Confessions of the Mask

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This novel can be looked at through the gender aspect to further analyze Mishima’s writing. Kochan, from his early years, struggles with his gender identity and how to express his feelings of homosexuality in the proper manner. As a child, Kochan is confused about his sexuality, and this confusion never disappears as the reader progresses through the novel. An example of this confusion relates to the picture Kochan’s sicknurse enables him to come across. “This looks like a man, but it’s a woman. Honestly. Her name was Joan of Arc. The story is that she went to war wearing a man’s clothes and served her country” (Mishima 12). There is clear confusion on whether the Joan of Arc is a man or woman, and this symbolizes Kochan’s difficulties with gender as a growing boy. Another source of Kochan’s confusion about his homosexuality is the fact that he goes to school with all boys, yet he is around all women at home, with his dad not being in Tokyo with his family. “Though I was still using the polite, feminine forms of speech at home, when at school I had begun speaking crudely like the other boys” (Mishima 49). This further displays the distinct struggle Kochan has growing up about his sexuality, since he acts two completely different ways around the women in his home to all the boys at school.

Because of Kochan’s feelings of confusion about his sexuality, he feels a disconnection between the other boys at school and him, but he is forced to try and blend in so he is not viewed as an outsider. This act of blending in and hiding his feelings within is a cause of his gender and sexuality struggle. An example of Kochan trying to blend in with his peers takes place when he joins in on a conversation with his classmates who are talking about the attractiveness of a conductress of a school bus. Mishima writes, “At this point I spoke up…It’s their uniforms! Because they fit so tight to their bodies…Needless to say, I had never felt the slightest such sensual attraction toward my bus conductresses as my words suggested” (Mishima 103). This signifies the act of blending in that Kochan is doing to fit in with his peers. This can be considered a “mask” symbol within the novel because he is hiding his true self from the outside world and containing it within. Kochan is essentially wearing a mask in order to fit in, instead of being himself around them.

Kochan masks his identity throughout his childhood years, which leads to the loss of a true identity. He keeps all his true feelings within himself and struggles to portray these feelings to others. As previously described, Kochan has psychological and gender struggles as he is growing from an adolescent into an adult. A couple of the psychological struggles Kochan has are isolation from the outside world and social identity difficulties. Both of these struggles are turned into masks for Kochan as he deals with both internally, with no real external assistance. The Kochan that he allows the outside world to see does not see the internal hardships going on. The gender struggles of confusion over sexuality and loss of identity are also masked. All of these struggles are combined into the mask that Kochan uses when interacting with the outside world and trying to blend in. Kochan only metaphorically takes off his mask when alone, where he is able to confess his feelings to his true self, hence the title Confessions of the Mask.

Works Cited

Mishima, Yukio. Confessions of the Mask. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1958. Print.