Yukio Mishima 1925-70

Yukio Mishima died by his own hand 33 years ago yesterday.

Mishima was one of the best, many say the best, Japanese writers of the 20th Century. He is certainly one of the best known: he has been more extensively translated and published abroad, over a longer period, than any other.

It is very difficult to get a grip on Mishima's work - it's very complex and contradictory, and the prose, even in translation, is distinctly baroque. He was full of contradictions and strange obsessions - he was deeply attracted to the patriotism of imperial Japan, and samurai spirit of Japan's past. However, at the same time he dressed in Western clothes and lived in a Western-style house. He was obsessed with the human body, both in terms of its potential strength and beauty and its inevitable decay.

In 1968 he founded the Tatenokai or "Shield Society", a private army of about 100 young men drawn from various extreme right-wing political organizations. He used his political connections to get them training at Japanese military bases near Tokyo. On November 25, 1970 he and four Shield Society cadets visited the office of the general commanding the Eastern Army Headquarters, located in Ichigaya, Tokyo. They took him hostage and demanded that the garrison assemble to hear a speech by Mishima. Mishima exhorted the troops to rise and overthrow the government, and reestablish the Emperor as the only power. No one would listen to him and after being jeered at for 20 minutes Mishima went inside and committed seppuku (ritual disembowelment).

Mishima was all about gestures. On the day of his death Mishima delivered to his publishers the final pages of the final book of The Sea of Fertility, his four-novel master work on the Japanese experience in the 20th century.

For more information, go see The Mishima Cyber Museum: http://www.vill.yamanakako.yamanashi.jp/bungaku/mishima/index-e.html.

An important visual interpretation of Mishima's life and art, but not an introduction to his works, is the 1985 film Mishima directed by Paul Schrader. Hard to find but the Pic-a-Flic on Cook Street has a copy (they also have a copy of The Black Lizard, an extremely weird 1968 film written by Mishima (adapted from his stage play of the same name) and featuring him in one scene as a living statue!).