Two Characters in Search of an Actor

I previously wrote about the patriarch of the Sugimoto clan, a man notable for the lack of attention paid to him in Sweet Blue Flowers. In my final commentary on the Fujigaya production of Rokumeikan, I consider two other men notable for their absence in the manga, Hisao and Count Kageyama.

Hisao at least rates a mention in Sweet Blue Flowers. In the performance of Rokumeikan, Akiko (played by Akira) mentions that he is in danger (though the manga omits the reason why). The girl playing Hisao is subsequently called to the stage, after which the narration explains that he is Asako’s estranged son (SBF, 3:94–95). But we are left ignorant of who played Hisao and are not made privy to anything he says.

With Count Kageyama, the erasure is (almost) complete. Like Hisao, his actor is never identified, and we never hear his words. Unlike Hisao, he is not referenced at all in the manga, either by his name or by his role in the story.

As with Yasuko’s father, we may ask, why might this be? As in that case, the most straightforward answer is that they are peripheral to the story Shimura is telling. They are men, and Sweet Blue Flowers is about girls becoming women, specifically women who love women. With Hisao, we have the additional factor that he is explicitly identified as Akiko’s lover. It would detract from the story of Akira and Fumi’s tentatively blossoming love to have another girl play a love interest opposite Akira.¹

But, as with Yasuko’s father, we can explore this absence further, starting with Hisao. Hisao is a type familiar from Mishima’s other works, his life, and Japanese history: the hotheaded young man, whose discontents and violent tendencies alternately affront and are exploited by the Japanese (male) establishment.

Hisao’s resentment at his father’s treatment of him first leads him to contemplate assassinating Kiyohara. Persuaded to desist only by the intervention of his newly-revealed mother, Asako, he lets himself be goaded again into resentment and action by Kageyama’s words and scheming—only to rebel against Kageyama as well by deliberately mis-aiming his shot at Kiyohara, subsequently getting himself killed by Kiyohara’s return fire.

I think the term “toxic masculinity” is overused, but if it applies to anything, it applies to Hisao’s actions in this play. Hisao has a chance to turn from the path he is taking, to leave Japan with Akiko and make a new life with her. Instead he throws it all away to engage in a self-destructive act—an act that in his mind means a great deal, but in the grand scheme of things makes no difference whatsoever, other than to bring pain to his mother, father, and lover.

This offers another reason why Hisao is downplayed in the manga: to audiences familiar with the play, he is by his omission highlighted as a negative role model, especially for young girls like Akira and Fumi, and especially for a story like Sweet Blue Flowers. In older Class S works, suicide (for that is what Hisao’s actions amount to) might be the end game for some, frustrated in their inability to escape the strictures of society. However, it has no place in the world of Sweet Blue Flowers.

Its message would rather be that of Asako to Akiko after she learns of Hisao’s death and despairs of life: “You can’t say any such weak-hearted thing. You must by all means try to live.”² Or in other words: “Don’t be Hisao.”

What then of Count Kageyama? As I implied above, he is the Voldemort of the Rokumeikan production portrayed in Sweet Blue Flowers, “he-who-must-not-be-named.” But, unlike Voldemort, Kageyama is seemingly successful in his role as the “Big Bad.”

When Kageyama’s original plan to employ Hisao goes awry, he discovers what Asako has done and arranges a new scheme to achieve his aim. He successfully plays on Hisao’s sense of masculinity to persuade him to resume his plan of assassinating Kiyohara—a plan that, even if seemingly unsuccessful, eliminates Kiyohara as a political force (as Kiyohara himself notes). He then (it is strongly implied) has Kiyohara killed to finish the job that Hisao could not. In plain terms, he wins, and everyone else—Asako, Akiko, Hisao, and Kiyohara—loses.

Kageyama is not portrayed in the play as an unrelievedly evil villain. He is jealous of Asako’s relationship with Kiyohara, and apparently yearns to have what they have with each other—“I was jealous of that indescribable trust that exists between you and Kiyohara”—even as he scoffs at the possibilities of love and trust between two people: “It is an absurd thing. Human beings can’t make pledges or trust each other unconditionally as you and Kiyohara have done. … That sort of thing should never exist in our human world.”³

But whatever his feelings, his actions are contemptible, and Asako calls him out for it at the climax of act 4: “Please do not talk about love and human beings any more. Those words are unclean. When they come out of your mouth, they become repellent. You are clean as ice only when you totally isolate yourself from human emotions. Please do not bring in love and humane feelings with your sticky hands. This is unlike you.”⁴

As it happens, this is the only time Kageyama appears in Sweet Blue Flowers even indirectly, as Kyoko rehearses this speech. (I have used Hiroaki Sato’s translation here instead of the one in the manga because I think it better conveys the sense of what Asako is saying.) Midway through, Kyoko stops, lost in thought, until prompted by another person—perhaps the anonymous girl playing Kageyama, whom we glimpse only from behind (SBF, 3:104-5).

What was Kyoko thinking? Earlier in the manga, she thought to herself, “Did dad fall for a woman like Asako?” (SBF, 3:99). Is she comparing her father to Kageyama?

And what of herself? Whatever ardor Ko felt before seems to have cooled, replaced with frustration at Kyoko’s behavior towards him—and perhaps also a jealousy born of whatever he might know or guess of Kyoko’s feelings toward Yasuko. In turn, Kyoko’s renewed desire to get married reeks of desperation and a desire to escape her family situation—as Ko points out to her (SBF, 3:90–91).

Perhaps Kyoko stopped to think that what happened to her mother and Asako might one day happen to herself: that she and Ko might enter into a marriage with at least some lingering feelings of love and affection, only to have it all end in cruelty and coldness. Kyoko could not save her mother—“I couldn’t stop her from breaking” (SBF, 3:101). If it ever came to that, could she save herself?