shown “ and this is the diary of his first year of marriage” with no connecting tissue. in a similar way, you’d be told “mishima became a superstar in his thirties with acting, modeling, and body building. he also gained international acclaim” before the next section ominously said “then he started getting into politics.” at this point i realized the museum was curated with help from the family and the estate.
there was only a paragraph or so about his death. there was a much stronger emphasis placed on the sea of fertility tetralogy (for some reason i remember the museum saying “in these books mishima asked ‘what is human? what is modernity?’”$
so overall a surreal experience but one i was glad to have. seeing the reproduction of his office and bookshelf was one of the coolest things i’ve seen, and i loved seeing the rare photographs, notebooks, and childhood drawings.
after the museum we rented a tiny paddle boat and fed swans in the lake. by that point the weather had cleared up a bit and we got a good view of mt fuji. i gotta tell you, as someone who had no particular interest in seeing mt fuji, that thing is really breathtaking.
