Mishima's Sword

I have the audacity to review a book: Mishima's Sword by Christopher Ross. It might be the fever talking, but I just didn't like it.

I thought the idea was very worthy. A national icon committed ritualistic suicide and Christopher Ross recovers the sword (and story) decades later. It's a first-person investigative adventure of the heart (he's a martial artist, he's a writer).

The book bursts with Japan-icana: the traditional measure for sword-sharpness (the number of cadavers it could cut, at which joints of the body); the oils for rust; the legend of a "good" sword, how leaves on a stream evade the blade (while striking another) because the moral sword avoids unnecessary hurt.

The drawing of a human body, scored by 10 horizontal lines, the diagram for cadaver-cutting.

His writing is clear, hard, efficient -- sentences cutting clean and sharp, clean and sharp, with Japanese names, detailed rituals, history, etc. But I can't shake the idea that all these sharp sentences are just facts drawn quickly across a dead body.

"Mishima claimed that the feminine side of Japan, displayed in the arts of ikebana and the tea ceremony, in kimono design and the institution of geisha, in haiku and ceramics, had been deliberately stressed since the American occupation. But this side was not the whole of Japanese culture. There was also an immense historical and cultural investment in the arts and attitudes of the warrior: the sword needed to balance the chrysanthemum."

Christopher Ross is the book's only warm, living character, and I couldn't feel a pulse. Too much "steady hand and mind" as he faced the potentially bloody ritual of writing? Was he ashamed to share his true emotion? (And is that's why David Sederis is so powerful; because he tells everything? Shameless.)

The author admits he felt kind of victorious in befriending a true-life Japanese bartender. AND felt constricted on a plane ride! The factual evidence was all there -- Mishima is worthy of our consideration. But our passion? The author's passion? More chrystanthemum, less blade.