On New Years Day we took the train out to see Rina’s family. I carried Mishima Yukio’s novel “Patriotism” with me. It was the only pocket-sized book I could get my hands on from a quick glance through the old collection I had stashed in Japan years ago.

I read the tiny novel as we rode the Toyoko Line north from Yokohama. The fictional story is about an army officer and his wife involved in the real-life February 26th coup d'état incident of 1936. The officer, Shinji, is faced with the prospect of attacking his comrades or disobeying orders.

He instead chooses ritual suicide.

The book describes in excruciating detail the way he immaculately prepares himself and his sword for the act, after making love to his wife Reiko one final time.

The play on the senses was profound as the cold descriptions of the blade and the flesh left me squirming. I began to sweat, putting the book away several times, looking around to see if anyone on the train noticed, only to pull it out again to venture just a bit further down the page like a coward. I carried a morbid curiosity to watch the officer’s last act, to see what his wife saw as she too witnessed his death.

As the sword entered his flesh, retching his belly apart and pouring warm blood out onto the mats of the room, I began to hypnotise myself with the words. Whether real or fiction, I never had a particular aversion to violent images. I always told myself that at the very least they were seperate from me, that they were happening to somebody else. But these words, when read and actualised in my mind had a kind of reality to them that was utterly inseparable from myself.

The sword was now inside of me.

I could not finish it. I put the book away one last time, but it was too late. A few moments later I began to feel light-headed as the officer returned to haunt me. I physically felt the blood draining away from my head, rushing out of an invisible wound in my stomach as I experienced for a brief moment that same sensation.

Somewhere near Musashi-kosugi Station I briefly lost consciousness and almost collapsed on the floor. Rina held me as I leaned over, the colour faded from the world and the bright winter sky out over the Tama River overpowered everything. The sounds of the train drifted away and a halo of light began to close in around my vision.

I had only a second of clarity before the darkness, to squeeze the blood back up from my legs and to breath in and out deeply, focussing on a point on the other side of the carriage. Rina held my hand and repeated calming words to me while I sat there momentarily blind.

We made it to Gakudai Station where she helped me up to alight. Unlike Reiko, she did not sit by steadfast in some ideology of the state or some lie of honour. In my boyish desire for an act of heroism did I use to enjoy this kind of thing?

Is it strange to feel this kind of sensation from something as simple as a book? Or is this the true power of the poet's words finally becoming clear to me?