Yukio Mishima (1925–1970)
Author of The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
About the Author
Yukio Mishima, the pseudonym for Hiraoka Kimitake, was born in Tokyo in 1925. His work covers many styles: poetry, essays, modern Kabuki ja Noh drama, and novels. Among his masterpieces are The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, and the four-volume novel Sea of Fertility, which outlines the Japanese show more experience in the 20th century. Each of the four volumes in this series has a distinct title--Spring Snow, Runaway Horses, The Temple of Dawn, and Five Signs of a God's Decay--and they were published over a six-year period, from 1965-1970. Mishima's plays include Tenth Day Chrysanthemum, and the Kabuki piece The Moon Like a Drawn Bow. Although Mishima was been nominated three times for the Nobel Prize for Literature, he never received it. Nevertheless, he is considered by many critics as one of the most important Japanese novelists of the 20th century. Yukio Mishima died by his own hand in 1970, committing seppuku (ritual disembowelment). (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Yukio Mishima, 1963
Series
Works by Yukio Mishima
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea / The Temple of the Golden Pavilion / Confessions of a Mask (1990) 83 copies
Le palais des fetes: Drame en quatre actes (Collection UNESCO d'oeuvres representatives) (French Edition) (1983) 7 copies
Melegin rys 2 copies
The lady Aoi 2 copies
春の雪 2 copies
By Yukio Mishima - The Decay of the Angel (Sea of Fertility, Book 4) (Reissue) (1990-04-29) [Paperback] (1990) 2 copies
Ο Ναός του Χρυσού Περιπτέρου 2 copies
頭文字 2 copies
Aya no tsuzumi 2 copies
Chieu Hom Lo Chuyen 2 copies
獅子・孔雀 2 copies
Tiếng triều dâng 1 copy
禁色 (新潮文庫) 1 copy
Decline of the Suzaku family 1 copy
Zakázané barvy 1 copy
Le temple d’or 1 copy
Confesiunile unei m♯¿ti 1 copy
بعد الوليمة 1 copy
Templul zorilor 1 copy
Yaban Oynaşması 1 copy
Senandung Ombak 1 copy
Cai în galop 1 copy
THE BIG PICTURE BRND ED A2 E 1 copy
Altı Çağdaş No Oyunu 1 copy
Past banketti : romaan 1 copy
℗Il ℗tempo dell'alba 1 copy
永すぎた春 1 copy
la voce delle donne 1 copy
Na uwięzi. Ballada o miłości 1 copy
Εξομολογήσεις μιας Μάσκας 1 copy
癩王のテラス 1 copy
La perla y otros cuentos 1 copy
Εξομολογήσεις μια Μάσκας 1 copy
Vite in vendita 1 copy
In punta di piedi 1 copy
Mishima (1985) (Ost) (CD) 1 copy
Εξομολογήσεις μιάς μάσκας 1 copy
Chết Giữa Mùa Hè 1 copy
Dupa banchet 1 copy
A RUÍNA DO ANJO 1 copy
サド侯爵夫人・わが友ヒットラー (新潮文庫) 1 copy
Fountains in the Rain 1 copy
The choice Yukio Mishima Complete Works novel (2) (2001) ISBN: 4106425424 [Japanese Import] (2001) 1 copy
The choice Yukio Mishima Complete Works novel (3) (2001) ISBN: 4106425432 [Japanese Import] (2001) 1 copy
Şölenden Sonra 1 copy
The Boy Who Wrote Poetry 1 copy
The choice Yukio Mishima Complete Works novels (12) (2001) ISBN: 4106425521 [Japanese Import] 1 copy
Il pazzo morire 1 copy
Tri priče o ljubavi i smrti 1 copy
Hanjo 1 copy
Kantan 1 copy
Kamen kokuhaku (仮面の告白) 1 copy
三熊野詣 Mikumano mōde 1 copy
Nyanyian Laut 1 copy
Shósetsuka no kyúka (小説家の休暇) 1 copy
The choice Yukio Mishima Complete Works novels (10) (2001) ISBN: 4106425505 [Japanese Import] 1 copy
The choice Yukio Mishima Complete Works short story (1) (2002) ISBN: 4106425556 [Japanese Import] 1 copy
The Flower Hat 1 copy
More plodnosti 1-4 1 copy
සිඳු ලෝලී සේලරුවා 1 copy
Thermos Bottles 1 copy
Dōjōji 1 copy
Onnagata 1 copy
Swaddling Clothes 1 copy
The Seven Bridges 1 copy
午後の曳航 (1968年) (新潮文庫) 1 copy
Patriotismo 1 copy
Η κυρία Αόι 1 copy
真夏の死: 自選短編集 (新潮文庫) 1 copy
[Nouvelles japonaises] 1 copy
The choice Yukio Mishima Complete Works short story (2) (2002) ISBN: 4106425564 [Japanese Import] 1 copy
決定版 三島由紀夫全集〈27〉評論(2) 1 copy
The choice Yukio Mishima Complete Works short stories (3) (2002) ISBN: 4106425572 [Japanese Import] 1 copy
The choice Yukio Mishima Complete Works short stories (4) (2002) ISBN: 4106425580 [Japanese Import] 1 copy
The choice Yukio Mishima Complete Works short stories (6) (2002) ISBN: 4106425602 [Japanese Import] (2002) 1 copy
決定版 三島由紀夫全集〈21〉戯曲(1) 1 copy
決定版 三島由紀夫全集〈23〉戯曲(3) 1 copy
決定版 三島由紀夫全集〈28〉評論(3) 1 copy
決定版 三島由紀夫全集〈30〉評論(5) 1 copy
決定版 三島由紀夫全集〈32〉評論(7) 1 copy
決定版 三島由紀夫全集〈33〉評論(8) 1 copy
三島由紀夫全集―決定版 (37) 1 copy
Associated Works
House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories (1969) — Introduction, some editions — 612 copies, 17 reviews
The World of the Short Story: A 20th Century Collection (1986) — Contributor — 511 copies, 4 reviews
The Art of the Tale: An International Anthology of Short Stories (1986) — Contributor — 381 copies, 3 reviews
Other Voices, Other Vistas: Short Stories from Africa, China, India, Japan, and Latin America (1992) — Contributor — 212 copies, 2 reviews
In Another Part of the Forest: An Anthology of Gay Short Fiction (1994) — Contributor — 191 copies, 2 reviews
Partings at Dawn: An Anthology of Japanese Gay Literature (12th - 20th Century) (1996) — Contributor — 75 copies
The Graphic Canon of Crime & Mystery, Vol. 2: From Salome to Edgar Allan Poe to The Silence of the Lambs (2021) — Contributor — 14 copies
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea [1976 film] (1976) — Original author — 6 copies, 1 review
Meesters der vertelkunst : zevenendertig verhalen uit de moderne wereldliteratuur (1975) — Contributor — 2 copies
三島由紀夫の死―高校生の発言 1 copy
星の文学館 銀河も彗星も — Contributor — 1 copy
リテラリーゴシック・イン・ジャパン 文学的ゴシック作品選 — Contributor — 1 copy
バージンラブ — Contributor — 1 copy
新潮 1971年 02 月号 [雑誌] 三島由紀夫追悼特集 — Contributor — 1 copy
構造と美文 山尾悠子偏愛アンソロジー — Contributor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- 三島由紀夫
- Other names
- Hiraoka, Kimitake (English real name)
Shobuin Bunkan Koi Koji (kaimyo) - Birthdate
- 1925-01-14
- Date of death
- 1970-11-25
- Gender
- male
- Education
- Gakushuin
University of Tokyo (LLB | 1947 | German Law) - Occupations
- novelist
playwright
actor
translator
poet
stage director (show all 8)
stage designer
short story writer - Organizations
- Shirakabaha (1939)
Ministry of Finance, Banking Bureau, National Savings Section (1948)
Hachi no Ki Kai / the Potted Cherry Tree Club
Bungakuza theatre company
Japan Self-Defense Forces
Tatenokai (show all 7)
Nissay Theatre - Awards and honors
- Emperor's Award (1944)
Shincho Prize (1954)
Kishida Prize for Drama (1955)
Yomiuri Prize (1956, 1958, 1961)
Mainichi Art Prize (1964)
Art Festival Prize (1965) (show all 9)
Participant in the 1st World Kendo Championships (1970)
AJKF Kendo Godan / 5th Dan (1968)
Iaido Shodan / 1st Dan (1967) - Agent
- Audrey Wood (New York)
- Relationships
- Sugiyama, Yoko (wife)
Tomita, Noriko (daughter)
Hiraoka, Iichiro (son)
Hiraoka, Azusa (father)
Hiraoka, Shizue (mother)
Hiraoka, Mitsuko (sister) (show all 17)
Hiraoka, Chiyuki (brother)
Kawabata, Yasunari (patron)
Ishihara, Shintarō (friend)
Ishikawa, Jun (acquaintance)
Mayuzumi, Toshiro (collaborator)
Abe, Kobo (friend)
Azuma, Fumihiko (friend)
Weatherby, Meredith (friend, translator)
Morris, Ivan (friend, translator)
Stokes, Henry Scott (friend)
Nathan, John (friend, translator) - Short biography
- Three-time winner of the Yomiuri Prize (1956 in literature, 1958 and 1961 in drama), winner of the Shinchosha Prize (1954), the Kunio Kishida Award (1956), the Mainichi Art Award (1964), and the Ministry of Education's Arts Festival Award (1965), "Mishima Yukio was probably the most prodigiously endowed Japanese writer of the twentieth century. Although he was only forty-five when he died, under spectacular circumstances that brought him worldwide fame, he had already completed a more voluminous oeuvre than most writers who live twice that long. His writings extended to every genre. Although he was best known as a novelist, he excelled also as a short-story writer. His works of fiction ranged from the philosophic to the farcical; he could write in whatever style was appropriate to each. He published numerous essays on literary, political, cultural and purely journalistic topics. He was also the most successful playwright of his generation." (Donald Keene. “Forward: Mishima’s Kabuki Plays” in “Mishima on Stage.” Ed. Laurence Kominz. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies 2007, viii–x.)
- Cause of death
- seppuku
suicide - Nationality
- Japan
- Birthplace
- Tokyo, Japan
- Places of residence
- Tokyo, Japan
- Place of death
- Tokyo, Japan
- Burial location
- Tama Reien, Tama-cho, Fuchu City, Tokyo, Japan
- Map Location
- Japan
Members
Discussions
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea (Bowie's Top 100) in 75 Books Challenge for 2016 (April 2016)
Mishima: The Decay of the Angel. The Sea of Fertility finally ends. in Le Salon Littéraire du Peuple pour le Peuple (October 2013)
NEW MISHIMA THREAD in Le Salon Littéraire du Peuple pour le Peuple (August 2013)
Mishima, tetralogy, by god, the whole fucking thing! in Le Salon Littéraire du Peuple pour le Peuple (May 2013)
Mishima : The Samurai ethic and modern Japan in Author Theme Reads (January 2013)
Mishima : The Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea in Author Theme Reads (October 2012)
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima in Author Theme Reads (October 2012)
Reviews
Look, I'll read any Mishima any time, any where. And some Mishima is better than no Mishima. But these were really good. Like, really good. The peacocks especially, and the sexual doubles of the old and young couple and the murder. And the double of the girl and her father. And the death of the world via one terrible San Francisco afternoon. ("Westerners are good for scenarios such as these.") I always have intense dreams after reading Mishima. This book is one of those I'll read again and show more again. I hate how good he is at everything. And all the images he conjures in my mind while he's a great glittering eel, wrapped around my stomach, poisonous and sleek and evil. Love you Mishima. show less
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion: Introduction by Donald Keene (Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics Series) by Yukio Mishima
She's rubbing his shoulder
and he's reading about
Western birds.
— Eileen Myles, Sympathy
On Needy Men
We like to imagine Mishima's chief characters as if totally freed from attachments. In famous post-coital scenes these men find themselves premeditating great acts of violence (a mental state in which, one imagines, they are also capable of revolutionary acts of kindness, though such things remain to be seen . . .) These characters are peculiar constructions because their sense of show more independence appears to derive from the constant need to be near people with whom they refuse to communicate. Mishima idealizes this relationship in his use the koan, Nansen Kills the Cat, in which selective non-communication is the only thing capable of saving a life (though, even in this case, it doesn't). Zen Master Joshu dons sandals on his head in a non-response which requires the presence of another (since otherwise he'd cycle about sandal-cephalic all the time).
The psychology of certain independent men who deny they have any attachments at all — despite meeting all their needs through the use of others — is perhaps more worth investigating than the cathected love-triangles in this novel. E.G. It would be possible to write an essay on our chief character's relationship with the eponymous pavilion, whose monkish order rejects him after he witnesses an adulterous carnal scene (through a series of intermediaries), as a surrogate relationship to his monk-father, who we find cowed in relation to his adulterous mother. The scene in which the chief character tramples a pregnant whore representing the impermissible desire to repudiate his mother ("foreclosed" in Lacan's sense), which therefore also masks his relationship to himself (corresponding to the trampled fetus), and so on . . . The burning of the temple as physical manifestation of an unacceptable relationship and so on . . . These are all mere literary conventions. (The only missing scene is the paramour's repudiation of our chief character's mother, but this is left as an exercise for the reader.)
Psychological defenses appear strongest at moments of great vulnerability. The chief character in Mishima's texts (and those of certain others) achieves the apex of his power in the post-coital scene, where, alone in the world with someone else (who has ostensibly just done you a favor), he turns even more strongly toward himself. That such invulnerable men appear to others as one great vulnerability is something he only perceives in brief flashes of terror. In this sense, the oft-quoted phrase is essentially correct: "I wasn't unconscious — I saw everything. The special quality of hell is to see everything clearly down to the last detail. And to see all that in the pitch darkness!" (130) In another context we recognize "seeing everything down to the last detail" as the neutral (scientific) gaze of death. It only becomes terrifying when we recognize what would happen if a needy man came to possess, for a moment, this unclouded vision while at the apex of his power. Then he would realize, with the quality of a Hollywood jump-scare, that while he had thought himself alone in bed, of course there has been someone else with him the whole time. show less
An early Mishima novel that shows him at his most paradoxical. The style is mannered at times, realist at others. It is highly referential to a specific post-war Japanese culture, half-way between defeat and economic miracle, and yet looks back to European decadent and classical literature.
There are two barriers to understanding here. First, we wonder whether the translator (Alfred Marks) has always been able to communicate the subtle behaviourial codes of an upper class that hovers between show more traditionalism and business.
Second, Mishima's partly satirical posturing on art and beauty through the cynical, bored and rather unpleasant novelist Shinsuke, will result in some small moments of dreariness. Few of us in the twenty-first century can get truly excited by debates on lost aesthetics.
But these are relatively minor concerns because Mishima brilliantly portrays the homosexual underworld of post-war Tokyo in a culture that disapproves of it but more as a social weakness than as a moral failing. It is 'unnatural' but not 'evil'.
The mood is thus of turn of the century Europe rather than offering us the visceral horror of the 'deviant' to be found in the then-contemporary West and still to be found amongst many religious troglodytes in the Americas and Africa.
A sub-culture is here denied entry into the wider culture on equal terms but it is allowed its dark space. In that space, homosexuals seem to live a vacant and sad but tolerated life, albeit with more than a hint of desperation.
Mishima (when he is not posturing as the superior Japanese traditionalist able to be more modern than the moderns) writes as brilliantly here as elsewhere. He also has the ability to dissect formal heterosexual relationships as he does homosexual within a culture of shame rather than guilt.
The character of Yuichi (Yuchan to his homosexual associates), often taken to be Mishima himself, remains a cypher throughout - a cool and self-regarding person with a limited emotional range.
What is more interesting is the way he impacts on others, giving us the paradox of the cool 'Mishima' being able to define quite precisely the emotional responses of a range of figures: his wife, his mother, a high-born female, a shallow female and all grades of male lover.
As a non-procreative male, the extent of Mishima's imaginative genius can be found not only in his portayal of women but in his unsentimental portrayal of a new-born baby while giving a good account of the way that Yuichi (as a man) can 'love' both wife and baby as a father.
The book is about the complexity, lack of fixedness, of love. Yuichi is detached but no psychopath. He can feel but his position as the object of projected desires means that he is often not allowed to by circumstances. If he 'weakens', he may be denied access to his true nature for ever.
This is the fascination of the book - to see how a pure beauty without apparent moral content creates a range of desires and 'wants' in others within a society that is layered with codes on what is acceptable or is not acceptable, wholly unlike our own in the West.
It is no accident that the sophisticated novelist with a broad education brings cruelties and small evils into the world of Yuichi, whereas Yuichi merely acts, like an animal, according to his rather limited range of needs.
Shunsuke's desire for a vicious revenge on women shows a person who has ceased to function as a human being and has no place on the planet as a vindictive, dessicated old man who has lost his creative spark.
His agent (Yuichi) is so detached that it becomes clear that the novelist is only half directing events. The women he wants to humiliate are all humiliated through Yuichi but they retain their power and dignity and Shunsuke is left with nothing.
Yuichi blithely sails through the events of the novel, somehow always landing on his feet like a cat, never feeling the pain he inflicts. The book is an essay both in the injustice of life and on the Nietzschean position of a general object of desire in the world.
As a result, although the actual sexual content is limited, the book gives off an aura of eroticism even when the reader (like myself) is very dominantly heterosexual.
What Mishima does, which is remarkable, is suggest to the male heterosexual reader what parts of himself as a male would re-emerge intact within a homosexual male - in other words, what it is about being a male that exists as essential whether one is gay or not.
To make a heterosexual male empathetic to the world of the homosexual would be no mean feat today - in the early 1950s, it would have been startling.
But the book is not so much about homosexuality as about desire itself and the way that desire has a life that is far more significant than any actual meaning to be placed in the desired object - because, in the end, Yuichi is always simply an object who finds it reasonable to be an object.
There are few occasions when Yuichi/Yuchan expresses genuine unhappiness so long as he is following his true nature. His cruelty is casual, the flow of the river through the easiest channel. Shunsuke is malicious as are others but Yuchan is as disinterested in malice as in kindness.
This a-morality (not immorality) is perhaps what will 'shock' most readers - especially in one particularly nasty incident where a somewhat shallow bimbo who had hurt the novelist is seduced by the two conspirators' trickery into being, in effect, raped by the novelist in the dark.
The women are treated like objects in a very different sense but there is a sense that the novelist has seduced Yuichi into treating women as things through being directed into the realisation that everyone treats him as a thing (even if he does not care overly).
And, disturbingly, we have none of the hysterical self-traumatizing of Western women but only a determined dignity where the impression is left that these women have come to terms with their position with far more dignity than the ultimate loser in the game - the manipulative novelist.
The book brings us, the Westerner (from a culture with a serious problem in managing desire), into a medium (Japanese traditional culture) that is alienating to the degree that desire is clearly given form and that this form is then articulated in almost ritualistic ways.
By the end of the book, we are left wondering whether it would be better or worse to give desire its outlet through rigid codes and appropriate forms than (as our culture did at that time) deny it any role in formal society at all.
Homosexuality was illegal in the UK at the time the book appeared but, being Japanese, nothing is illegal here, merely shameful.
Any English homosexual reading the translation at the time must have had mixed feelings about its message - an acceptance and management of shame through combinations of secrecy, hypocrisy and denial but the 'vice' being permitted nevertheless. He might have lived with that. show less
There are two barriers to understanding here. First, we wonder whether the translator (Alfred Marks) has always been able to communicate the subtle behaviourial codes of an upper class that hovers between show more traditionalism and business.
Second, Mishima's partly satirical posturing on art and beauty through the cynical, bored and rather unpleasant novelist Shinsuke, will result in some small moments of dreariness. Few of us in the twenty-first century can get truly excited by debates on lost aesthetics.
But these are relatively minor concerns because Mishima brilliantly portrays the homosexual underworld of post-war Tokyo in a culture that disapproves of it but more as a social weakness than as a moral failing. It is 'unnatural' but not 'evil'.
The mood is thus of turn of the century Europe rather than offering us the visceral horror of the 'deviant' to be found in the then-contemporary West and still to be found amongst many religious troglodytes in the Americas and Africa.
A sub-culture is here denied entry into the wider culture on equal terms but it is allowed its dark space. In that space, homosexuals seem to live a vacant and sad but tolerated life, albeit with more than a hint of desperation.
Mishima (when he is not posturing as the superior Japanese traditionalist able to be more modern than the moderns) writes as brilliantly here as elsewhere. He also has the ability to dissect formal heterosexual relationships as he does homosexual within a culture of shame rather than guilt.
The character of Yuichi (Yuchan to his homosexual associates), often taken to be Mishima himself, remains a cypher throughout - a cool and self-regarding person with a limited emotional range.
What is more interesting is the way he impacts on others, giving us the paradox of the cool 'Mishima' being able to define quite precisely the emotional responses of a range of figures: his wife, his mother, a high-born female, a shallow female and all grades of male lover.
As a non-procreative male, the extent of Mishima's imaginative genius can be found not only in his portayal of women but in his unsentimental portrayal of a new-born baby while giving a good account of the way that Yuichi (as a man) can 'love' both wife and baby as a father.
The book is about the complexity, lack of fixedness, of love. Yuichi is detached but no psychopath. He can feel but his position as the object of projected desires means that he is often not allowed to by circumstances. If he 'weakens', he may be denied access to his true nature for ever.
This is the fascination of the book - to see how a pure beauty without apparent moral content creates a range of desires and 'wants' in others within a society that is layered with codes on what is acceptable or is not acceptable, wholly unlike our own in the West.
It is no accident that the sophisticated novelist with a broad education brings cruelties and small evils into the world of Yuichi, whereas Yuichi merely acts, like an animal, according to his rather limited range of needs.
Shunsuke's desire for a vicious revenge on women shows a person who has ceased to function as a human being and has no place on the planet as a vindictive, dessicated old man who has lost his creative spark.
His agent (Yuichi) is so detached that it becomes clear that the novelist is only half directing events. The women he wants to humiliate are all humiliated through Yuichi but they retain their power and dignity and Shunsuke is left with nothing.
Yuichi blithely sails through the events of the novel, somehow always landing on his feet like a cat, never feeling the pain he inflicts. The book is an essay both in the injustice of life and on the Nietzschean position of a general object of desire in the world.
As a result, although the actual sexual content is limited, the book gives off an aura of eroticism even when the reader (like myself) is very dominantly heterosexual.
What Mishima does, which is remarkable, is suggest to the male heterosexual reader what parts of himself as a male would re-emerge intact within a homosexual male - in other words, what it is about being a male that exists as essential whether one is gay or not.
To make a heterosexual male empathetic to the world of the homosexual would be no mean feat today - in the early 1950s, it would have been startling.
But the book is not so much about homosexuality as about desire itself and the way that desire has a life that is far more significant than any actual meaning to be placed in the desired object - because, in the end, Yuichi is always simply an object who finds it reasonable to be an object.
There are few occasions when Yuichi/Yuchan expresses genuine unhappiness so long as he is following his true nature. His cruelty is casual, the flow of the river through the easiest channel. Shunsuke is malicious as are others but Yuchan is as disinterested in malice as in kindness.
This a-morality (not immorality) is perhaps what will 'shock' most readers - especially in one particularly nasty incident where a somewhat shallow bimbo who had hurt the novelist is seduced by the two conspirators' trickery into being, in effect, raped by the novelist in the dark.
The women are treated like objects in a very different sense but there is a sense that the novelist has seduced Yuichi into treating women as things through being directed into the realisation that everyone treats him as a thing (even if he does not care overly).
And, disturbingly, we have none of the hysterical self-traumatizing of Western women but only a determined dignity where the impression is left that these women have come to terms with their position with far more dignity than the ultimate loser in the game - the manipulative novelist.
The book brings us, the Westerner (from a culture with a serious problem in managing desire), into a medium (Japanese traditional culture) that is alienating to the degree that desire is clearly given form and that this form is then articulated in almost ritualistic ways.
By the end of the book, we are left wondering whether it would be better or worse to give desire its outlet through rigid codes and appropriate forms than (as our culture did at that time) deny it any role in formal society at all.
Homosexuality was illegal in the UK at the time the book appeared but, being Japanese, nothing is illegal here, merely shameful.
Any English homosexual reading the translation at the time must have had mixed feelings about its message - an acceptance and management of shame through combinations of secrecy, hypocrisy and denial but the 'vice' being permitted nevertheless. He might have lived with that. show less
I read this novel decades ago. Mishima committed seppuku on Nov. 25th, 1970, after failing to exhort military cadets to action. His ritual suicide offered a tragic and frightening parallel to his novels, especially this one, Runaway Horses. Mishima was a craftsman of language, but also briliantly connected reified objects to reincarnation. A peeled orange in the ocean electrified the spine today no less than years ago when I first read him. Today, older, wiser, I found the philosophy behind show more Mishima's work disturbing. I understand a different value system in Japan, but the glorificaltion of honor to the extent of ritual suicide cannot help but disturb anyone who reflects on it. Though I admire Mishima as a writer, I offer a lower rating than I would have earlier. A rigid code of honor accompanied by seppuku seems a dangerous zeitgeist which could destroy individuals, countries and our planet. Isao worries how aging could attentuate youthful purity. In his view, it is better to die young than face such attenuated purity. Let us reverse it and a better world for all of us. show less
Lists
Japanese Literature (17)
1940s (1)
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Overdue Podcast (1)
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1950s (2)
Stuff from Bard (3)
Reading LIst (5)
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A Novel Cure (1)
current (1)
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philosophy (1)
Books for Dustin (1)
Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 269
- Also by
- 53
- Members
- 27,111
- Popularity
- #762
- Rating
- 3.8
- Reviews
- 458
- ISBNs
- 910
- Languages
- 29
- Favorited
- 144
