The World's Literature in Europe discussion

Chapters 1 and 2.

Two tempermentally different, late-teen school friends--capricious Kiyoaki Matsugae and rational Shigekuni Honda. About the former,

"...to live for the emotions--gratuitous and unstable, dying only to quicken again, dwindling and flaring without direction or purpose.
At that moment nothing interested him."

About the latter,

"He was...a young man who wanted to lead a constructive life, and he had made up his mind about his future role."

Refined, elegant life on the Matsugae estate.
The personality of Kiyoaki's personal tutor Ilinuma.
Kiyoaki keeps a journal about his constant nighttime dreaming.
Honda rows Kiyoaki to the island on the Matsuegae's lake.

Chapters 3 and 4.

The Matsuegae's architecturally landscaped park of waterfalls, bridges, stone steps and stepping stones, rowing lake, island, maple and pine trees, flowers, arbors with a view, hills, and paths is the setting.

Kiyoaki Matsugae's having been raised by the aristocratic Ayakuras along with their daughter Satoko.

Kiyoaki's pretense of general disinterestedness because of pride and reticence. His indecisiveness to act contrasts to Satoko's directness.

Kiyoaki, Honda, Satoko, her great-aunt the Abbess of Gesshu, the two mothers, the maids tour the Matsugae's park, now aflame in autumnal maple leaves. An unintended dead black dog, blocking "the crest" of a waterfall, ruins its "graceful fall of water". After the Abbess blesses the dog's grave, Kiyoaki's mother's remarks on the dog's reincarnation.

"...it will be reborn as a human being..."

Why a reserved, "beautiful", "arrogant", "anxious" dreamer like Kiyoaki allows Honda's friendship. A psychological portrait of Kiyoaki and of Honda's attitude to him.

The Abbess's convent at Gesshu Temple is rare in its nuns studying Hosso Buddhist scriptures. Her illustrative story of that sect's basic belief--"doctrine of Yuishiki" i.e. "all existence is based on subjective awareness"--differently affects Kiyoaki and Honda, the former indifferent and uncurious, the latter excited by the Abbess's teaching

"To take your own ideal and bend the world to it like that. Wouldn't that be a remarkable force? It would be like holding the secret key to life right there in your hand, wouldn't it?"

and by the temple's history.

Chapter 5.

The Matsugae's westernized house, clothes, food, manners, etc occur alongside traditional, prophetic, superstitious(?) rituals. At fifteen years old, Kiyoaki had his "Otachimachi divination ritual" in which a basin of water reflects the moon. Seeing a bright, watery reflection predicts a fortunate life. In another ritual, Kiyoaki offers up a branch of the sakaki tree and intones an incantation. Perhaps he is conservative?

The following metaphor Mishima returns to again in this chapter. Quite a bit of psychology in it.

"For even in the triviality of a single playing card missing from a deck, the world's order is inevitably turned awry. And for someone like Kiyoaki, the smallest incongruity took on the proportions of a watch deprived of one cogwheel. The order of his universe collapsed and he found himself trapped in terrifying darkness. The lost playing card, of no value in itself, would, in his eyes, assume the significance of a crown over which rival claimants were locked in a struggle that would plunge the world into crisis. His sensibility was thus at the mercy of every unforeseen occurrence, however trivial, and he had no defenses at hand."

This chapter also displays Kiyoaki's important, three small moles under his arm. That's the signifying mark of his future reincarnated beings in books two through four of the tetralogy.