The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

by

Yukio Mishima

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea: Part 2, Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
Fusako gradually becomes kinder and more attentive to Noboru, who suspects that she’s trying to compensate for upcoming news that he won’t like. One night, she nearly forgets the key to Noboru’s bedroom, and Ryuji suggests that she stop locking him inside. So, she leaves the door unlocked. But Noboru isn’t happy—he doesn’t want the grownups to make him mature. He prefers the door locked.
The novel strongly implies that Noboru already knows about Fusako and Ryuji’s upcoming marriage. Their failure to win him over through kindness shows that he’s right to think that adults underestimate his intelligence. At the same time, he disdains the idea that Fusako and Ryuji would trust him with more privileges (like an open door) in the hopes of helping him mature. This isn’t because he believes in immaturity—although readers might consider him immature. Rather, it’s because he thinks maturity means conforming to the meaningless, oppressive norms of adult society. Of course, he wants the door closed for entirely different reasons: so that he can keep spying through the peephole.
Themes
Glory, Heroism, and Death Theme Icon
Masculinity, Love, and Family Theme Icon
Reality, Perception, and Identity Theme Icon
One evening, Ryuji and Fusako take Noboru to a movie and then for his favorite dinner, Chinese food. They seem hesitant and afraid, and Noboru already knows what they’re going to tell him. He plays the part of the innocent child when his mother informs him that Ryuji will be his “new father.” She explains how she became lonely after Noboru’s real father died and will be marrying Ryuji next month. Noboru thinks this all sounds stupid, but he’s delighted that the adults are afraid of him. He puts on a wicked smile, but Ryuji notices it and thinks he’s glad. Ryuji declares that he’ll start calling Noboru “Son,” and they awkwardly shake hands across the table.
Fusako’s speech and Ryuji’s attitude explicitly confirm what the last chapter strongly implied: Noboru will no longer be free from fatherhood. Instead, Ryuji will act as his father—which, to Noboru, really just means that Ryuji will have unearned power over him. Noboru expertly manipulates Ryuji and Fusako in order to prove to himself that they are weak and don’t deserve this power. In particular, he suggests that Ryuji has become the worst version of himself by abandoning his admirable, rugged sailor’s life to live a meaningless, conventional life instead.
Themes
Masculinity, Love, and Family Theme Icon
Reality, Perception, and Identity Theme Icon
That night, Fusako leaves Noboru’s room unlocked. Inside, Noboru broods, struggling to control his emotions. He hopes his mother will come back and tell him that the wedding is a lie. But he also wants to hurt her. He hasn’t looked through the peephole in weeks—it feels too risky with his door unlocked. But tonight, he finds courage. He pulls out the drawer and lets it crash to the floor. He hides inside the chest with a flashlight and his English vocabulary cards. That way, he can spite his mother—if she finds him, she will be furious at him, but then notice that he was just innocently studying. He laughs villainously—he feels that he’s on “the world’s outer edge.” After studying a few words, he falls asleep. The flashlight is still on.
Torn between his emotions and his belief in prioritizing dispassionate analysis over all emotion, Noboru once again turns to the peephole, which combines both. Namely, it enables him to act out his anger precisely by observing and analyzing his mother’s private life (and now Ryuji’s, too). Noboru’s feeling of being at the “outer edge” of the world shows that he understands the great risk he’s taking. But he delights in that risk because he believes that he can manipulate his mother into misunderstanding the situation.
Themes
Masculinity, Love, and Family Theme Icon
Reality, Perception, and Identity Theme Icon
Quotes
Ryuji and Fusako go to the bedroom around midnight. Fusako feels a sense of shame, but she can’t pinpoint why. She asks Ryuji to turn off the lights. They get into bed and have sex. Afterward, Fusako admits that she was even more embarrassed with the lights off than she is with them on. Then, Ryuji notices a light emanating from a spot in the wall. He points it out and promises to fix it, but when she sees it, Fusako instantly understands what has happened. She runs out of the room and into Noboru’s. Confused, Ryuji lights a cigarette and waits.
Fusako and Ryuji spy Noboru’s peephole through a mirror image of the situation in which he used to spy on them: now, Noboru’s dresser is filled with light and Fusako’s room with darkness. The peephole explains why he appeared to mysteriously know about their relationship at the very beginning of the book. The darkness alters Ryuji and Fusako’s perceptions: not only does it make the peephole stand out, but it also changes the way sex feels to them by changing what they pay attention to during the act.
Themes
Reality, Perception, and Identity Theme Icon
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Fusako drags Noboru out of his dresser and starts hitting him harder than he ever imagined possible. When Noboru comes to, he sees her standing above him, with her robe open and her face covered in tears. He remembers this moment from his dreams. Fusako screams that Noboru is disgusting and that he humiliated her. Noboru doesn’t mention his studying—he believes that his mother has finally discovered reality itself and is distraught because of her prejudice against it.
Noboru has absolutely no sympathy for his mother, and he doesn’t even care if he has lost her respect or affection. Instead, he’s proud to have humiliated her, because this proves that he has power over her. His claim that Fusako is merely prejudiced against reality suggests that he doesn’t take moral objections to his behavior seriously. Instead, he insists that force and coercion are the true basis of the universe, that he has an inherent right to use them, and that anyone who objects to this right on moral grounds is simply in denial. Of course, in one specific way, he’s right: the only way to stop someone who doesn’t believe in any moral constraints at all is by overpowering them.
Themes
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Reality, Perception, and Identity Theme Icon
Quotes
Fusako declares that Ryuji will come punish Noboru. Meanwhile, Noboru proudly reminds himself that the peephole has shown him the true meaning and source of the universe. When Ryuji comes in, Fusako explains that Noboru was spying on them and needs a serious beating. Ryuji calmly asks if Noboru has been spying on them since the beginning, and Noboru nods. Ryuji contemplates what to do—this is his first true “decision about shore life.” He remembers the ocean’s violent fury, and he thinks about the other decisions he will have to make in the coming years. Compared to the swelling sea, they all seem unreal.
Noboru views being caught at the peephole as proof that morality doesn’t exist, and that the way of the universe is for the strong to win out over the weak. In contrast, Ryuji tries to formulate an appropriate moral response to the situation. This is what distinguishes his first “decision about shore life.” When he was a sailor, he could solve most of the challenges he faced through force, but now, he has to decide based on moral principles because his life is tied up with other people’s. In other words, when he has to punish Noboru, Ryuji is no longer a heroic outsider to society, but rather one of the people responsible for enforcing its rules and perpetuating its principles.
Themes
Glory, Heroism, and Death Theme Icon
Masculinity, Love, and Family Theme Icon
Reality, Perception, and Identity Theme Icon
Quotes
Ryuji decides that beating Noboru would be unwise. He sits down and says that since his own arrival has changed Noboru’s life, Noboru’s curiosity about him is understandable. So is using the peephole, even though it was clearly wrong. He proposes forgiving Noboru and moving on. Privately, Noboru is horrified to see his great manly hero saying such sensitive, dishonorable things. He recalls the chief’s comment: “there [are] worse things than being beaten.”
Ryuji’s response to the situation shows that he is taking his role as a father seriously and wants to model morality and restraint for Noboru. Ironically, Noboru expects just the opposite: he wants to be punished, not forgiven, because he believes that morality is meaningless and that physical force is the only way that people can really teach others. Noboru remembers the chief’s comment because he realizes that he could continue to respect Ryuji if he responded with a beating—but not when he responds with a moral speech. Thus, the “worse thing[] than being beaten” is losing faith in one’s role model—or learning that one’s hero is no hero at all.
Themes
Glory, Heroism, and Death Theme Icon
Masculinity, Love, and Family Theme Icon
Reality, Perception, and Identity Theme Icon
Quotes