To Love
Yukio Mishima
When it comes to love, it is women who are experts, and men are eternal amateurs. Men are in love awkward, incompetent, misdirected, insensitive, and ungainly like a frog running on land. They just don’t understand the secret of “love,” and, essentially, do not know what to do. They are inherently “the backward pupils of love.”
In contrast, women are inherently geniuses of love. Even in women who love in a foolish and selfish manner, there is a power of some kind that does not take no for an answer. Men’s “power that does not take no for an answer” is often violence, but in the case of women it is pure spiritual strength. Even in women who love in a mercenary and impure manner, the spiritual strength of women shines forth only in love. When an extraordinarily beautiful young woman has become the lover of a very wealthy old man, people want to presume that it is a self-interested love, but that is wrong. Even through self-interest, the experts of love are able to pour forth love.
To Love - What I Think About Love (First Appearance) The Women’s Room - September of the Forty-Fifth Year of the Shōwa Era (1970)
To Love (First Published) Ranryōō - Shinchōsha - May of the Forty-Sixth Year of the Shōwa Era (1971)
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