三島文学における男性同性愛: 女性登場人物の支配力をめぐって

Abstract

This paper reconsiders Mishima Yukio’s novel Kinjiki (Forbidden Colors, 1951) through a reading of it as　a work which profoundly investigates gender relations and homosexuality, specifically by focusing on the dominant nature of the female protagonists in their relationships with the male characters. Kinjiki inarguably has the emotional and psychological issues surrounding homosexuality as its central theme, and it is in this context that the story develops around the two male protagonists Shunsuke and Yuichi. However, the novel does not describe the physical relationships involved in homosexuality, but instead depicts the emotions arising from such a relationship, such as obsession, jealousy, indifference and anguish. This work places homosexual and heterosexual relationships on the same spectrum, while reversing conventional gender roles. Consequently, in terms of gender relations, it has been said that this novel shows women exerting their subjective power in an organic way, in contrast to conventional assumptions about their capacities. However, this reading is at odds with the description in Mishima's novel of women as “subordinate” to men, and in fact some critics have argued that this view of women on the part of Mishima leads to his female characters being trapped in a way that is a reversal of their usual subjugation. There has been widespread attention paid to the fact that Kinjiki was written at a time when interest in and discourse on homosexuality had increased exponentially, along with postwar sexual liberation, in which context male homosexual relationships were not differentiated as a special category, and such love was positioned as an extension of male-female relationships, and simply as another sort of human relationship. In contrast to this explicit discourse, the relationship between men and women in Mishima’s novels can help us comprehend the latent aspects of his oeuvre, which I believe should become an important theme of future studies of his work.