Yukio Mishima - Definition and Overview

Yukio Mishima

Yukio Mishima (三島由紀夫 Mishima Yukio), was the public name of Kimitake Hiraoka (平岡公威 Hiraoka Kimitake), (January 14, 1925 - November 25, 1970), a Japanese author and rightist political activist, notable for both his nihilistic post-war writing and the circumstances of his suicide.

Early life

Mishima's early childhood was greatly influenced by his grandmother, Natsu. She separated Mishima from his family and raised him virtually as her own until he was 12. She was sick with sciatica yet controlled much of his upbringing and limited his interactions with his siblings and parents. A powerful woman prone to violent emotional outbursts, she was vaguely related to an old samurai family and maintained considerable aristocratic pretensions. While she encouraged the young Mishima's interest in the Kabuki, she read French and German and would also entertain him with fairy tales and other fantastic stories. Mishima spent much of his childhood shut indoors, playing with dolls and with his three female cousins. He cared for his Grandmother more frequently as her health worsened, and developed a precocious interest in books.

Schooling & Early Works

At 12, Mishima began to write his first stories. He read voraciously the works of Wilde, Rilke, and numerous Japanese classics. Mishima did well at the elite Peers School, becoming a member of the editorial board in a literary society at the school. He was invited to write a short story for the prestigious literary magazine, Bungei-Bunka (Art and Culture) and submitted, Hanazakari no mori (The Forest in Full Bloom). The story was published in book form in 1944, albeit in a limited fashion due to the shortage of paper in wartime. He received a draft notice for the Japanese Army during World War II but was turned down after doctors appraised his natural paleness and frailty and misdiagnosed him with tuberculosis. He graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1947 with a degree in German Law, and worked as an official in the government's Finance Ministry. He resigned his position within a year in order to devote his time to writing.

Postwar Literature

Mishima began his first novel, Tōzoku (Thieves), in 1946 and published it in 1948. It was followed up by Kamen no kokuhaku (Confessions of a Mask), an autobiographical work about a young latent homosexual who must hide behind a mask in order to fit into society. The novel was extremely successful and made a celebrity out of Mishima, at the age of 24.

Later works and activities

During the 1960s, Mishima wrote some of his most successful and critically acclaimed novels, acted in films, and was nominated three times for the Nobel Prize. He continued to build his physique, studied martial arts, and swordsmanship, to some popular ridicule. At the end of the decade, he formed the Tatenokai (Shield Society), composed primarily of young rightist students who studied martial principles and physical discipline under Mishima's tutelage. Mishima's demeanor and attire reflected his new devotion to hyper masculinity. His workout regimen of three sessions per week was not disrupted for the final 15 years of his life. His writing gained him international celebrity and a sizable following in Europe and America, as many of his most famous works had been translated into English. It was speculated in an article that ran in New York Times Magazine that he was to win the Nobel Prize at last. In the '60's he visited Brazil to know the situation of the Japanese emigrants to the city of Marília, state of São Paulo.

Ritual Suicide

On November 25, 1970, Mishima and members of the Tatenokai took over Ichigaya Camp, the Tokyo headquarters of the Eastern Command of the Japan’s Self-Defense Forces. Mishima had written a manifesto and designed plans to articulate its contents. His followers bound the Commandant and barricaded his office. Mishima had written out a list of demands and had them painted on a banner, which he later hung from the balcony leading out of the Commandant’s office. Mishima stepped onto the balcony to address the gathered soldiers below. He intended to inspire them to help his troops stage a coup d'etat and restore the Emperor to his rightful place. He succeeded only in irritating them and was mocked and jeered for his efforts. They were unable to hear him and he aborted his planned speech after only a few minutes. He stepped in from the balcony and ritually committed seppuku, finalized by his ritual decapitation by Tatenokai member Hiroyasu Koga.

Afterword

Much speculation has surfaced regarding Mishima's suicide. At the time of his death he had just completed the final book in his Sea of Fertility tetralogy and was recognized as one of the most important postwar stylists of the Japanese language.

He wrote 40 novels, 18 plays, 20 books of short stories, and at least 20 books of essays as well as one libretto. He had also starred in several gangster films, even directing himself in his Yukoku (Patriotism). His later political agitation was expressed through his fervent identification with 'traditional Japanese values' and the symbolism of Feudal Japan. One of Mishima's most influential essays, Bunka boeiron (A Defense of Culture), argues that the Emperor was the source of Japanese Culture, and to defend the Emperor was to defend Japanese culture. It has been rumored that this suicide was a result of his secret affair with a homosexual lover, however, this has stood uncorroborated.

The theatrical nature of his suicide, the campy photographs he had taken, and the occasionally bathetic nature of his prose have surely taken their toll on his legacy and in the Japanese and Anglo-American academies Mishima is today virtually unspoken of, although he is undergoing something of reappraisal amongst critics interested in the critique of Japanese capitalism.

Awards

• Shincho Prize from Shinchosha Publishing, 1954, for The Sound of Waves.
• Kishida Prize for Drama from Shinchosha Publishing, 1955.
• Yomiuri Prize from Yomiuri Newspaper Co., for best novel, 1957, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion.
• Yomiuri Prize from Yomiuri Newspaper Co., for best drama, 1961, Toka no Kiku.

Major Works

• For the Kinkaju-ji temple, see: Kinkaku-ji

Films

Works about Mishima

• Ba-ra-kei: Ordeal by Roses by Eikoh Hosoe and Mishima. (photoerotic collection of images of Mishima, with his own commentary) (Aperture 2002 ISBN 0893811696)
• Deadly Dialectics: Sex, Violence, and Nihilism in the World of Yukio Mishima by Roy Starrs (University of Hawaii Press, 1994, ISBN 0824816307 and ISBN 0824816307)
• Escape from the Wasteland: Romanticism and Realism in the Fiction of Mishima Yukio and Oe Kenzaburo (Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series, No 33) by Susan J. Napier (Harvard University Press, 1995 ISBN 067426181X)
• Mishima: A Biography by John Nathan (Boston, Little, Brown 1974, ISBN 0316598445)
• Mishima ou la vison du vide (Mishima : A Vision of the Void), essay by Marguerite Yourcenar trans. by Alberto Manguel 2001 ISBN 0226965325)
• Rogue Messiahs: Tales of Self-Proclaimed Saviors by Colin Wilson (Mishima profiled in context of phenomenon of various "outsider" Messiah types), (Hampton Roads Publishing Company 2000 ISBN 1571741755)
• The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima, by Henry Scott Stokes London : Owen, 1975 ISBN 0720601231)
• The Madness and Perversion of Yukio Mishima by Jerry S. Piven. (Westport, Connecticut, Praeger Publishers, 2004 ISBN 0275979857)
• Yukio Mishima by Peter Wolfe ("reviews Mishima's life and times, discusses, his major works, and looks at important themes in his novels," 1989, ISBN 082640443X)
• Yukio Mishima, Terror and Postmodern Japan by Richard Appignanesi (2002, ISBN 1840463716)

External links

• The Mishima Yukio Cyber Museum (http://www.vill.yamanakako.yamanashi.jp/bungaku/mishima/index-e.html)
• Web page devoted to Yukio Mishima (http://members.tripod.com/dennismichaeliannuzz/index.HTML)
• Yukio Mishima: A 20th Century Samurai (http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/6824/gnosis.htm)
• Books and Writers bio (http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/mishima.htm)
• Short bio with photo (http://www.ox.compsoc.net/~simon/simons/historyweb/mishima.html)
• Entry from "CLASSIC GAY LITERATI" page (http://www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/3705/mishima.html)
• Sacred Visions of Splendor (http://eric.stamey.com/yukio.html), essay on the meaning of Yukio Mishima's suicide.
• Mishima's final day (http://www.members.tripod.com/dennismichaeliannuzz/finalDay.html)
• John Nathan New Yorker "Talk of the Town" commentary on Mishima's death (https://classes.yale.edu/anth254a/article_bank/NewYorker_701212.htm)
• Mishima chronology, with links (http://faculty.washington.edu/kendo/mishima.html)
• YUKIO MISHIMA: The Harmony of Pen and Sword (http://www.meaus.com/MISHIMA.html) Ceremony commemorating his 70th Birthday Anniversary
• Chronology of Mishima's Life (http://members.tripod.com/dennismichaeliannuzz/table.HTML)

Related Articles

• Article about ritual suicide (Seppuku) (http://www.destroy-all-monsters.com/seppuku.shtml)
• Brief Seppuku Piece (http://www.newdawnmagazine.com/Articles/Yukio%20Mishima.html)
• "I Cut Off the Head of Yukio Mishima" (http://www.corpse.org/issue_10/broken_news/palmer.html)
• Article focusing on Mishima's homosexuality (http://www.glbtq.com/literature/mishima_y.html)
• Film review of Yukoku (Patriotism) (http://www.midnighteye.com/reviews/yukoku.shtml)