“I wish that some morning, while my eyes are closed, the whole world would change.”

Thirst For Love is a lesser novel by Yukio Mishima. For a somewhat juvenile work, it was entertaining, thoughtful, and even well-written, but it didn’t impress me very much. The story is centered around Etsuko, who is a tragic and deeply flawed woman. Her shitty husband died, but she remained living with her husband’s family which includes his wealthy father and a sibling or two. Also living with the family are at least two peasants. Etsuko is an extremely jealous woman, so jealous that she wishes for her husband’s death because he is having an affair with another woman as he is suffering from tuberculosis in the hospital. Upon the death of her husband, her father-in-law begins molesting her, to which she acquiesces. She is basically indifferent to it, but sees his affection as advantageous to her, so she allows it to emotionally manipulate him. Meanwhile she falls in love with Saburo, a young and handsome farmhand, but she cannot communicate her emotions to him. She becomes possessive (in her mind) and jealous of Saburo’s interactions with women. At the climax of the novel, the reader learners that he has impregnated Miyo, another peasant, which leads Etsuko’s inner turmoil to spiral out of control. She manipulates her father-in-law to fire Miyo, and demands that Saburo meet her in a dilapidated greenhouse on the property in the middle of the night.

The ending was particularly interesting, but it was a little rushed and the impact nearly fell flat for me. Etsuko reveals to Saburo, who is emotionally detached from all other characters by the way, that she fired Miyo. Saburo essentially wants to escape the situation because he’s unable to communicate with Etsuko about emotions like love that he does not have, understand, or value, so he tells Etsuko that he loves her. Etsuko sees through this, but Saburo, on a masculine impulse, begins to unclothe her. While Etsuko, who had wished for this from the beginning, is overjoyed, she finds herself inexplicably running away and screaming. She ends up killing Saburo and burying him there in self-defense. The matter is complicated by Etsuko’s emotions — she realizes, perhaps, that she wished to kill Saburo more than she wished for his love. She understands that she is a wicked woman who simply wants power over others to hurt them.

The misunderstanding in final encounter highlights their class difference as the source of their obvious incompatibility. Mishima writes that “words stood between them like an intransigent ghost.” Saburo does not value or understand love because it represents a luxury. In his unpretentious poverty, he cannot relate to a desire for love, which Etsuko is obsessed with in her higher status. Etsuko’s torment over love for Saburo throughout the whole novel is a wasted effort; Saburo cannot identity with love to begin with. Not to mention that love is used as a tool for abuse in the case of Etsuko as a victim of her father-in-law, who is of an ever higher status, as well. Mishima reflects on what love can be. In this story, it is an outlet for control.

The novel ends with an allusion to Etsuko perhaps feeling guilty, or more likely, being once again tortured by her wicked soul. The roosters, who do not actually exist, crow in her mind. This indicates she’s either haunted by guilt or destined to never change.