“Everyone says that life is a stage. But most people do not seem to become obsessed with the idea, at any rate, not as early as I did. By the end of childhood, I was already firmly convinced that it was so and that I was to play my part on the stage without once ever revealing my true self.”
The newborn Kochan has a very frail body and a sickly constitution, and already a few months after being born, his life is seriously threatened by a common illness. While he is in his cradle, fighting against a premature death, his parents already give up their hopes and regard him as dead. Surprisingly, he survives. His grandmother develops a morbid attachment to the nephew, driven by the scare of risking losing him again. In an unhealthy way, she takes over the role of parent and becomes the providing person for Kochan, ensuring he is protected from any other danger. Unlikely his younger brothers, Kochan grows up far from his parents and peers, isolated in the grand Maison of his grandmother. Over the years, just as any other child, he looks for his place in the world, trying to figure out those things that pique his interest. At the age of four, he is infatuated with the figure of a heroic western knight found in a picture book. He would stare at him for hours, studying all his features and tiny details, often hiding under the blanket, ashamed of his adoration. One day, while reading the book together, his carer casually reveals that the figure of the knight is actually a woman, Joan of Arc. Kochan is extremely disappointed by the revelation that the knight is a woman and that she successfully tricked him by dressing up as a man. He swears to himself never to look at the figure ever again. In another episode during his childhood, Kochan remembers contemplating from the window of his bedroom the sweaty bodies of men demonstrating in the streets, shirtless in the Summer heat. As he enters puberty, he discovers masturbation at a very early age through an art history book brought to him as a gift by his father returned from a trip to Europe. He is attracted by the painting portraying San Sebastian by Guido Reni. The half-naked body of San Sebastian is pierced by arrows in the side. Kochan is fascinated by his body and the vision of little drops of blood flowing from the pierced side. As a young boy, Kochan is confused by his attraction and partly feels ashamed of his alleged perversions. He wonders if it is normal to be fascinated as much as he is by figures of death and violence, and by the body of warriors depicted in the various books he can find at home. He begins feeling the need for confrontation with his peers. At school, he slowly becomes aware that he has different physical reactions and thoughts from his peers, who can talk for hours only about women. Kochan listens absently to his classmates’ discussions about the female sex while he takes a peek at the mature body of a classmate who is a couple of years older. He explains to himself that his dissimilarity in taste and thoughts from his schoolmates is probably due to their physical difference. Kochan continues to have a very puny body with no sign of muscles, and becomes convinced that his interest in his companion’s muscular body is perhaps simple envy or curiosity. Nonetheless, the further he grows, the more he begins to feel the need to pretend to conform to what he defines as normality. He creates a figure for himself far from his true being to justify his total indifference towards the female sex. To him, everything becomes an act, an experiment to see how much he manages to fool his interlocutors, hiding his true passions as much as he can. This act reaches its climax when, during the end of World War II, Kochan manages to escape the military service call because of his frail and sickly physicality, remaining among the few ones to study law at university. During this time, he actively decides to court the sweet Sonoko, the sister of one of his fellow students. He hopes to be able to feel sexual attraction for her, so he can finally feel normal like everyone else. Even after putting in all of his efforts, he feels nothing but brotherly love. Despite the many signs, he keeps on spending his life latently hiding behind a fake mask. He hides his homosexuality from everyone, even from himself, constantly feeling unable to find his place in society.
This novel, published in 1949, was the springboard to Yukio Mishima’s fame. The title, Confessions of a Mask, alludes to how Kochan, confused about his sexual identity and persona, feels the need to wear a mask to conform to the majority of his peers. Intimately, Kochan thinks that everyone does the same, that is, that everyone plays their act when confronted with the public, and that only in their private dressing room, they can truly be themselves. The whole novel can seem a confession because of its first-person narrative. Confessions of a Mask is considered a semi-autobiography of Yukio Mishima, who, like Kochan, was brought up by his grandmother and her morbid love mainly due to his puny physicality.