The Frolic of the Beasts

In a photograph, three smiling individuals–Ippei Kusakado, his wife Yūko, and the youthful Kōji–are seen standing on the harbor wall in Iro Village, a rural fishing port in the western part of the Izu Peninsula in Shizuoka Prefecture. The photograph was taken on a hot summer day. It was taken only days before "the final wretched incident". It was immediately sent to the chief priest of Taisenji temple. In Iro, there are also rice paddies as well as the Kusakado greenhouses, located beside the Kusakado family home. On the mountainside lies a new graveyard, reaching halfway up the slope of the mountain from its base. In spite of opposition from the villagers, the chief priest of Taisenji temple erected the new graves with the money that was entrusted to him. Ippei's grave lies on the right, Kōji's on the left, and Yūko's in the center. Yūko's, however, is only a "living monument", reserved for her eventual death.

Kōji is released from prison. He travels by boat from Numazu to Iro Village, where Yūko is waiting for him. Kōji tells himself that he has repented and is a different person, but once he arrives he is immediately told by Yūko that he hasn't changed. Yūko had become his guarantor upon his release, but they both question whether they have made a mistake in Kōji coming to Iro. Yūko closed the Tokyo shop a year ago, moved to Iro, and started the Kusakado greenhouse, which Kōji will work in. The two of them walk through Iro to the Kusakado house. Greeted by villagers on the way, Kōji is ashamed knowing rumours of his past will spread but Yūko tells him to keep his head up. Kōji is seized by fear when he sees Ippei in front of the gate of the house.

Two years earlier, when he was a 21-year-old university student, Kōji was hired to work at a Western ceramics shop in Ginza, Tokyo. Ippei Kusakado, a 40-year-old man, is the owner and manager of the ceramics shop but also translates and reviews German literature in his spare time. While drinking together at a bar, Ippei tells Kōji about his unhappiness with his wife Yūko's lack of jealousy. He says he has tried everything to make her jealous, confessing to his numerous affairs. Kōji, jealous of Ippei's "corrupt heart", falls in love with Yūko that night, despite not having met her before. Kōji begins a secret affair with Yūko. One night, Yūko told Kōji that she knows Ippei has been adulterous, showing him documentation from a private investigator who tracked his infidelity. She cried, but told Kōji not to tell her husband of her suffering. On a summer's day, six months after he first met Yūko, Kōji is waiting for Yūko outside a hospital. He spots a black wrench lying on the ground and puts it in his jacket pocket. Much later while in prison, Kōji reflected on the wrench, viewing it as a manifestation of "will" that had become a material phenomen which sought to "upset the very foundations" of the order of his world. That evening, Yūko and Kōji walk in on Ippei and find him with a lover, Machiko. Yūko simply asks Ippei to "return home quietly". Kōji expected a grand confrontation, where "the truth of perverse human nature begins to shine". He instead sees it as "nothing other than things he had grown utterly tired of seeing: the mediocre concealment of human shame, the irony of keeping up appearances." Yūko, crying and jabbering, is struck across the cheek twice by Ippei. Kōji immediately reacts without "emotion, objective, or motive", and repeatedly bashes the left side of Ippei's head with the wrench he had placed in the pocket of his jacket.

Izu coastline in Nishiizu.

In Iro, Kōji meets Ippei for the first time since he was imprisoned. Kōji's assault leaves Ippei with a fractured cranium and a cerebral contusion. Ippei is diagnosed with aphasia and paralysis on his right side, and is left with an "interminable smile". Kōji explains his assault as driven by an extreme unease with enduring that "world bereft of logic", and chose to impart the "cold, hard, black logic of iron" of the wrench. Kōji works in the Kusakado greenhouse with fellow gardener Teijiro. One day, Kōji, Yūko and Ippei go for a picnic at the nearby waterfall and greet Kakujin, the priest of Taisenji temple, on the way. They stop at the village shrine to make a peace offering with a lily, but Yūko is unimpressed with the shrine's appearance and size. Yūko's sacrilege scares Kōji. Yūko suddenly begins to taunt Ippei, asking him if he understands "sacrifice". Ippei replies that he does not understand and Kōji tries to defend him but Yūko cuts Kōji off and calls Ippei an idiot. Yūko throws the lily into the plunge pool, and Ippei's face displays "a look of pure anxiety born of being cut off from all understanding". She asks Ippei if he understands the word "kiss", then passionately kisses Kōji in front of him. Kōji scolds Yūko for using him for Ippei's sake. She answers, asserting she has used Kōji from the beginning and that he surely likes it. Kōji strikes Yūko across the cheek and turns to Ippei, who has a fixed smile on his face. Terrified, Kōji embraces Yūko to erase the fear from his mind, but her kiss "had lost completely its exquisite taste".

One evening, Kōji is drinking alone at the Storm Petrel, the only bar in Iro Village. He gossips with the bar's owner about Teijirō's young daughter, Kimi. Kōji has never heard Teijirō speak about Kimi, and senses that there are ill feelings between them. After Kimi's mother died, they had lived together until Kimi suddenly left for Hamamatsu to become a factory girl. Kimi has not interacted with Teijirō since returning to Iro for a ten-day vacation from her work at the Imperial Instruments factory in Hamamatsu. Kimi is strikingly beautiful and makes the village girls of Iro jealous by her presence. She carries a ukulele with her wherever she goes. At around 9:00 p.m., Kimi, Matsukichi, and Kiyoshi enter the bar and Kōji joins them at their table. Matsukichi is a fisherman and Kiyoshi is a member of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force ground crew. They are both Kimi's childhood friends, and have quarrelled with each other over her love ever since. Kōji envies Kiyoshi's "simple lyrical spirit", but considers Matsukichi "a dull-witted young animal". Looking at the three characters, Kōji thinks of Yūko, who has not permitted him to kiss her since the incident during the picnic. He realises the depth of his love for Yūko and repeats "I have repented" to himself. Together in the bar, Kōji, Kimi, Matsukichi, and Kiyoshi all get drunk and Kimi offers up her ukulele, swearing that whichever of the young men gets it will be the one who gets her love. Interested, they all leave in a small boat and travel to Urayasu where they go nude swimming. They walk into Urayasu forest and start a bonfire, where Kimi refuses to give up her ukulele. Matsukichi steals the instrument from Kimi, then passes it to Kiyoshi. The two men pass it back and forth to each other as Kimi attempts to take it back. Matsukichi and Kiyoshi take the ukulele and jump into the boat together, rowing into the bay by themselves. Kōji and Kimi return to the forest bonfire. Kimi says she purposely did not swim after the boat because she wished be alone with Kōji. Kimi says she respects Kōji's love for Yūko, but is "prepared to make a sacrifice and act as a stand-in". Kōji and Kimi have sex, but Kōji cannot suppress the thought that the experience is "nothing but a poor imitation" of the "perfect flesh" that he created and refined with his imagination while in prison. They swim across the bay and return home. Several days later, Kōji hears rumours that Kiyoshi kept the ukulele, carrying it around wherever he went to the envy of the other young men in the village. That night, after drinking at the bar, Matsukichi confesses to Kōji that he and Kiyoshi made a secret pact. Kiyoshi only cared about his reputation, and agreed to never lay a hand on Kimi. The night after they went to Urayasu, Kimi gave herself to Matsukichi. When Matsukichi told Kimi of their pact, she laughed but accepted his proposal nonetheless. Kōji is surprised that Matsukichi has no inkling that he and Kimi had sex while alone on the island together.

While working in the greenhouse, Teijirō suddenly confesses to Kōji that he raped Kimi. Teijirō then shows Kōji a pornographic photograph of a boy in a student's uniform having sex with a girl in a sailor uniform, and remarks that the girl has a similar appearance to that of Kimi. Kōji is disturbed by Teijirō's unsolicited confession, and questions what the purpose of his confession was. Kimi stops by the Kusakado house to say goodbye before leaving to return to the factory in Hamamatsu. Looking at her, Kōji theorises that Kimi had slept with him and persuaded Matsukichi to love her only in order to infect them with the "germ-like secret of her father's crime" without letting them know her truth. He imagines she was quietly picturing "the origin of her burning, rejuvenating humiliation and self-loathing" while they had sex. Kimi says goodbye and squeezes Kōji's hands, gazing in his eyes. Kōji stares only at Yūko, who takes out a hairpin from her hair and pricks the back of Kimi's hand. Kimi leaves, running down the slope laughing maniacally, while Yūko turns away with a frown on her face. In the heat of that night, Kōji is lying on his bed while covered by a mosquito net. Yūko enters Kōji's room and tells him she stuck her hairpin in the hand of the "conceited" Kimi to warn her, not out of jealously. Yūko compares her action to that of Kōji with the wrench, and reveals that she is jealous of Koji's crime. She is jealous of "not having a crime to her name" that would allow her to at least "stand beside him". Kōji and Yūko passionately embrace between the mosquito net, but Yūko sees a figure outside and loudly screams that her husband is approaching. Kōji realises Yūko wishes to be caught by Ippei, that it would liberate her from her "long-continued suffering". He is infuriated by Yūko and refuses to let her through the mosquito net, not wanting to be caught by Ippei in an adulterous position with Yūko. Ippei climbs the stairs and tells Yūko he wants to sleep there because it is cool. Several days later, after a typhoon passes and misses West Izu, Kōji speaks with Kakujin the priest at Taisenji temple. He sees Yūko and Ippei coming down the slope, and Yūko asks Kōji to accompany Ippei on his daily walk. Kōji decides to confront Ippei on their walk, vehemently questioning him and accusing him of elaborately tormenting Yūko and him under the guise of his mental incapacity. He calls him a "hollow cavern" and "empty hole" which the household revolves around. Kōji asks Ippei what he wants, to which Ippei responds he wishes to go home. Kōji is angered by this "childlike supplication" and further presses Ippei, asking him what he really wants. Ippei responds, "Death. I want to die." They meet back up with Yūko, and Kōji tells her that he feels his life is being lived solely for Ippei's sake. There is a tacit understanding between them, and Yūko says, "There's no going back now after all of this." The three of them arrive at the harbor, and Yūko says they should travel to the other side of the bay one day. She suggests Teijirō take them over in the boat in the middle of the day and that they should take "lots of pictures".

On a summer vacation, a folklore researcher travels to Iro and speaks with a priest, Kakujin, who recounts his memories of Ippei, Yūko, and Kōji. Kakujin tells of the time Yūko and Kōji appeared at Taisenji temple, confessing to strangling Ippei to death. Kakujin shows the researcher the photo described in the novel's prologue. It had been given to him the day before Ippei was murdered. Kōji testified that he murdered Ippei at Ippei's request, but Kōji's gifting of the photograph to the priest was used as indelible evidence of premeditated murder. Kōji was given the death penalty, and Yūko was sentenced to life imprisonment. While in prison, Yūko requested Kakujin to arrange their graves side by side, with Yūko in between. The researcher visits the graves, and takes a photograph. The priest asks the researcher to deliver the photograph on his behalf to Yūko in person. The researcher later travels to Tochigi prison and meets Yūko. Looking at the photograph, she thanks the researcher and says, "Now I can serve my time in peace." Yūko puts the photograph in her pocket and leaves.

The novel received a positive reception from contemporary Japanese literary critics.[37] Its publication in 1961 coincided the public debate over the "pure literature controversy" (Junbungaku Ronsō (純文学論争)), which was started by literary critic Hirano Ken with a September 1961 article he wrote in The Asahi Shimbun.[37][38][39][40] The Frolic of the Beasts was positively evaluated as a legitimate work of "pure literature" at the time.[37]

In the 16 October 1961 issue of The Nihon Keizai Shimbun, eminent writer and scholar Shōichi Saeki called the novel an authentic literary depiction of love.[41][42] In the 8 November 1961 issue of the Tokyo Shimbun's evening edition, critic Takeshi Muramatsu praised the novel and contrasted it to the detective crime fiction of writer Seichō Matsumoto, whose work Muramatsu said in contrast to that of Mishima could not be considered "pure literature".[43][42] In the 10 August 1962 issue of Chitsujo (秩序), Hidehiko Miwa characterized it a neo-romantic novel.[44][42] In the 30 October 1961 issue of the weekly book review paper Shūkan Dokushojin, Sumie Tanaka described the novel as a work of fierce research.[45][42] In the 2 November 1961 issue of the Yomiuri Shimbun's evening edition, critic Okuno Takeo felt, however, that the second part of the novel was written in such a dense and beautiful style that it prevented the overall work from leaving a deep impression.[46][42]

The novel's English translation, written by Andrew Clare and first published in 2018, received favourable reviews from literary critics, with a cumulative "Positive" rating at the review aggregator website Book Marks.[47]

Publishers Weekly, in its starred review, called it a "luridly propulsive novel" and praised Mishima's "baroque, beautiful prose".[5][48][4][12] Sam Sacks of The Wall Street Journal called it a "morose little gem" and wrote that the book's influences "aren't integrated so much as piled on top of each other, like a face gaudily layered in makeup. It's a train wreck of styles, but because the book is about moral catastrophe the collision seems fitting."[3] John Nathan, a well-known translator and biographer of Mishima, who knew Mishima personally, praised Andrew Clare's "decent" translation in his review of the novel for The New York Review of Books.[49]

Andrew Ervin of The Washington Post wrote that the novel's nonlinear timeline "pays huge dividends" and "powerful epilogue ties a neat ribbon around the plot." Ervin, however, noted that the book seems dated for contemporary readers, with its "excessive and repetitive attention to the breast size of every female character."[50] In her review for Spectrum Culture, Ashley Pabilonia felt the first half of the novel suffered from its nonlinear timeline, but praised Mishima for building the characters' "romantic tension, suspense and guilt between them thickly enough that readers will be enticed to see the trio's story to the end."[51] Writing for The New York Times Book Review, John Williams criticised the plot for not sustaining the novel's length, but praised the unconventional relationships of the central characters for making the "most riveting scenes" of the novel "truly riveting; unforgettable, even."[2]

The English-language translation was included as an honorable mention on Literary Hub's list "The 10 Best Translated Novels of the Decade" for the 2010s.[52]