YUKIO MISHIMA

( photo courtesy~ Tamotsu Yato:)

Yukio Mishima, January 14, 1925 – November 25, 1970), a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor, and film director. Nominated three times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Mishima is considered one of the most important Japanese authors of the 20th century. His avant-garde work displayed a blending of modern and traditional aesthetics that broke cultural boundaries, with a focus on sexuality, death, and political change.
He is also remembered for his ritual suicide by seppuku after a failed coup d'état.

In 1955, Mishima took up weight training and his workout regimen of three sessions per week was not disrupted for the final 15 years of his life. 

Although it is known that he visited gay bars in Japan, Mishima's sexual orientation annoyed his widow: she wanted that part of his life downplayed after his death.  However, the writer Jiro Fukushima published a revealing homosexual correspondence between himself and the famed novelist. Soon after publication, Mishima's children successfully sued Fukushima for violating Mishima's privacy. 

In 1967, Mishima enlisted in the Ground Self Defense Force (GSDF) and underwent basic training. A year later, he formed theTatenokai (Shield Society), a private army composed primarily of young students who studied martial principles and physical discipline, and swore to protect the Emperor. Mishima trained them himself. However, under Mishima's ideology, the emperor was not necessarily the reigning Emperor, but rather the abstract essence of Japan. In Eirei no Koe (Voices of the Heroic Dead), Mishima actually denounces Emperor Hirohito for renouncing his claim of divinity at the end of World War II.

Mishima espoused a very individual brand of nationalism towards the end of his life. He was hated by leftists, in particular for his outspoken and anachronistic commitment tobushido (the code of the samurai).

On November 25, 1970, Mishima and four members of the Tatenokai, under pretext, visited the commandant of the Ichigaya Camp — the Tokyo headquarters of the Eastern Command of Japan's Self-Defense Forces.

Inside, they barricaded 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 soldiers gathered below. His speech was intended to inspire a coup d'état restoring the powers of the emperor. He succeeded only in irritating them, and was mocked and jeered. He finished his planned speech after a few minutes, returned to the commandant's office and committed seppuku. The customary kaishakunin duty at the end of this ritual had been assigned to Tatenokai member Masakatsu Morita, but Morita was unable to properly perform the task. After several failed attempts, he allowed another Tatenokai member, Hiroyasu Koga, to behead Mishima. Morita then knelt and stabbed himself in the abdomen; Koga once again performed the kaishakunin duty.

Another traditional element of the suicide ritual was the composition of jisei no ku (death poems) before their entry into the headquarters. Mishima planned his suicide meticulously for at least a year and no one outside the group of hand-picked Tatenokai members had any indication of what he was planning. His biographer, translator John Nathan, suggests that the coup attempt was only a pretext for the ritual suicide of which Mishima had long dreamed.

 Mishima made sure his affairs were in order and left money for the legal defense of the three surviving Tatenokai members.

ANTEBELLUM'S FETISH BOOK CLUB is reading mishima's cult classic~

CONFESSIONS OF THE MASK.. read it, (available @ most libraries & amazon) and join us for a discussion debate on march 10th~ 1pm

$10