"The Sound of Waves" by Yukio Mishima *****

• Japanese author
• Book club selection
• Originally published 1956
• Setting:  Uta Jima ("Song Island"), off Japanese coast, inhabited primarily by fishermen 
• Characters:  Shinji (young man in love), Hatsue (his love), Yasuo (lazy competitor for Hatsue), Chinoko (loves Shinji from afar, Terukichi (Hatsue's father)
• References to the "sound of waves":
• p.21..."...the roar of the tide was constantly revealing the unrest and might of natures...".
• p.45..."He heard the sound of the waves striking the shore, and it was as though the surging of his young blood was keeping time with the movement of the sea's great tides.  It was doubtless because nature itself satisfied his need that Shinji felt no particular lack of music in his everyday life."
• p.65...Before, he had hated days when there was no fishing, days that robbed him both of the pleasure of working and of income, but now the prospect of such a day seemed the most wonderful of festival days to him .. It was a festival made glorious, not with blue skies and flags waving from poles topped with golden balls, but with a storm, raging seas, and a wind that shrieked as it came tearing through the prostrate treetops."...like his passion
• p.77...To Shinji it seemed as though this unceasing feeling of intoxication, and the confused booming of the sea outside, and the noise of the storm among the treetops were all beating with nature's violent rhythm."
• p.88..."In the dead of night the sound of the waves could be plainly heard...the village was silent."
• p.98....the sound of the waves in the caverns....."the reverberations overlapping each other until the entire cave was aroar and seemed to be pitching and swaying"
• p.112..."The gentle waves that rocked their boat also calmed his heart....". 
• p.177..."Nature too again smiled on them......the sound of the waves strong, but coming regularly and peacefully, as though the sea were breathing in healthy slumber."...Shinji and Hatsue resolved
• Interesting tidbits:
• Foreshadowing:  second to last paragraph at end of first chapter....the call of the world beyond Uta Jima...a white ship on the sea 
• p.131...So long as he had observed the 'unknown' from a distance, heis heart had been peaceful,...."....like the butterfly his mother watched get battered by the wind
• Community organizations:  Young Men's Association, Respect for Old Age Association
• Island life v. city life: 
•  "City youths learn the ways of love early from novels, movies, and the like, but on Uta-jima there were practically no models to follow."
• "In the city almost all nature had been put into uniform, and the little power of nature that remained was an enemy.  Here on the island, however, the islanders enthusiastically entered into an alliance with nature and gave it their full support."
• "Placed as he was, close to the workings of nature, it was not surprising that he should understand nature's precise system."
• Legend of Prince Deki....his remains buried leaving behind "not a single story"....perhaps never "separated from happiness"
• Mother's observation of the butterfly (p.124)....tantalized by the idea of the next island
• p.139...the "breast-beautiful contest"
• Quotes:
• p.6..."His dark eyes were exceedingly clear, but their clarity was not that of intellectuality--it was a gift that the sea bestows upon those who make their livelihood upon it....".
• p.19..."His fisherman's
• conception of the sea was close to that of the farmer for his land.  The seas was the place where he earned his living, a rippling field where, instead of waving heads of rice or wheat, the white and formless harvest of waves was forever swaying above the unrelieved blueness of a sensitive and yielding soil."
• p.22..."It was a blow to his pride to realize the existence of things within himself that he had never so much as suspected....".....first feelings of passion
• p.23...."I know not why, My mournful soul, Flies the sea, fitfully, fitfully, On restless, frantic pinion s..."...Verlaine
• p.32..."Thus their well-founded fear of the village's love of gossip changed what was but an innocent meeting into a thing of secrecy between the two of them."...small towns everywhere
• p.35..."In the pale light of daybreak the gravestones looked like so many white sails of boats anchored in a busy harbor.  They were sails that would never again be filled with wind, sails that, too long unused and heavily drooping, had been turned into stone just as they were.  The boats' anchors had been thrust so deeply into the dark earth that they could never again be raised."
• p.106..."But in any case he was an old man who, while still living, could act like a bronze statue erected to his own memory--without appearing ridiculous."...Terukichi
• Review:  Poetic drama, the lives lived on an island in close contact with nature, coming of age, and young love.  It was a pleasure to read this novel by Yukio Mishima.  Just as the waves range from violent ferocity to Zen-like peacefulness, so too do the characters in this story live their lives. Mishima writes with a clarity and deceptive simplicity about what it means to live in harmony with nature.