“Isao drew in a deep breath and shut his eyes as he ran his left hand caressingly over his stomach. Grasping the knife with his right hand, he pressed its point against his body, and guided it to the correct place with the fingertips of his left hand. Then, with a powerful thrust of his arm, he plunged the knife into his stomach. The instant that the blade tore open his flesh, the bright disk of the sun soared up and exploded behind his eyelids.”
Runaway Horses takes place in 1932. Honda, Kiyoaki’s dearest friend, is thirty-eight years old, happily married, and a successful judge. He lives an apparently happy life, but his mind often travels back to the past, where he melancholically thinks about his dear late friend Kiyoaki. One day, he is asked to give a speech at a kendo tournament, where he notices one young man that is remarkably talented and a promising athlete. With great surprise, Honda asks for his name and discovers that he is Isao Iinuma, son of Shigeyuki Iinuma, former tutor of Kiyoaki. Honda recalls that Mr. Iinuma was a right-wing conservative with strong opinions on the decadent state of Japan. After the tournament, Honda climbs with a guide on the top of the sacred Mount Miwa until the Sanko Falls to bathe with the kendōka. Honda is about to jump into the water when he glances at Isao’s left side. There, back from the nipple, he clearly sees three small moles identical in position and size to the ones that Kiyoaki had. At that moment, Honda remembers Kiyoaki’s dying words: “I’ll see you again. I know it. Beneath the falls.”. Honda is hit by a realization: this young man might be the reincarnation of Kiyoaki. The story unravels around the two figures of Isao and Honda, the latter being attracted to the former because of the idea of Kiyoaki’s reincarnation. Honda contacts Isao through Mr. Iinuma and discovers their right-wing political involvement. Mr. Iinuma runs the Academy of Patriotism, and his son is very active in it. After one of their meetings, Isao sends a copy of his favourite story to Honda, The League of the Divine Wind by Tsunanori Yamao, and urges him to read it. The book dives into the story of The League of the Divine Wind, a group of samurai that, in 1873, swore to end the Japan misgovernment and its foreign influence by attacking and killing the government and major officials. Those samurai who survived the attacks committed seppuku (Japanese ritualistic suicide) one by one. After reading the story, Honda sends a letter to Isao expressing his concerns over the story’s message and warns him that it could be dangerous. Isao is disappointed by the reaction of Honda and loses interest in him. As the book unravels, Isao starts talking about The League of the Divine Wind to his school friends and the people in the Academy. He is upset with the current political situation of Japan, where capitalism is spreading among the wealthy families. During the summer vacation, he gathers his circle of friends every day at 6am to train and discuss political views. The circle grows, and, one evening, they discuss who in Japan most deserves assassination among the class of aristocracy involved with the government. Honda is thorned: he starts suspecting that Isao might not be the reincarnation of Kiyoaki because of how much the two young men differ, but at the same time, some events that happen to Isao are the realization of the dreams in Kiyoaki’s diary. In the end, Isao tries to implement the same plan as The League of the Divine Wind, but the execution is not as successful. Isao learns that his father boycotted his plan and that the Academy is alive only because of funds donated by some members of the Japanese aristocracy much hated. Feeling betrayed and defeated, Isao runs away and commits seppuku, alone. His suicide is much different from the one he had planned for himself following the samurai traditions. He dies at the age of twenty.
The second book of The Sea of Fertility explores the fine line between atheism and religious beliefs faced by Honda, a man who firmly believes in the rule of laws and rationality but who finds himself wondering about the theme of reincarnation and its plausibility. The book also takes a deeper zoom into Japanese traditions and samurai history, with a detailed narration of the book the League of the Divine Wind. The style of this second book is similar to the first one: dense and complex, which perfectly matches the complexity of the themes and story.