The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

by

Yukio Mishima

Noboru’s Father Character Analysis

Noboru Kuroda’s father (and Fusako Kuroda’s husband) died five years before the events of the novel. The reader learns little about him, except that he used to own Rex, the store that Fusako now runs. However, Noboru is actually proud of his father’s death because he believes in the chief’s theory that all fathers are evil and oppressive.

Noboru’s Father Quotes in The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

The The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea quotes below are all either spoken by Noboru’s Father or refer to Noboru’s Father. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Glory, Heroism, and Death Theme Icon
).
Part 1, Chapter 1 Quotes

And the zone of black. […] He tried all the obscenity he knew, but words alone couldn’t penetrate that thicket. His friends were probably right when they called it a pitiful little vacant house. He wondered if that had anything to do with the emptiness of his own world.

At thirteen, Noboru was convinced of his own genius (each of the others in the gang felt the same way) and certain that life consisted of a few simple signals and decisions; that death took root at the moment of birth and man’s only recourse thereafter was to water and tend it; that propagation was a fiction; consequently, society was a fiction too: that fathers and teachers, by virtue of being fathers and teachers, were guilty of a grievous sin. Therefore, his own father’s death, when he was eight, had been a happy incident, something to be proud of.

Related Characters: Noboru Kuroda, Fusako Kuroda, The Chief, Noboru’s Father
Related Symbols: The Peephole
Page Number: 8
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 4 Quotes

“There is no such thing as a good father because the role itself is bad. Strict fathers, soft fathers, nice moderate fathers—one’s as bad as another. They stand in the way of our progress while they try to burden us with their inferiority complexes, and their unrealized aspirations, and their resentments, and their ideals, and the weaknesses they’ve never told anyone about, and their sins, and their sweeter-than-honey dreams, and the maxims they’ve never had the courage to live by—they’d like to unload all that silly crap on us, all of it!

[…]

They’re suspicious of anything creative, anxious to whittle the world down into something puny they can handle. A father is a reality-concealing machine, a machine for dishing up lies to kids, and that isn’t even the worst of it: secretly he believes that he represents reality.”

Related Characters: The Chief (speaker), Noboru Kuroda, Ryuji Tsukazaki, Noboru’s Father
Page Number: 136-137
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 5 Quotes

The moment he huddled inside the chest he was calm again. The trembling and the trepidation seemed almost funny now; he even had a feeling he would be able to study well. Not that it really mattered: this was the world’s outer edge. So long as he was here, Noboru was in contact with the naked universe. No matter how far you ran, escape beyond this point was impossible.
Bending his arms in the cramped space, he began to read the cards in the light of the flashlight.

abandon
By now this word was an old acquaintance: he knew it well.

ability
Was that any different from genius?

aboard
A ship again; he recalled the loudspeaker ringing across the deck that day when Ryuji sailed. And then the colossal, golden horn, like a proclamation of despair.

absence

absolute

Related Characters: Noboru Kuroda, Ryuji Tsukazaki, Fusako Kuroda, Noboru’s Father
Related Symbols: The Peephole, The Rakuyo
Page Number: 149-150
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea PDF

Noboru’s Father Quotes in The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

The The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea quotes below are all either spoken by Noboru’s Father or refer to Noboru’s Father. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Glory, Heroism, and Death Theme Icon
).
Part 1, Chapter 1 Quotes

And the zone of black. […] He tried all the obscenity he knew, but words alone couldn’t penetrate that thicket. His friends were probably right when they called it a pitiful little vacant house. He wondered if that had anything to do with the emptiness of his own world.

At thirteen, Noboru was convinced of his own genius (each of the others in the gang felt the same way) and certain that life consisted of a few simple signals and decisions; that death took root at the moment of birth and man’s only recourse thereafter was to water and tend it; that propagation was a fiction; consequently, society was a fiction too: that fathers and teachers, by virtue of being fathers and teachers, were guilty of a grievous sin. Therefore, his own father’s death, when he was eight, had been a happy incident, something to be proud of.

Related Characters: Noboru Kuroda, Fusako Kuroda, The Chief, Noboru’s Father
Related Symbols: The Peephole
Page Number: 8
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 4 Quotes

“There is no such thing as a good father because the role itself is bad. Strict fathers, soft fathers, nice moderate fathers—one’s as bad as another. They stand in the way of our progress while they try to burden us with their inferiority complexes, and their unrealized aspirations, and their resentments, and their ideals, and the weaknesses they’ve never told anyone about, and their sins, and their sweeter-than-honey dreams, and the maxims they’ve never had the courage to live by—they’d like to unload all that silly crap on us, all of it!

[…]

They’re suspicious of anything creative, anxious to whittle the world down into something puny they can handle. A father is a reality-concealing machine, a machine for dishing up lies to kids, and that isn’t even the worst of it: secretly he believes that he represents reality.”

Related Characters: The Chief (speaker), Noboru Kuroda, Ryuji Tsukazaki, Noboru’s Father
Page Number: 136-137
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 5 Quotes

The moment he huddled inside the chest he was calm again. The trembling and the trepidation seemed almost funny now; he even had a feeling he would be able to study well. Not that it really mattered: this was the world’s outer edge. So long as he was here, Noboru was in contact with the naked universe. No matter how far you ran, escape beyond this point was impossible.
Bending his arms in the cramped space, he began to read the cards in the light of the flashlight.

abandon
By now this word was an old acquaintance: he knew it well.

ability
Was that any different from genius?

aboard
A ship again; he recalled the loudspeaker ringing across the deck that day when Ryuji sailed. And then the colossal, golden horn, like a proclamation of despair.

absence

absolute

Related Characters: Noboru Kuroda, Ryuji Tsukazaki, Fusako Kuroda, Noboru’s Father
Related Symbols: The Peephole, The Rakuyo
Page Number: 149-150
Explanation and Analysis: