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Part 1, Chapter 6
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Glory, Heroism, and Death
Japanese Nationalism and Identity
Masculinity, Love, and Family
Reality, Perception, and Identity
Summary
Analysis
In ports, women have always asked sailors, “You’ll be leaving in the morning, won’t you?” But Fusako won’t say those words, even if they will protect “a simple man’s pride.” Indeed, from their conversation in the park, Fusako could tell that Ryuji was simple—but she appreciates it. She wants a safe, reliable man, not a passionate dreamer.
The novel suggests that sailors and their wives fall into an inescapable, universal romantic pattern: the independent man heads out to sea, and the dependent woman passively waits for him. But Fusako doesn’t want to embody this archetype, as she recognizes how this kind of love can limit her freedom. Ironically, because Ryuji failed to communicate his true, profound feelings about his life and destiny, Fusako ends up viewing him in a way that’s totally opposed to his view of himself.
Themes
During their second date, on their way to dinner, Fusako and Ryuji stop in a café for drinks. In a moment of “peaceful physical intimacy,” Fusako eats the cherry on top of her frappé, and then Ryuji decides to pop the cherry pit into his mouth. After dinner, they walk through the neighborhood, holding hands. Fusako can’t believe that Ryuji is leaving tomorrow. “I’ve sunk pretty low thanks to you,” she tells him, but she won’t say why. She doesn’t want to be like every other woman who loves a sailor.
Fusako and Ryuji’s rather tame moment of intimacy signals that their physical connection isn’t limited to lust and sex. Fusako realizes that falling into the stereotype of a sailor’s wife would mean sacrificing her freedom in two ways: first, she would become emotionally dependent on Ryuji. Second, she would lose the freedom to set her own course in life and instead live out a well-worn, predictable script. However, her comment to Ryuji, “I’ve sunk pretty low thanks to you,” signals that she feels herself falling into this pattern despite her best efforts to avoid it.
Themes
Ryuji lets it go: while he knows that he will miss Fusako, he also knows that he must leave her behind in order to pursue his “Grand Cause.” Still, he knows that he won’t find his “Grand Cause” at sea. What awaits him is far more mundane: radio transmissions, the daily log, the mess hall, and the roaring engine.
While Fusako rejects the timeless pattern of sailors leaving their lovers behind, Ryuji embraces it: he believes that he has to love and then leave Fusako in order to fulfill his destiny (achieving glory by dying in service of a “Grand Cause”). Since Fusako fulfills this pattern against her wishes, the novel seems to suggest that it is inevitable or fated. In other words, Mishima suggests that, just like Ryuji and Fusako are destined to come together because of their complementary energies and personalities, Ryuji is destined to leave Fusako behind as part of an inherent universal pattern.
Themes
Ryuji and Fusako come upon a nursery and decide to go inside, even though it’s closed for the night. They wade through the greenery until they find an area with tropical plants, where they kiss. This kiss reminds Fusako of Ryuji’s imminent departure, and it reminds Ryuji of death. Even though he will leave tomorrow, he would still “die happily for her sake.” The sound of a departing ship’s horn distracts Ryuji, who withdraws from the kiss to light a cigarette. But Fusako grabs his lighter. She tries and fails to set a leaf on fire, but by the lighter’s flame, Ryuji sees her crying. He starts crying, too.
Fusako and Ryuji’s reactions to their kiss—she thinks of his travels, while he thinks of death—extends the ongoing association between love, death, and glory in the novel. Again, this points to Ryuji’s impassioned belief that he is fated to encounter all three together—a belief that reflects Mishima’s own feelings throughout his life. It's telling that Mishima stages this scene among tropical plants: this setting furthers the association between heat, passion, destiny, and the tropical climates that Ryuji visits while sailing. Ryuji’s lighter also explicitly links heat to love and loss.
Themes
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Meanwhile, Noboru is annoyed that his mother hasn’t come home yet. When she calls and tells the housekeeper that she will be spending the night with a friend, Noboru is furious and afraid—he won’t be able to watch her and Ryuji through the peephole. Noboru tries to do some of his summer homework, but he can’t focus because he’s too angry. He can’t sleep, either. When he hears his mother’s door open, he decides to look through the peephole, just in case his mother was lying to him. Just then, the housekeeper knocks on his door. Noboru doesn’t want her to find out about the peephole, so he pushes against the door until she gives up and locks him inside.
Noboru isn’t angry because he misses his mother or because she has chosen Ryuji over him. Instead, he hates that they are spending the night elsewhere because it takes away his ability to watch them through the peephole—which allows him to gain power over them by invading their privacy. In other words, Noboru is really resentful about his own powerlessness. When he tries to fight back against the housekeeper and ends up locked inside instead, this again shows how his attempts to assert his power against the world end up backfiring. He ends up feeling even more powerless and resentful.
Themes
Furious that he can’t sneak out to meet the chief, Noboru starts writing an angry diary entry listing Ryuji’s crimes: smiling like a coward, wearing a wet shirt, and spending the night with his mother. (He removes the third, which he decides is too subjective.) Noboru angrily brushes his teeth and then decides to look through the peephole, just because he can. On the other side, his mother’s room is pitch black because the housekeeper has closed the curtains. It looks like “the inside of a large coffin […] alive with jostling particles […] the blackest thing in all the world.”
While it’s clear that Noboru’s complaints about Ryuji stem from his own personal resentment—and not from Ryuji breaking any absolute moral principles—he still tries to give these complaints an air of objectivity. He sees Ryuji’s smile and wet shirt as crimes because they represent Ryuji deviating from the ideal of masculine heroism that Noboru has projected onto him. In this chapter’s closing lines, Noboru looks through the peephole just to prove that he hasn’t lost the power to do so. But he sees darkness, which the narration associates with both life (“alive with jostling particles”) and death (“the inside of a large coffin”). Specifically, Noboru knows that the particles in his mother’s room are alive, but cannot see them, which is why the room reminds him of death. While this may or may not represent Noboru’s death, it certainly does represent his powerlessness and loss of insight—meaning his sudden inability to understand the order of the universe, which always seemed clear to him in the past.
Themes
