But sometime, sometime during such a peaceful life [Mishima had spoken of his married life]—we got the two children—still the old memory comes to my mind.
It is the memory of during the war, and I remember one scene which happened during the war, when I was working at the airplane factory.
One motion picture was shown there for the entertainment of the working students, which was based on the novel of Mr. Yokomitsu. And it was maybe Maytime of 1945, the very last of the war, and all students—I was twenties—couldn’t believe that we could be survived after the war. And I remember one scene of the film. There was a street, a street scene of Ginza, before the war, a lot of neon signs, beautiful neon signs; it was glittering and we believed we couldn’t see all in my life, we can never see it all in my life. But, as you know, we see it actually right now, in the Ginza street, there are more and more neon signs on it. But sometimes, when the memory during the war comes back to my mind, some confusion happens in my mind. That neon sign on the screen during the war, and the actual neon sign on the Ginza street, I cannot distinguish which is illusion.
It might be our . . . my basic subject and my basic romantic idea of literature. It is death memory . . . and the problem of illusion.
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