Confessions of the Mask

Struggles

        Psychological and gender struggles are evident in Yukio Mishima’s Confessions of the Mask.  The main character in the Japanese novel, Kochan, goes through certain struggles throughout his development from an adolescent to an adult.  Kochan faces inner psychological conflicts through his isolation, social identity, and ailing physical health.  Kochan also has difficulties with his gender, struggling with confusion about his homosexuality, trying to blend in, and losing his identity as a whole.

        As a growing boy, Kochan’s parents completely isolate him from the outside world.  This isolation he is faced with begins to shape his psyche, and he starts to feel disconnected with the world around him.  As a result, Kochan shows signs of issues in distinguishing between reality and fantasy, which is exemplified by a poem he wrote to a picture.  “St. Sebastian—A Prose Poem: Out of a schoolroom window once I spied a tree of middling height, swaying in the wind.  As I looked, my heart began to thunder.  It was a tree of startling beauty…” (Mishima 42).  This signifies the disconnection Kochan has with reality, as he is writing a fantasy letter to a picture.  This poem is not being written to a person, rather it is being written to an object, the picture, that Kochan has obsessed over.  Kochan’s isolation, coming from the strictness of his parents, causes this lack of distinction between fantasy and reality for him. Another example of this isolation takes place in Kochan’s second year in middle school.  “My ever-cautious parents had used the plea of my poor health to obtain for me an exception to the rule requiring every student to live in the dormitory for a year or two during his middle school course.  And once again their main reason was nothing more than to keep me from learning “bad things” (Mishima 48).  This further displays how Kochan’s parents influence his isolation as a child.  His parents go as far as getting an exception to force Kochan to stay at home instead of living in dorms with his peers, with is limiting Kochan socially by disabling him to go through the living arrangements that his peers are going through together.

        Over his growing years, Kochan also faces social identity problems, which stem from the isolation he goes through.  When his parents get the exception for him to stay living at home, Kochan is missing out on the social experiences that the other children are able to take part in due to living together while at school.  The feeling of isolation is the norm for Kochan, which contributes to building his social isolation from his peers.  From his days as an early child, Kochan is used to being alone, and over time, this directly shapes his social identity.  This identity consists of a socially awkward, reserved, shy, isolated child, with gender-related social issues as well (will be further discussed in the gender struggle section).

        Another psychological struggle Kochan faces is the effect of the limitation stemming from his sickly physical health.  Because he is not in prime physical condition throughout his childhood years, he is used to being extremely skinny.  So, when Kochan is twenty years old, he is to enlist in the military, if he is of good health. Mishima writes, “Early in the year all the students at my university were sent to work at the N airplane factory…Eighty percent of the students became factory hands, while the frail students, who formed the remaining twenty percent, were given some sort of clerical jobs.  I fell into the latter category” (Mishima 132).  This portrays that the strong students are able to serve for their country, which is what all the students are striving to do, but Kochan is not a healthy enough young man.  He is sickly and too frail to be passed for enlistment in the military, which hurts him psychologically because he is being isolated from eighty percent of his peers who are heading into the military.