Free Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima Page A

meet exacting standards. Starting with the bonsai in the front entrance, the screen behind it with the painted Chinese ideogram for harmony, the cigarette case and ashtrays laid out in the drawing room, the tasseled tablecloth, and ending with the rice bin in the kitchen, the towel rack in the toilet, the pen holders in the study, and even the various paperweights in the study—each item was perfection of its kind.
    And this same care extended to the conversation of the household. In the homes of Honda’s friends, one or two old people could always be counted on to come up with absurd stories. In all seriousness, for example, they might recall the night when two moons had appeared at the window, one of them a badger in disguise who immediately resumed his normal shape on being roundly abused, and lumbered away. And there would always be an appreciative audience. But in his own home, a severe glance from his father would make it clear even to the oldest of the maids that to indulge in such ignorant nonsense was out of the question.
    In his youth, his father had spent some years studying law in Germany, and he revered the German respect for logic.
    When Shigekuni Honda compared his own home with Kiyoaki’s, one aspect of the contrast particularly amused him. Although the Matsugaes seemed to lead a Westernized life and although their house was filled with objects from abroad, the atmosphere of their home was strikingly and traditionally Japanese. In his own household, on the other hand, the day-today life-style might be Japanese, but the atmosphere had much that was Western in spirit. And then his father’s regard for the education of his student houseboys was in marked contrast to Marquis Matsugae’s attitude toward his.
    As usual, once he had finished his homework, which tonight was French, his second foreign language, Honda turned to some law digests. These were written in German, French, and English, and he had had to order them through the Maruzen bookstore. He read these every night in anticipation of the future demands of college work, and also, more significantly, because he had a natural bent to trace everything to its source. Lately, he had begun to lose interest in the European natural law that had exercised such a fascination on him. From the day of the Abbess of Gesshu’s sermon, he had become more and more aware of such a system’s inadequacies.
    He realized, however, that although natural law had been comparatively neglected in recent years, no other system of thought displayed such a capacity for survival: it had flourished in different forms suited to each of the many epochs in two thousand years of history—from its apparent origins in Socrates and its powerful influence on the formulation of law in the Roman era through the medium of Aristotle’s writings, to its intricate development and codification during the Christian Middle Ages and its renewed popularity in the Renaissance; this indeed reached such a peak that the period could be called the Age of Natural Law. In all probability, it was this recurrent philosophy that preserved the traditional European faith in the power of reason. Still, Honda could not help thinking that despite its tenacity, two thousand years of its strong, bright, Apollonian humanism had barely sufficed to hold off the assaults of darkness and barbarism.
    Nor was the assault limited to these forces. Another, more blinding light had also threatened it, since natural law had to rigidly exclude the very possibility of a concept of existence based on romantic and irrational nationalism.
    However that might be, Honda did not necessarily cling to the historical school of law, which was influenced by nineteenth-century romanticism, nor to the ethnic school. The Japan of the Meiji era, indeed, needed a nationalistic type of law, one that had its roots in the philosophy of the historical school. But Honda’s concerns were quite different. He had first been intent on isolating the