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 the conflict between his grandmother, Natsu, and his mother, Shizue. Natsu was from a minor family related to the samurai class but had been married off to Mishima's grandfather who, although being a successful member of the new bureaucracy, was not of aristocratic background. A powerful, stubborn woman prone to violent emotional outbursts, she always maintained considerable aristocratic pretensions.
Although the families lived in the same house most of the time, Natsu separated Mishima from his parents and siblings and kept him with her in her room, which was darkened on account of her suffering from sciatica. Mishima's father could not or would not stand up to his mother, and as a result Mishima spent much of his childhood shut indoors, playing with dolls and with three female cousins.
Never having any exercise or being allowed in the sun resulted in him being a small and frail child, making him into a further outsider. Natsu encouraged the young Mishima's interest in the Kabuki, read French and German, and entertained him with fairy tales and other fantastic stories. The boy cared for his grandmother more frequently as her health worsened, and developed a precocious interest in books. When the twelve-year-old Mishima moved back into the household with his parents and siblings, he exchanged the total control his grandmother had exercised over him for that of his father -- who felt he had to make up for Mishima's girlish upbringing and was not in favour of stories. Shizue on the other hand lavished all her love on him that she had harboured since his birth. Till Natsu's death, Mishima would be torn between trying to keep both his mother and his grandmother happy.
Schooling & Early Works
At 12, Mishima began to write his first stories. He voraciously read the works of Wilde, Rilke, and numerous Japanese classics. Although his family was not as affluent as those of the other students of this institution, Natsue insisted that he went to the elite Peers School.
After six miserable years at school, he still was a pale and frail teenager, but he started to do well and became the youngest member of the editorial board in the literary society at the school.He was invited to write a short story for the prestigious literary magazine, Bungei-Bunka (Literary 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.
Mishima received a draft notice for the Japanese Army during World War II. At the time of his medical check up he had a cold and spontaneously lied to the army doctor about having tuberculosis symptoms and thus was declared unfit. Although Mishima was greatly relieved of not having to go to war, he continued to feel guilty for having survived and having missed the chance for a heroic death.
Although his father had forbidden him to write any further stories, Mishima continued to write secretly every night, supported and protected by his mother Shizue, who was always the first to read a new story. After school, his father, who sympathized with the Nazis, wouldn't allow him to pursue a writer's career, but instead forced him to study German Law. Mishima attended lectures during the day and wrote at night and graduated from the elite University of Tokyo in 1947. He got a job as an official in the government's Finance Ministry and was set up for a promising career.
However, he exhausted himself so much that his father agreed to his resigning his position within a year in order to devote his time to writing. When his father gave up his opposition, he told Mishima that he'd better become the best Japanese writer there was.
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 Mishima a celebrity at the age of 24.
Mishima was a very disciplined and versatile writer: He wrote not only novels and popular serial novellas, short stories and literary essays but also highly acclaimed traditional Kabuki plays.
His writing gained him international celebrity and a sizable following in Europe and America, as many of his most famous works were translated into English.
He travelled extensively and was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature three times and was the darling of many foreign publications. However, in 1968 his friend Yasunari Kawabata won the Prize and Mishima realized that the chances of it being given to another Japanese author in the near future were slim.
Private life
After Confessions of a Mask Mishima tried to leave behind the young man who had only existed inside his head and had continuously flirted with death. He tried to tie himself to the real, physical world by taking up stringent physical exercise: 1955 Mishima took up weight lifting and his workout regimen of three sessions per week was not disrupted for the final 15 years of his life. He also became very skillful at Japanese swordfighting. However the swimming and weight lifting only trained his upper body, while his legs stayed thin like before, just like he couldn't get his early romanticism out of his system.
Although he visited gay bars in Japan, Mishima reportedly stayed an observer and only had affairs with men when he travelled abroad. After briefly considering an alliance with Michiko Shoda -- she later became the wife of Emperor Akihito of Japan -- he married Yoko Sugiyama in 1958, and over the next three years, the couple had a daughter and a son.
In 1967 Mishima enlisted in the Army Self Defense Force (ASDF) and underwent basic training. A year later, he formed the Tatenokai (Shield Society), composed primarily of young patriotic students who studied martial principles and physical discipline who were trained through the ASDF under Mishima's tutelage.
In the last ten years of his life, Mishima acted in several movies and co-directed an adaption of one of his stories, Patriotism, the Rite of Love and Death.
Ritual Suicide
On November 25, 1970, Mishima and 4 members of the Tatenokai under a pretext visited the commandant of the Ichigaya Camp, the Tokyo headquarters of the Eastern Command of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces. Once inside, they proceeded to barricade the office and tied the commandant to his chair. With a prepared manifesto and banner listing their demands, Mishima stepped onto the balcony to address the gathered soldiers below. His speech was intended to inspire them to stage a coup d'etat and restore the Emperor to his rightful place. He succeeded only in irritating them and was mocked and jeered. As he was unable to make himself heard, he finished his planned speech after only a few minutes. He stepped back into the commandant's office and committed seppuku, ending in his ritual decapitation by Tatenokai member Masakatsu Morita . Morita, who was rumored to have been Mishima's lover, was unable to perform the decapitation properly, and after several failed attempts, allowed another Tatenokai member, Hiroyasu Koga, to do the job. After Mishima was decapitated, Morita also committed seppuku and was beheaded by Koga.
Mishima prepared his suicide meticulously for a year and no one outside the group of handpicked Tatenokai members had any indication of what he was planning. Mishima must have known that his coup plot would never succeed and his biographer, translator and former friend John Nathan suggests that the scenario was only a pretext for the ritual suicide that Mishima always dreamed of. Mishima made sure his affairs were in order and even had the foresight to leave money for the defense at trial of the two surviving Tatenokai members.
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. It has been rumored that this suicide was a result of his secret affair with a homosexual lover, however, this has stood uncorroborated.
Mishima wrote 40 novels, 18 plays, 20 books of short stories, and at least 20 books of essays as well as one libretto.
It is contentious if Mishima became a rightist towards the end of his life. Patriotism certainly became a strong subject in his writing. One of Mishima's essays, Bunka Beiron (A Defense of Culture), argues that the Emperor was the source of Japanese Culture, and to defend the Emperor was to defend Japanese culture. There are, however, some facts which do not seem congruent with his alleged fervent identification with "traditional Japanese values" and the symbolism of Feudal Japan. Mishima--especially after his travels--took a very Western attitude: His house was built and furbished in Western style and guests didn't even have to take off their shoes when entering. And Mishima encouraged Yoko not to fit in to the mold of the traditional Japanese wife.
The theatrical nature of his suicide, the camp 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
| Japanese Title |
English Title |
Year |
English translation, year |
ISBN |
| Kamen no Kokuhaku (仮面の告白) |
Confessions of a Mask |
1948 |
Meredith Weatherby, 1958 |
ISBN 081120118X
|
| Ai no Kawaki (愛の渇き) |
Thirst for Love |
1950 |
Alfred H. Marks, 1969 |
ISBN 4101050031
|
| Kinjiki (禁色) |
Forbidden Colors |
1954 |
Alfred H. Marks, 1968, 1974 |
ISBN 0375705163
|
| Shiosai (潮騒) |
The Sound of Waves |
1954
|
Meredith Weatherby, 1956 |
ISBN 0679752684
|
| Kinkaku-ji* (金閣寺) |
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion |
1956 |
Ivan Morris, 1959 |
ISBN 0679752706
|
| Utage no Ato (宴のあと) |
After the Banquet |
1960 |
Donald Keene, 1963
|
ISBN 0399504869
|
| Gogo no Eikō (午後の曳航) |
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea |
1963 |
John Nathan, 1965 |
ISBN 0679750150
|
| Sado Kōshaku Fujin (play) (サド公爵夫人) |
Madame de Sade |
1965 |
|
ISBN 0781456003
|
| (真夏の死) |
Death in Midsummer and other stories |
1966 |
|
ISBN 0811201171
|
| Waga Tomo Hittora (play) (わが友ヒットラー) |
My Friend Hitler and other plays |
1968 |
|
ISBN 0231126336
|
|
Sun and Steel |
1970
|
John Bester |
ISBN 4770029039
|
| Hōjō no Umi (豊穣の海) |
The Sea of Fertility tetralogy:
|
1964-70 |
|
ISBN 0677149603
|
Part one:
Haru no Yuki
|
|
|
Michael Gallagher, 1972 |
ISBN 0394442393
|
Part two:
Honda
|
Runaway Horses
|
|
Michael Gallagher, 1973 |
ISBN 0394466187
|
Part three:
Akatsuki no Tera
|
The Temple of Dawn
|
|
E. Dale Saunders and Cecilia S. Seigle, 1973 |
ISBN 0394466144
|
Part four:
Tennin Gosui
|
The Decay of the Angel
|
|
Edward Seidensticker, 1974 |
ISBN 0394466136
|
| Hagakure Nyūmon (葉隠入門) |
|
|
Kathryn Sparling , 1977
|
ISBN 0465090893
|
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
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Last updated: 05-31-2005 04:53:34
