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Yukio Mishima

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Kimitake Hiraoka (Template:Linktext Template:Linktext, Hiraoka Kimitake; 14 January 1925Template:Spaced ndash25 November 1970), known by his pen name Yukio MishimaTemplate:Efn (Template:Linktext Template:Linktext, Mishima Yukio), was a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor, model, Shintoist, ultranationalist,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> and the leader of an attempted coup d'état that culminated in his seppuku (ritual suicide).

Mishima is considered one of the most important postwar stylists of the Japanese language. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times in the 1960s—including in 1968, when the award went to his countryman and benefactor Yasunari Kawabata.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Mishima's works include the novels Confessions of a Mask and The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, and the autobiographical essay Sun and Steel. Mishima's work is characterized by "its luxurious vocabulary and decadent metaphors, its fusion of traditional Japanese and modern Western literary styles, and its obsessive assertions of the unity of beauty, eroticism and death",<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> according to the author Andrew Rankin.

Mishima's political activities made him a controversial figure; he remains so in Japan to the present day.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="nyt 1970">Template:Cite news</ref> From his mid-30s onwards, Mishima's far-right ideology and reactionary beliefs became increasingly evident.<ref name="nyt 1970" /><ref name="Jacobin" /><ref>Commentary on Mishima's ideology:

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In 1968, Mishima formed the Tatenokai ("Shield Society"), a private militia, for the purpose of protecting the dignity of the emperor as a symbol of national identity.<ref name="o-ency-tate">Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> On 25 November 1970, Mishima and four members of his militia entered a military base in central Tokyo, took its commandant hostage, and unsuccessfully tried to inspire the Japan Self-Defense Forces to rise up and overthrow Article 9 of the 1947 Constitution to restore autonomous national defense<ref name="geki" /><ref name="m-jiken">Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="kage">Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="mura-mon" /> and the divinity of the emperor,<ref name="kage" /><ref name="mura-mon" /> after which he died by seppuku.<ref name="m-jiken" /><ref name="kage" />

Life and workEdit

Early lifeEdit

File:Yukio Mishima 1931.gif
Mishima in his childhood (April 1931, at the age of 6)

On 14 January 1925, Template:Nihongo was born Template:Nihongo in Nagazumi-cho, Yotsuya-ku of Tokyo City (now part of Yotsuya, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo). His father was Template:Nihongo, a government official in the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> His mother, Template:Nihongo, was the daughter of the 5th principal of the Kaisei Academy. Shizue's father, Template:Nihongo, was a scholar of the Chinese classics, and the Hashi family had served the Maeda clan for generations in Kaga Domain. Mishima's paternal grandparents were Sadatarō Hiraoka, the third Governor-General of Karafuto Prefecture, and Template:Nihongo. Mishima received his birth name Kimitake (公威, also read Kōi in on-yomi) in honor of Furuichi Kōi who was a benefactor of Sadatarō.<ref name="azusa2">Template:Harvnb</ref> He had a younger sister, Template:Nihongo, who died of typhus in 1945 at the age of 17, and a younger brother, Template:Nihongo.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

Mishima's childhood home was a rented house, though a fairly large two-floor house that was the largest in the neighborhood. He lived with his parents, siblings and paternal grandparents, as well as six maids, a houseboy, and a manservant.

Mishima's early childhood was dominated by the presence of his grandmother, Natsuko, who took the boy and separated him from his immediate family for several years.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> She was the granddaughter of Matsudaira Yoritaka, the daimyō of Shishido, which was a branch domain of Mito Domain in Hitachi Province;Template:Efn therefore, Mishima was a descendant of the founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate, Tokugawa Ieyasu, through his grandmother.<ref name="etsugu" /><ref>Family tree of the Matsudaira family in Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Natsuko's father, Template:Nihongo, had been a Supreme Court justice, and Iwanojō's adoptive father, Nagai Naoyuki, had been a bannerman of the Tokugawa House during the Bakumatsu.<ref name="etsugu"/> Natsuko had been raised in the household of Prince Arisugawa Taruhito, and she maintained considerable aristocratic pretensions even after marrying Sadatarō, a bureaucrat who had made his fortune in the newly opened colonial frontier in the north, and who eventually became Governor-General of Karafuto Prefecture on Sakhalin Island.<ref name="inose1">Template:Harvnb</ref> Sadatarō's father, Template:Nihongo, and grandfather, Template:Nihongo, had been farmers.<ref name="etsugu"/>Template:Efn Natsuko was prone to violent outbursts, occasionally alluded to in Mishima's works,<ref name="HK">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> to which some biographers have traced Mishima's fascination with death.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> She did not allow Mishima to venture into the sunlight, engage in any kind of sport, or play with other boys. He spent much of his time either alone or with female cousins and their dolls.<ref name="Shizue">Template:Cite journal, collected in Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="HK"/>

Mishima's father, Azusa, had a taste for military discipline, and worried Natsuko's style of childrearing was too soft. When Mishima was returned to his immediate family at the age of 12, Azusa employed extreme parenting tactics, such as holding young Mishima up close to the side of a speeding steam locomotive.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> He also raided his son's room for evidence of an "effeminate" interest in literature, and often ripped his son's manuscripts apart.<ref name="azusa3">Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="oku-manu">Template:Harvnb</ref> Although Azusa forbade him from writing any further stories, Mishima continued to write in secret, supported and protected by his mother, who was always the first to read a new story.<ref name="azusa3"/><ref name="oku-manu"/>

When Mishima was 13, Natsuko took him to see his first Kabuki play: The Treasury of Loyal Retainers, an allegory of the story of the 47 Rōnin. He was later taken to his first Noh play (Miwa, a story featuring Amano-Iwato) by his maternal grandmother Template:Nihongo. From these early experiences, Mishima became addicted to Kabuki and Noh. He began attending performances every month and grew deeply interested in these traditional Japanese dramatic art forms.<ref name="henre">Template:Cite journal, collected in Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

Schooling and early worksEdit

File:Self-portrait of Mishima Yukio.jpg
Mishima's self-portrait drawn in junior high school

Mishima was enrolled at the age of six in the elite Gakushūin, the Peers' School in Tokyo, which had been established in the Meiji period to educate the Imperial family and the descendants of the old feudal nobility.<ref>

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|CitationClass=web }}</ref> Mishima began to write his first stories aged 12, taking inspiration from myths (Kojiki, Greek mythology, etc.) and the works of numerous classic Japanese authors, as well as Raymond Radiguet, Jean Cocteau, Oscar Wilde, Rainer Maria Rilke, Thomas Mann, Friedrich Nietzsche, Charles Baudelaire, l'Isle-Adam, and other European authors. He also studied German. After six years as a pupil, he became the youngest member of the editorial board of its literary society. Mishima was particularly drawn to the works of Japanese poet Template:Nihongo, Haruo Satō, and Michizō Tachihara, who inspired Mishima's appreciation of classical Japanese waka poetry. Mishima's early contributions to the Gakushūin literary magazine Template:NihongoTemplate:Efn included haiku and waka poetry before he turned his attention to prose.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

In 1941, at the age of 16, Mishima was invited to write a short story for the Hojinkai-zasshi, where he submitted Template:Nihongo, a story in which the narrator describes the feeling that his ancestors somehow still live on within him. The story displays several metaphors and aphorisms that would become Mishima's hallmarks.Template:Efn He also sent a copy of the manuscript to his teacher Template:Nihongo, who was so impressed that he and his fellow editorial board members decided to publish it in their literary magazine Template:Nihongo.<ref name="shimizu"/>

In order to protect him from potential backlash from Azusa, Shimizu and the other editorial board members coined the pen-name Yukio Mishima.<ref name="shimizu">Template:Cite journal collected in Template:Harvnb</ref> They took "Mishima" from Mishima Station, which Shimizu and his fellow Bungei Bunka board member Hasuda Zenmei passed through on their way to the editorial meeting, which was held in Izu, Shizuoka. The name "Yukio" came from yuki (雪), the Japanese word for "snow", because of the snow they saw on Mount Fuji as the train passed.<ref name="shimizu" /> The story was later published as a limited book edition (4,000 copies) in 1944 due to a wartime paper shortage. Mishima had it published as a keepsake to remember him by, as he assumed that he would die in the war.<ref>Template:Cite journal, collected in Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

In the editorial notes of Bungei Bunka magazine in 1941, when this debut work was serialized, Hasuda praised Mishima's genius: "This youthful author is a heaven-sent child of eternal Japanese history. He is much younger than we are, but has arrived on the scene already quite mature."<ref name="hasu">Template:Cite journal collected in Template:Harvnb</ref> Hasuda, who became something of a mentor to Mishima, was an ardent nationalist and a fan of Motoori Norinaga (1730–1801), a scholar of kokugaku from the Edo period who preached Japanese traditional values and devotion to the emperor.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> Hasuda had previously fought for the Imperial Japanese Army in China in 1938, and in 1943 he was recalled to active service for deployment as a first lieutenant in the Southeast Asian theater.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> At a farewell party thrown for Hasuda by the Bungei Bunka group, Hasuda offered the following parting words to Mishima: "I have entrusted the future of Japan to you." According to Mishima, these words were deeply meaningful to him, and had a profound effect on the future course of his life.<ref name="mura4-3-4">Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="ando">Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal collected in Template:Harvnb</ref>

Later in 1941, Mishima wrote an essay about his deep devotion to Shintō, titled Template:Nihongo.<ref>Template:Cite journal collected in Template:Harvnb</ref> Mishima's story Template:Nihongo, published in 1946, describes a homosexual love he felt at school and being teased from members of the school's rugby union club because he belonged to the literary society. Another story from 1954, Template:Nihongo, was similarly based on Mishima's memories of his time at Gakushūin Junior High School.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

On 9 September 1944, Mishima graduated Gakushūin High School at the top of the class, becoming a graduate representative.<ref name="mitani1-a">Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="gradu">Template:Cite journal, collected in Template:Harvnb</ref> Emperor Hirohito was present at the graduation ceremony, with Mishima later receiving a silver watch from him at the Imperial Household Ministry.<ref name="mitani1-a"/><ref name="gradu"/><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

On 27 April 1944, during the final years of World War II, Mishima received a draft notice for the Imperial Japanese Army, barely passing his conscription examination on 16 May 1944 with a less desirable rating of "second class" conscript. Scholars have argued that Mishima's failure to receive a "first class" rating on his conscription examination (reserved only for the most physically fit recruits), in combination with the illness which led him to be erroneously declared unfit for duty, contributed to an inferiority complex over his frail constitution that later led to his obsession with physical fitness and bodybuilding.<ref>See for example, Tatsumi Okabe, "Revival of Japanese Militarism?" The Institute of South East Asian Studies Occasional Papers No. 22 (July 1974), p. 11.</ref>

Mishima had a cold during his medical check on convocation day (10 February 1945), which the army doctor misdiagnosed as tuberculosis; Mishima was consequently declared unfit for service and sent home.<ref name="sishun">Template:Cite journal collected in Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="azusa3-akagami">Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="matsu-47">Template:Harvnb</ref> Mishima would later hint in his quasi-autobiographical novel Confessions of a Mask (1949) that he might have lied to the doctor in order to secure the misdiagnosis.Template:Sfn Mishima wrote:

Why had I looked so frank as I lied to the army doctor? Why had I said that I'd been having a slight fever for over half a year, that my shoulder was painfully stiff, that I spit blood, that even last night I had been soaked by a night sweat?...Why when sentenced to return home the same day had I felt the pressure of a smile come pushing so persistently at my lips that I had difficulty in concealing it? Why had I run so when I was through the barracks gate? Hadn't my hopes been blasted? What was the matter that I hadn't hung my head and trudged away with heavy feet? I realized vividly that my future life would never attain heights of glory sufficient to justify my having escaped death in the army...Template:Sfn<ref name=mask>Template:Cite book</ref>

The veracity of this account is impossible to know for certain, but what is unquestionable is that Mishima did not speak out against the doctor's diagnosis of tuberculosis.<ref name=six>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Sfn Researchers have speculated that Mishima's guilt at allowing himself to escape death in the war left a lasting impression on his life and writing, possibly contributing to his later suicide.<ref name=six/>Template:Sfn

The day before his failed medical examination, Mishima had written a farewell message to his family, ending with the words Template:Nihongo, including hair and nail clippings as mementos for his parents.<ref name="azusa3-akagami"/><ref name="album">photograph of the will in Template:Harvnb</ref> The unit that Mishima would have enlisted in was eventually sent to the Philippines, with few survivors.<ref name="sishun"/><ref name="matsu-47"/> Mishima's parents were ecstatic that he did not have to go to war, but Mishima's mood was harder to read, and Mishima's mother overheard him express a wish that he could have joined a "Special Attack" unit.<ref name="azusa3-akagami"/><ref name="matsu-47"/> He also expressed an admiration for kamikaze pilots and other "special attack" units.<ref name="mitani-tokko">Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="hira-1-14">Template:Harvnb</ref> In a 21 April 1945 letter to a friend, Mishima wrote:

It was through the kamikazes that "modern man" has finally been able to grasp the dawning of the "present day", or perhaps better said, "our historical era" in a true sense, and for the first time the intellectual class, which until now had been the illegitimate child of modernity, became the legitimate heir of history. I believe that all of this is thanks to the kamikazes. This is the reason why the entire cultural class of Japan, and all people of culture around the world, should kneel before the kamikazes and offer up prayers of gratitude.<ref name="letter-makoto">Mishima's letter to Makoto Mitani (April 21, 1945)　Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="mitani-tokko"/><ref name="hira-1-14"/>

Mishima was deeply affected by Emperor Hirohito's radio broadcast announcing Japan's surrender on 15 August 1945, vowing to protect Japanese cultural traditions and to help to rebuild Japanese culture after the destruction of the war.<ref name="letter">Mishima's letters to his friends (Makoto Mitani, Akira Kanzaki) and teacher Fumio Shimizu in August 1945, collected in Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="mitani-ketsui">Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="ando-ketsui">Template:Harvnb</ref> He wrote in his diary, "Only by preserving Japanese irrationality will we be able contribute to world culture 100 years from now."<ref>Template:Cite journal collected in Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

File:Mishima Yukio and sister.jpg
Mishima at age 19, with his sister at age 16 Template:Avoid wrap

Four days after Japan's surrender, Mishima's mentor Zenmei Hasuda, who had been drafted and deployed to the Malay peninsula, shot and killed his superior officer, who blamed Japan's defeat on the Emperor.<ref name="juro">Template:Harvnb</ref> Hasuda had long suspected the officer to be a Korean spy.<ref name="juro"/> After shooting him, Hasuda turned his pistol on himself.<ref name="juro"/> Mishima learned of the incident a year later and contributed poetry in Hasuda's honor at a memorial service in November 1946.<ref name="juro"/> On 23 October 1945 (Showa 20), Mishima's beloved younger sister Mitsuko died suddenly at the age of 17 from typhoid fever after drinking untreated water.<ref name="azusa3-mitsu">Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="kyoko">Template:Harvnb</ref> Around the same time, he also learned that Template:Nihongo, a classmate's sister whom he had hoped to marry, was engaged to another man.<ref name="mura1-2-3">Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>Template:Efn Mishima used these events as inspiration and motivation for his later literary work.<ref name="shuma">Template:Cite journal, collected in Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="mura1-2-3"/>

At the end of the war, his father Azusa "half-allowed" Mishima to become a novelist. He was worried that his son would become a professional novelist, preferring instead that his son follow in the footsteps of himself and Mishima's grandfather Sadatarō and become a bureaucrat. To this end, he advised his son to enroll in the Faculty of Law instead of the literature department.<ref name="azusa3-hogaku">Template:Harvnb</ref> Attending lectures during the day and writing at night, Mishima graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1947. He obtained a position in the Ministry of the Treasury and was set for a promising career as a government bureaucrat. However, after just one year of employment, Mishima had exhausted himself so much that his father agreed to allow him to resign from his post and devote himself to writing full time.<ref name="azusa3-sibuya">Template:Harvnb</ref>

In 1945, Mishima began the short story Template:Nihongo and continued to work on it throughout World War II. After the war, the story was praised by poet Template:Nihongo, whom Mishima respected.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

Post-war literatureEdit

File:Mishima Yukio 1948.JPG
Mishima with his cat (Asahigraph, 12 May 1948 issue). He was known as a cat-lover.<ref name="etsugu-neko">Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="nosaka1">Template:Harvnb</ref> Yōko (his wife) was jealous of his pet cat, and disliked him petting it.<ref name="etsugu-neko"/><ref name="nosaka1"/>

After Japan's defeat in World War II, the country was occupied by the U.S.-led Allied Powers. At the urging of the occupation authorities, many people who held important posts in various fields were purged from public office. The media and publishing industry were also censored, and were not allowed to engage in forms of expression reminiscent of wartime Japanese nationalism.Template:Efn In addition, literary figures, including many of those who had been close to Mishima before the end of the war, were branded "war criminal literary figures". In response, many prominent literary figures became leftists, joined the Communist Party as a reaction against wartime militarism, and began writing socialist realist literature that might support the cause of socialist revolution.Template:Sfn These newly converted leftists held great influence in the Japanese literary world immediately following the end of the war, which Mishima found difficult to accept, and he denounced them as "opportunists" in letters to friends.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="kimu">Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> Although Mishima was just 20 years old at this time, he worried that his type of literature, based on the 1930s Template:Nihongo, had already become obsolete.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="henre-ob">Template:Cite journal, collected in Template:Harvnb</ref>

Mishima had heard that the famed writer Yasunari Kawabata had praised his work before the end of the war. Uncertain of who else to turn to, Mishima took the manuscripts for Template:Nihongo and Template:Nihongo with him, visited Kawabata in Kamakura, and asked for his advice and assistance in January 1946.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="henre-ob"/> Kawabata was impressed, and in June 1946, following Kawabata's recommendation, The Cigarette was published in the new literary magazine Template:Nihongo, followed by The Middle Ages in December 1946.<ref name="chusei">Template:Harvnb</ref> The Middle Ages is set in Japan's historical Muromachi Period and explores the motif of shudō (man-boy love) against a backdrop of the death of the ninth Ashikaga shogun Ashikaga Yoshihisa in battle at the age of 25, and his father Ashikaga Yoshimasa's resultant sadness. The story features the fictional character Kikuwaka, a beautiful teenage boy who was beloved by both Yoshihisa and Yoshimasa, who fails in an attempt to follow Yoshihisa in death by committing suicide. Thereafter, Kikuwaka devotes himself to spiritualism in an attempt to heal Yoshimasa's sadness by allowing Yoshihisa's ghost to possess his body, and eventually dies in a double-suicide with a miko (shrine maiden) who falls in love with him. Mishima wrote the story in an elegant style drawing upon medieval Japanese literature and the Ryōjin Hishō, a collection of medieval imayō songs. This elevated writing style and the homosexual motif suggest the germ of Mishima's later aesthetics.<ref name="chusei" /> Later in 1948 Kawabata, who praised this work,<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> published an autobiographical work Template:Nihongo describing his experience of falling in love for the first time with a boy two years his junior.<ref>Template:Cite journal collected in Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

File:Yukio Mishima 01.jpg
Mishima aged 28Template:Avoid wrap

In 1946, Mishima began his first novel, Template:Nihongo, a story about two young members of the aristocracy drawn towards suicide. It was published in 1948, and placed Mishima in the ranks of the Second Generation of Postwar Writers. The following year, he published Confessions of a Mask, a semi-autobiographical account of a young homosexual man who hides behind a mask to fit into society. The novel was extremely successful and made Mishima a celebrity at the age of 24. In 1947, a brief encounter with Osamu Dazai, a popular novelist known for his suicidal themes, left a lasting impression on him.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> Around 1949, Mishima also published a literary essay about Kawabata, for whom he had always held a deep appreciation, in Template:Nihongo.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

Mishima enjoyed international travel. In 1952, he took a world tour and published his travelogue as Template:Nihongo. He visited Greece during his travels, a place which had fascinated him since childhood. His visit to Greece became the basis for his 1954 novel The Sound of Waves, which drew inspiration from the Greek legend of Daphnis and Chloe. The Sound of Waves, set on the small island of "Kami-shima" where a traditional Japanese lifestyle continued to be practiced, depicts a pure, simple love between a fisherman and a female pearl and abalone diver. Although the novel became a best-seller, leftists criticized it for "glorifying old-fashioned Japanese values", and some people began calling Mishima a "fascist".<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal collected in Template:Harvnb</ref> Looking back on these attacks in later years, Mishima wrote, "The ancient community ethics portrayed in this novel were attacked by progressives at the time, but no matter how much the Japanese people changed, these ancient ethics lurk in the bottom of their hearts. We have gradually seen this proven to be the case."<ref>Template:Cite journal collected in Template:Harvnb</ref>

File:Ishihara Mishima.jpg
Yukio Mishima (lower) with Shintaro Ishihara in 1956 Template:Avoid wrap

Mishima made use of contemporary events in many of his works. The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, published in 1956, is a fictionalization of the burning down of the Kinkaku-ji Buddhist temple in Kyoto in 1950 by a mentally disturbed monk.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

In 1959, Mishima published the artistically ambitious novel Kyōko no Ie. The novel tells the interconnected stories of four young men who represented four different facets of Mishima's personality. His athletic side appears as a boxer, his artistic side as a painter, his narcissistic, theatrical side as an actor, and his secretive, nihilistic side as a businessman who goes through the motions of living a normal life while practicing "absolute contempt for reality". According to Mishima, he was attempting to describe the time around 1955 in the novel, when Japan was entering into its era of high economic growth and the phrase "The postwar is over" was prevalent.Template:Efn Mishima explained, "Kyōko no Ie is, so to speak, my research into the nihilism within me."<ref>Template:Cite journal collected in Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal collected in Template:Harvnb</ref> Although the novel was well received by a small number of critics from the same generation as Mishima and sold 150,000 copies in a month, it was widely panned in broader literary circles,Template:Sfn<ref name="ino-kyo"/> and was rapidly branded as Mishima's first "failed work".<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="ino-kyo">Template:Harvnb</ref> It was Mishima's first major setback as an author, and the book's disastrous reception came as a harsh psychological blow.<ref>Mishima's letter to Yasunari Kawabata on 18 December 1959, collected in Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="nagisa">Template:Cite journal collected in Template:Harvnb (dialogue with Nagisa Ōshima)</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

Until 1960, Mishima had not written works that were seen as especially political.Template:Sfn In the summer of 1960, Mishima became interested in the massive Anpo protests against an attempt by U.S.-backed Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi to revise the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security Between the United States and Japan (known as "Anpo" in Japanese) in order to cement the U.S.–Japan military alliance into place.Template:Sfn Although he did not directly participate in the protests, he often went out in the streets to observe the protestors in action and kept extensive newspaper clippings covering the protests.Template:Sfn In June 1960, at the climax of the protest movement, Mishima wrote a commentary in the Mainichi Shinbun newspaper, entitled "A Political Opinion".Template:Sfn In the critical essay, he argued that leftist groups such as the Zengakuren student federation, the Socialist Party, and the Communist Party were falsely wrapping themselves in the banner of "defending democracy" and using the protest movement to further their own ends.<ref name="seiji-iken">Template:Cite journal collected in Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="jiten-seiji">Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="tekina-b">Template:Harvnb</ref> Mishima warned against the dangers of the Japanese people following ideologues who told lies with honeyed words.<ref name="seiji-iken"/><ref name="jiten-seiji"/> Although Mishima criticized Kishi as a "nihilist" who had subordinated himself to the United States, Mishima concluded that he would rather vote for a strong-willed realist "with neither dreams nor despair" than a mendacious but eloquent ideologue.<ref name="seiji-iken"/><ref name="jiten-seiji"/>

Shortly after the Anpo Protests ended, Mishima began writing one of his most famous short stories, Patriotism, glorifying the actions of a young right-wing ultranationalist Japanese army officer who commits suicide after a failed revolt against the government during the February 26 incident.Template:Sfn The following year, he published the first two parts of his three-part play Template:Nihongo, which celebrates the actions of the 26 February revolutionaries.Template:Sfn

Mishima's newfound interest in contemporary politics shaped his novel After the Banquet, also published in 1960, which so closely followed the events surrounding politician Hachirō Arita's campaign to become governor of Tokyo that Mishima was sued for invasion of privacy.<ref name="Cooper-ChenKodama1997">Template:Cite book</ref> The next year, Mishima published The Frolic of the Beasts, a parody of the classical Noh play Motomezuka, written in the 14th-century by playwright Kiyotsugu Kan'ami. In 1962, Mishima produced his most artistically avant-garde work Beautiful Star, which at times comes close to science fiction. Although the novel received mixed reviews from the literary world, prominent critic Template:Nihongo singled it out for praise as part of a new breed of novels that was overthrowing longstanding literary conventions in the tumultuous aftermath of the Anpo Protests. Alongside Kōbō Abe's Woman of the Dunes, published that same year, Okuno considered A Beautiful Star an "epoch-making work" which broke free of literary taboos and preexisting notions of what literature should be in order to explore the author's personal creativity.Template:Sfn

In 1965, Mishima wrote the play Madame de Sade that explores the complex figure of the Marquis de Sade, traditionally upheld as an exemplar of vice, through a series of debates between six female characters, including the Marquis' wife, the Madame de Sade. At the end of the play, Mishima offers his own interpretation of what he considered to be one of the central mysteries of the de Sade story—the Madame de Sade's unstinting support for her husband while he was in prison and her sudden decision to renounce him upon his release.<ref name="Inose-e 2012 454">Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal collected in Template:Harvnb</ref> Mishima's play was inspired in part by his friend Tatsuhiko Shibusawa's 1960 Japanese translation of the Marquis de Sade's novel Juliette and a 1964 biography Shibusawa wrote of de Sade.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> Shibusawa's sexually explicit translation became the focus of a sensational obscenity trial remembered in Japan as the Template:Nihongo, which was ongoing as Mishima wrote the play.<ref name="Inose-e 2012 454"/> In 1994, Madame de Sade was evaluated as the "greatest drama in the history of postwar theater" by Japanese theater criticism magazine Template:Nihongo.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

Mishima was considered for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1963, 1964, 1965, 1967 and 1968 (he and Rudyard Kipling are both the youngest nominees in history),<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and was a favorite of many foreign publications.<ref name="Japan Times Nobel">Template:Cite news</ref> However, in 1968 his early mentor Kawabata won the Nobel Prize and Mishima realized that the chances of it being given to another Japanese author in the near future were slim.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In a work published in 1970, Mishima wrote that the writers he paid most attention to in modern western literature were Georges Bataille, Pierre Klossowski, and Witold Gombrowicz.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Acting and modellingEdit

File:Yukio mishima 1961.jpg
Mishima poses for a photograph, 1961

Mishima was also an actor, and starred in Yasuzo Masumura's 1960 film, Afraid to Die, for which he also sang the theme song (lyrics by himself; music by Shichirō Fukazawa).<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> He performed in films like Patriotism or the Rite of Love and Death directed by himself, 1966, Black Lizard directed by Kinji Fukasaku, 1968 and Hitokiri directed by Hideo Gosha, 1969. Maki Isaka has discussed how his knowledge of performance and theatrical forms influenced short stories including Template:Nihongo.<ref> Template:Cite book </ref>

Mishima was featured as the photo model in the photographer Eikoh Hosoe's book Template:Nihongo, as well as in Tamotsu Yatō's photobooks Template:Nihongo and Template:Nihongo. The American author Donald Richie gave an eyewitness account of seeing Mishima, dressed in a loincloth and armed with a sword, posing in the snow for one of Tamotsu Yatō's photoshoots.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

In the men's magazine Heibon Punch, to which Mishima had contributed various essays and criticisms, he won first place in the "Mr. Dandy" reader popularity poll in 1967 with 19,590 votes, beating second place Toshiro Mifune by 720 votes.<ref name="Shiine">Template:Harvnb </ref> In the next reader popularity poll, "Mr. International", Mishima ranked second behind French President Charles de Gaulle.<ref name="Shiine"/> At that time in the late 1960s, Mishima was the first celebrity to be described as a "superstar" (sūpāsutā) by the Japanese media.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

Private lifeEdit

File:Mishima Yukio.JPG
Mishima at age 30 in his garden, 1955

In 1955, Mishima took up weight training to overcome his weak constitution, and his strictly observed workout regimen of three sessions per week was not disrupted for the final 15 years of his life. In his 1968 essay Sun and Steel,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Mishima deplored the emphasis given by intellectuals to the mind over the body. He later became very skilled (5th Dan) at kendo (traditional Japanese swordsmanship), and became 2nd Dan in battōjutsu, and 1st Dan in karate. In 1956, he tried boxing for a short period of time. In the same year, he developed an interest in UFOs and became a member of the Template:Nihongo.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> In 1954, he fell in love with Template:Nihongo, who became the model for main characters in Template:Nihongo and Template:Nihongo.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> Mishima hoped to marry her, but they broke up in 1957.<ref name="kyoko"/><ref>Template:Harvnb, Template:Harvnb</ref>

After briefly considering marriage with Michiko Shōda, who later married Crown Prince Akihito and became Empress Michiko,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Mishima married Template:Nihongo, the daughter of the Japanese-style painter Yasushi Sugiyama, on 1 June 1958.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> The couple had two children: a daughter named Template:Nihongo (born 2 June 1959) and a son named Template:Nihongo (born 2 May 1962).<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> Noriko eventually married the diplomat Koji Tomita.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

While working on his novel Forbidden Colors, Mishima visited gay bars in Japan.Template:Sfn Mishima's sexual orientation was an issue that bothered his wife, and she always denied his homosexuality after his death.<ref name="film" /> In 1998, the writer Template:Nihongo published an account of his relationship with Mishima in 1951, including fifteen letters (not love letters) from Mishima.<ref name="itasa">Template:Harvnb</ref> Mishima's children successfully sued Fukushima and the publisher for copyright violation over the use of Mishima's letters.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="itasa"/><ref name="JapanTimes">Template:Cite news</ref> The publisher Bungeishunjū had argued that the contents of the letters were "practical correspondence" rather than copyrighted works. However, the ruling for the plaintiffs declared, "In addition to clerical content, these letters describe the Mishima's own feelings, his aspirations, and his views on life, in different words from those in his literary works."<ref name="copy">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>Template:Efn

In February 1961, Mishima became embroiled in the aftermath of the Shimanaka incident. In 1960, the author Shichirō Fukazawa had published the satirical short story Template:Nihongo in the mainstream magazine Chūō Kōron. It contained a dream sequence (in which the Emperor and Empress are beheaded by a guillotine) that led to outrage from right-wing ultra-nationalist groups, and numerous death threats against Fukazawa, any writers believed to have been associated with him, and Chūō Kōron magazine itself.Template:Sfn On 1 February 1961, Kazutaka Komori, a seventeen-year-old rightist, broke into the home of Hōji Shimanaka, the president of Chūō Kōron, killed his maid with a knife and severely wounded his wife.Template:Sfn In the aftermath, Fukazawa went into hiding, and dozens of writers and literary critics, including Mishima, were provided with round-the-clock police protection for several months;Template:Sfn Mishima was included because a rumor that Mishima had personally recommended The Tale of an Elegant Dream for publication became widespread, and even though he repeatedly denied the claim, he received hundreds of death threats.Template:Sfn In later years, Mishima harshly criticized Komori, arguing that those who harm women and children are neither patriots nor traditional right-wingers, and that an assassination attempt should be a one-on-one confrontation with the victim at the risk of the assassin's life.<ref name="teach1-a">Template:Cite journal collected in Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="komatsu">Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="seishi">Template:Harvnb</ref> Mishima also argued that it was the custom of traditional Japanese patriots (such as Otoya Yamaguchi) to immediately commit suicide after committing an assassination.<ref name="teach1-a"/><ref name="komatsu"/><ref name="seishi"/>

In 1963, Template:Nihongo occurred within the theatrical troupe Bungakuza, to which Mishima belonged. He wrote a play titled Template:Nihongo, but star actress Haruko Sugimura and other Communist Party-affiliated actors refused to perform because the protagonist held anti-communist views and mentioned criticism about a conspiracy of world communism in his lines.<ref name="mura3-5-3">Template:Harvnb</ref> As a result of this ideological conflict, Mishima quit Bungakuza and later formed the troupe Template:Nihongo with playwrights and actors who had quit Bungakuza along with him, including Template:Nihongo, Template:Nihongo, and Nobuo Nakamura.<ref name="mura3-5-3"/><ref name="ency-nlt">Template:Harvnb</ref> When Neo Littérature Théâtre experienced a schism in 1968, Mishima formed another troupe, the Template:Nihongo, and worked with Matsuura and Nakamura again.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

During the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Mishima interviewed various athletes every day and wrote articles as a newspaper correspondent.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Tokyo Olympics reports are collected in Template:Harvnb</ref> He had eagerly anticipated the long-awaited return of the Olympics to Japan after the 1940 Tokyo Olympics were cancelled due to Japan's war in China. Mishima expressed his excitement in his report on the opening ceremonies: "It can be said that ever since Lafcadio Hearn called the Japanese "the Greeks of the Orient", the Olympics were destined to be hosted by Japan someday."<ref>Template:Cite journal collected in Template:Harvnb</ref>

Mishima hated Ryokichi Minobe, who was a socialist and the governor of Tokyo beginning in 1967.<ref name="side30">Template:Harvnb</ref> Influential persons in the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), including Takeo Fukuda and Kiichi Aichi, had been Mishima's superiors during his time at the Ministry of the Treasury, and Prime Minister Eisaku Satō came to know Mishima because his wife, Hiroko, was a fan of Mishima's work. Based on these connections LDP officials solicited Mishima to run for the LDP as governor of Tokyo against Minobe, but Mishima had no intention of becoming a politician.<ref name="side30" />

Mishima was fond of manga and gekiga, especially the drawing style of Hiroshi Hirata, a mangaka best known for his samurai gekiga; the slapstick, absurdist comedy in Fujio Akatsuka's Mōretsu Atarō; and the imaginativeness of Shigeru Mizuki's GeGeGe no Kitarō.<ref name="gekiga">Template:Cite journal collected in Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="manga">Template:Cite journal collected in Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="ency-manga">Template:Harvnb</ref> Mishima especially loved reading the boxing manga Ashita no Joe in Weekly Shōnen Magazine every week.<ref name="onos">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Efn Ultraman and Godzilla were his favorite kaiju fantasies, and he once compared himself to "Godzilla's egg" in 1955.<ref>Template:Cite journal collected in Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal collected in Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> On the other hand, he disliked story manga with humanist or cosmopolitan themes, such as Osamu Tezuka's Phoenix.<ref name="gekiga"/><ref name="manga"/><ref name="ency-manga"/>

Mishima was a fan of science fiction, contending that "science fiction will be the first literature to completely overcome modern humanism".<ref>Template:Cite journal collected in Template:Harvnb</ref> He praised Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End in particular. While acknowledging "inexpressible unpleasant and uncomfortable feelings after reading it," he declared, "I'm not afraid to call it a masterpiece."<ref>Template:Cite journal collected in Template:Harvnb</ref>

Mishima traveled to Shimoda on the Izu Peninsula with his wife and children every summer from 1964 onwards.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="kuro">Template:Harvnb</ref> In Shimoda, Mishima often enjoyed eating local seafood with his friend Henry Scott-Stokes.<ref name="kuro"/> Mishima never showed any hostility towards the US in front of foreign friends like Scott-Stokes, until Mishima heard that the name of the inn where Scott-Stokes was staying was Kurofune (Template:Literal translation), at which point his voice suddenly became low and he said in a sullen manner, "Why? Why do you stay at a place with such a name?". Mishima liked ordinary American people after the war, and he and his wife had even visited Disneyland as newlyweds.Template:Efn However, he clearly retained a strong sense of hostility toward the "black ships" of Commodore Matthew C. Perry, who forcibly opened Japan up to unequal international relations at the end of the Edo period, and had destroyed the peace of Edo, where vivid chōnin culture was flourishing.<ref name="kuro"/>

Later lifeEdit

Template:Conservatism in Japan Mishima's nationalism grew towards the end of his life. In 1966, he published his short story Template:Nihongo,<ref>Template:Cite journal collected in Template:Harvnb,Template:Harvnb</ref> in which he denounced Emperor Hirohito for renouncing his own divinity after World War II.Template:Sfn Mishima argued that the soldiers who had died in the February 26 incident and the Kamikaze had died for their "living god" Emperor, and that Hirohito's renunciation of his own divinity meant that all those deaths had been in vain.Template:Sfn

In February 1967, Mishima joined his fellow-authors Yasunari Kawabata, Kōbō Abe, and Jun Ishikawa in issuing a statement condemning China's Cultural Revolution for suppressing academic and artistic freedom.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> However, only one Japanese newspaper carried the full text of their statement.<ref name="nishi3-1">Template:Harvnb</ref>

In September 1967 Mishima and his wife visited India at the invitation of the Indian government. He traveled widely and met with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and President Zakir Hussain.<ref name="Inose-e 2012 521–522">Template:Harvnb</ref> He left extremely impressed by Indian culture, and what he felt was the Indian people's determination to resist Westernization and protect traditional ways.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> Mishima feared that his fellow Japanese were too enamored of modernization and Western-style materialism to protect traditional Japanese culture.<ref name="Inose-e 2012 521–522" /> On his way home from India, Mishima also stopped in Thailand and Laos; his experiences in the three nations became the basis for portions of his novel The Temple of Dawn, the third in his tetralogy The Sea of Fertility.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

In a series of critical essays in the late 1960s, Mishima exalted what he viewed as traditional Japanese values. In 1967, he published Template:Nihongo, an impassioned plea for a return to bushido, the putative "samurai code" of Japan's past.<ref name=blomberg>Template:Cite book</ref> Mishima praised the Hagakure, a treatise on warrior virtues authored by the samurai Yamamoto Tsunetomo during the Edo period that valorized the warrior's willingness to die, as being at the core of his literary production and "the source of his vitality as a writer".Template:Sfn<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> Mishima concluded,

What Hagakure is insisting is that even a merciless death, a futile death that bears neither flower nor fruit, has dignity as the death of a human being. If we value so highly the dignity of life, how can we not also value the dignity of death? No death may be called futile.<ref name=blomberg/>

In Template:Nihongo,<ref name="bunbou">Template:Cite journal collected in Template:Harvnb</ref> Mishima preached the centrality of the emperor to Japanese culture,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and argued that Japan's postwar era was a time of flashy but ultimately hollow prosperity (a "Shōwa Genroku"), lacking any truly transcendent literary or poetic talents comparable to the 18th century masters of the original Genroku era, such as the playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon or the poet Matsuo Bashō.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

In 1968, Mishima wrote a play titled My Friend Hitler, in which he depicted the historical figures of Adolf Hitler, Gustav Krupp, Gregor Strasser, and Ernst Röhm as mouthpieces to express his own views on fascism and beauty.Template:Sfn Mishima explained that after writing the all-female play Madame de Sade, he wanted to write a counterpart play with an all-male cast.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> Mishima wrote of My Friend Hitler, "You may read this tragedy as an allegory of the relationship between Ōkubo Toshimichi and Saigō Takamori" (two heroes of Japan's Meiji Restoration who initially worked together but later had a falling out).<ref>Template:Cite journal collected in Template:Harvnb</ref> Given the play's provocative title, Mishima was repeatedly asked if he intended to express admiration or support for Hitler.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> Mishima wrote in a program note,

To be honest, I feel a terrifying interest in Hitler, but if the question is whether I like or dislike him, I can only answer, I don't like him. Hitler was a political genius but was not a hero. He thoroughly lacked the refreshing, sunny quality indispensable to becoming a hero. Hitler is as gloomy as the twentieth century.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

That same year, he wrote Life for Sale, a humorous story about a man who, after failing to commit suicide, advertises his life for sale.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> In a review of the English translation, the novelist Ian Thomson called it a "pulp noir" and a "sexy, camp delight", but also noted that, "beneath the hard-boiled dialogue and the gangster high jinks is a familiar indictment of consumerist Japan and a romantic yearning for the past."<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Like many other right-wingers, Mishima was extremely alarmed by the riots and revolutionary actions undertaken by radical "New Left" university students, who took over dozens of college campuses in Japan in 1968 and 1969.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> On 25 February 1968, he and several other right-wingers met at the editorial offices of the recently founded minzoku-ha monthly magazine Template:Nihongo, where they pricked their little fingers and signed a blood oath promising to die if necessary to prevent a left-wing revolution from occurring in Japan.<ref name="h-mochi">Hiroshi Mochimaru, "The Tatenokai and the Controversy Journal" (Appendix of Template:Harvnb)</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="Inose-e 2012 540">Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="azusa5-chi">Template:Harvnb</ref> Mishima showed his sincerity by signing his birth name, Kimitake Hiraoka, in his own blood.<ref name="h-mochi"/><ref name="Inose-e 2012 540"/><ref name="azusa5-chi"/>

On 13 May 1969, Mishima accepted an invitation to debate with members of the Tokyo University Zenkyōtō on the university's Komaba campus. This debate lasted for 2.5 hours, with both Mishima and the students treating each other amiably and with respect, despite Mishima's initial fears that the students might kill him on the spot for his right-wing views.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:SfnTemplate:Efn At this debate, Mishima told the students, "As long as you refer to the Emperor as 'Emperor,' I will gladly join forces with you," but in the end the ideological differences between Mishima and the students could not be overcome. Mishima ended by saying, "I believe in your passion. I believe in this alone. Even if I believe in nothing else of yours, I want you to know that I believe in this alone."<ref name="Zenkyōtō">Template:Nihongo(Shinchōsha, 1969) pp.9–119, Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="sabaku">Yukio Mishima Template:Nihongo (1969), collected in Template:Nihongo(Shinchōsha, 1969) pp.124–143, Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="hosaka-todai">Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="jiten-zenkyo">Template:Harvnb</ref> In an essay written after the debate Mishima said that "they could not escape established leftist thinking" and that "the discussion was inevitably at a stalemate."<ref name="sabaku"/><ref name="hosaka-todai"/><ref name="jiten-zenkyo"/> In this essay, Mishima argued that the supposedly revolutionary Zenkyōtō were themselves "weakening the roots of the revolutionary ideal in Japan" by rejecting the idea of the "Emperor", which Mishima claimed was also "a revolutionary ideal deeply rooted in the consciousness of the Japanese people."<ref name="sabaku"/><ref name="hosaka-todai"/><ref name="jiten-zenkyo"/> Mishima's friends interpreted this essay as him expressing his disappointment with the Zenkyōtō.<ref name="hosaka-todai"/>Template:Efn

Throughout this period, Mishima continued to work on his magnum opus, The Sea of Fertility tetralogy of novels, which began appearing in a monthly serialized format in September 1965.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The four completed novels were Spring Snow (1969), Runaway Horses (1969), The Temple of Dawn (1970), and The Decay of the Angel (published posthumously in 1971). Mishima aimed for a very long novel with a completely different raison d'être from Western chronicle novels of the 19th and 20th centuries; rather than telling the story of a single individual or family, Mishima boldly set his goal as interpreting the entire human world.<ref name="hojo">Template:Cite journal collected in Template:Harvnb</ref> In The Decay of the Angel, four stories convey the transmigration of the human soul as the main character goes through a series of reincarnations.<ref name="hojo"/> Mishima hoped to express in literary terms something akin to pantheism.<ref>Template:Cite book collected in Template:Harvnb (dialogue with Mitsuo Nakamura)</ref> The novelist Paul Theroux blurbed the first edition of the English translation of The Sea of Fertility as "the most complete vision we have of Japan in the twentieth century" and critic Charles Solomon wrote in 1990 that "the four novels remain one of the outstanding works of 20th-Century literature and a summary of the author's life and work".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Coup attempt and suicideEdit

From 12 April to 27 May 1967, Mishima underwent basic training with the Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF).<ref name="Inose-e 2012 486">Template:Harvnb</ref> Mishima had originally lobbied to train with the GSDF for six months, but was met with resistance from the Defense Agency.<ref name="Inose-e 2012 486"/> Mishima's training period was finalized to 46 days, which required using some of his connections.<ref name="Inose-e 2012 486"/> His participation in GSDF training was kept secret, both because the Defense Agency did not want to give the impression that anyone was receiving special treatment, and because Mishima wanted to experience "real" military life.<ref name="Inose-e 2012 486"/><ref name="mura4-1-1"/> Accordingly, Mishima trained under his birth name, Kimitake Hiraoka, and most of his fellow soldiers did not recognize him.<ref name="Inose-e 2012 486"/>

From June 1967, Mishima became a leading figure in a plan to create a 10,000-man Template:Nihongo as a civilian complement to the Self-Defense Forces. He began leading groups of right-wing college students to undergo basic training with the GSDF in the hope of training 100 officers to lead the National Guard.<ref name="higun1">Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="JNG-d">Template:Citation collected in Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="mura4-1-1">Template:Harvnb</ref>

Finding that his plan for a large-scale Japan National Guard with broad public and private support had failed to catch on,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Mishima formed the Tatenokai ("Shield Society"), a private militia composed primarily of right-wing college students, on 5 October 1968. Mishima accepted no outside money, and funded the activities of the Tatenokai using royalties from his writing.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> The Tatenokai primarily focused on martial training and physical fitness, including traditional kendo sword-fighting and long-distance running.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> Live-fire training was also conducted.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> Mishima personally oversaw this training. Initial membership was around 50, and was drawn primarily from students from Waseda University and individuals affiliated with the Controversy Journal. The number of Tatenokai members was later increased to exactly 100.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="higun1"/>

File:Mishima Yukio 1969.jpg
Mishima delivering his speech on the balcony

On 25 November 1970, Mishima and four members of the Tatenokai—Masakatsu Morita, Template:Nihongo, Template:Nihongo, and Hiroyasu Koga—used a pretext to visit Template:Nihongo, the commandant of Template:Nihongo, a military base in central Tokyo and the headquarters of the Eastern Command of the Japan Self-Defense Forces.<ref name="film">Template:Cite news</ref> Once inside, they barricaded the door to Mashita's office and tied him to his chair. Mishima wore a white hachimaki headband with a red hinomaru circle in the center bearing the kanji for Template:Nihongo, a reference to the last words of Kusunoki Masasue, the younger brother of the 14th-century imperial loyalist samurai Kusunoki Masashige, as the two brothers died fighting to defend the emperor.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

Holding a prepared manifesto and a banner listing their demands, Mishima stepped out onto the balcony to address the soldiers gathered below. His speech was intended to inspire a coup d'état to restore direct rule to the emperor. He succeeded only in irritating the soldiers, and was heckled, with jeers and the noise of helicopters drowning out some parts of his speech. In his speech, Mishima rebuked the JSDF for their passive acceptance of a constitution that "denies (their) own existence" and shouted to rouse them, "Where has the spirit of the samurai gone?" In a final Template:Nihongo that Morita and Ogawa scattered copies of from the balcony, Mishima expressed his dissatisfaction with the half-baked nature of the JSDF: "It is self-evident that the United States would not be pleased with a true Japanese volunteer army protecting the land of Japan."<ref name="geki">Mishima's Template:Nihongo (last Manifesto) on 25 November 1970 was collected in Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

After he finished reading his prepared speech in a few minutes' time, Mishima cried out Template:Nihongo three times. He then retreated into the commandant's office and apologized to the commandant, saying, "We did it to return the JSDF to the Emperor. I had no choice but to do this."<ref name="date5">Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="date6">Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="naka4">Template:Harvnb</ref> Mishima then committed seppuku, a form of ritual suicide by disembowelment associated with the samurai. Morita had been assigned to serve as Mishima's second (kaishakunin), cutting off his head with a sword at the end of the rite to spare him unnecessary pain. However, Morita proved unable to complete his task, and after three failed attempts to sever Mishima's head, Hiroyasu Koga had to step in and complete the task.<ref name="date5" /><ref name="date6" /><ref name="naka4" />

According to the testimony of the surviving coup members, originally all four Tatenokai members had planned to commit seppuku along with Mishima.<ref name="saigo">Template:Harvnb</ref> However, Mishima attempted to dissuade them and three of the members acquiesced to his wishes.<ref name="saigo"/> Only Morita persisted, saying, "I can't let Mr. Mishima die alone."<ref name="saigo"/> But Mishima knew that Morita had a girlfriend and still hoped he might live. Just before his seppuku, Mishima tried one more time to dissuade him, saying "Morita, you must live, not die."<ref name="saigo"/><ref name="mochi-o">Template:Harvnb</ref>Template:EfnTemplate:Efn Nevertheless, after Mishima's seppuku, Morita knelt and stabbed himself in the abdomen and Koga acted as kaishakunin again.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Another traditional element of the suicide ritual was the composition of death poems by the Tatenokai members prior to their entry into the headquarters.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

This coup attempt is called the Template:Nihongo in Japan.Template:Efn

Mishima had planned his suicide meticulously for at least a year, with no one outside a small group of hand-picked Tatenokai members knowing of his plans.<ref name="naka3">Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="juro4">Template:Harvnb</ref> Mishima had made sure his affairs were in order and left money for the legal defense of the three surviving Tatenokai members involved in the incident.<ref name="juro4"/> Mishima had also arranged for a department store to send his two children Christmas gifts every year until they became adults,<ref>Template:Cite journal December 12th issue, Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Mitsuo Fujita ”Commentary” (Appendix) Template:Harvnb</ref> and had asked a publisher to pay the long-term subscription fee for children's magazines in advance and deliver them every month.<ref name="azusa4-p">Template:Harvnb</ref>

Much speculation has surrounded Mishima's suicide. One of Mishima's biographers, translator John Nathan, suggests that the coup attempt was only a pretext for the ritual suicide of which Mishima had long dreamed.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> Mishima's friend Henry Scott-Stokes, another biographer, noted a meeting with Mishima in his diary entry for 3 September 1970 at which Mishima, with a dark expression on his face, said:

Japan has lost its spiritual tradition, and instead has become infested with materialism. Japan is under the curse of a green snake now. The green snake is biting Japan's chest. There is no way to escape this curse.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

Scott-Stokes told Template:Ill in 1990 that he took the "green snake" to mean the U.S. dollar.<ref name="Tokuoka 1999-11cap-h">Template:Harvnb</ref>

One researcher has speculated that Mishima chose 25 November for his coup attempt in order to set his period of bardo until his reincarnation, such that the 49th day after his death would coincide with his birthday, 14 January.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> Mishima's remains were returned to his family the day after the incident, and were buried in the grave of the Hiraoka family at Tama Cemetery on what would have been his 46th birthday, 14 January 1971.<ref name="azusa1-a">Template:Harvnb</ref>

LegacyEdit

File:170505 Mishima Yukio Literary Museum Yamanakako Japan02n.jpg
Mishima Yukio Literary Museum in Yamanakako, Yamanashi

Mishima has been recognized as one of the world's most important literary persons of the 20th century.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> Mishima wrote 34 novels, approximately 50 plays and 25 books of short stories, more than 35 books of essays, plus a libretto and one film.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

File:Grave of Yukio Mishima.jpg
Grave of Yukio Mishima in Tama Cemetery. The inscription reads, "Grave of Hiraoka family".

The annual Mishima Prize was established in 1998 by the literary publisher Shinchōsha to recognise groundbreaking Japanese literature. On 3 July 1999, the Template:Nihongo opened in Yamanakako, Yamanashi Prefecture.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

The Mishima Incident helped inspire the formation of Template:Nihongo groups in Japan, such as the "Issuikai", founded by Template:Nihongo, who was one of Tatenokai members and Mishima's follower. Compared to older pro-American, anti-communist groups such as Bin Akao's Greater Japan Patriotic Party, New Right groups such as the Issuikai tended to emphasize ethnic nationalism and anti-Americanism.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

A memorial service deathday for Mishima, called Template:Nihongo, is held every year in Japan on 25 November by the Template:Nihongo, as well as former members of the Template:Nihongo.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> A separate memorial service has also been held annually by former Tatenokai members from 1975 onwards, one year after Masahiro Ogawa, Masayoshi Koga, and Hiroyasu Koga were released on parole.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

A variety of cenotaphs and memorial stones have been erected in honor of Mishima's memory in various places around Japan. For example, stones have been erected at Hachiman Shrine in Kakogawa City, Hyōgo Prefecture, where his grandfather's permanent domicile was;<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> in front of the 2nd company corps at JGSDF Camp Takigahara;<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> and in one of Mishima's acquaintance's home garden.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> There is also a "Monument of Honor Yukio Mishima & Masakatsu Morita" in front of the Rissho University Shonan High school in Shimane Prefecture.<ref name="azusa6">Template:Harvnb</ref>

The Mishima Yukio Shrine was built in the suburb of Fujinomiya, Shizuoka Prefecture, on 9 January 1983.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

A 1985 biographical film by Paul Schrader titled Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters depicts his life and work, however it has not had a theatrical release inside Japan. A 2012 Japanese film titled 11:25 The Day He Chose His Own Fate examines Mishima's final day. The 1983 gay pornographic film Beautiful Mystery satirized homosexual undertones that were present during Mishima's career.<ref name="TimeOut">Template:Cite magazine</ref><ref name="Jacobin">Template:Cite magazine</ref>

In 2020, a documentary titled Template:Nihongo was released, based on the debate between Mishima and members of the Tokyo University Zenkyōtō on 13 May 1969.

On 14 January 2025, commemorative events to mark the 100th anniversary of Mishima's birth was held at two halls in Tokyo, in which Template:Nihongo, who was an actress of Mishima's troupe, and Tadanori Yokoo, an acquaintance of Mishima, talked at each venue about their memories of him.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

AwardsEdit

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Major worksEdit

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}}

LiteratureEdit

Japanese title English title Year (first appeared) English translator Year (English translation) ISBN
Template:Ubl "Forest in Full Bloom" 1941 Andrew Rankin 2000  
Template:Ubl "The Circus" 1948 Andrew Rankin 1999<ref name="trans">Template:Harvnb</ref>
Template:Ubl Thieves 1947–1948  
Template:Ubl Confessions of a Mask 1949 Meredith Weatherby 1958 Template:ISBNT
Template:Ubl Thirst for Love 1950 Alfred H. Marks 1969 Template:ISBNT
Template:Ubl Pure White Nights 1950  
Template:Ubl The Age of Blue 1950  
Template:Ubl Forbidden Colors 1951–1953 Alfred H. Marks 1968–1974 Template:ISBNT
Template:Ubl Death in Midsummer 1952 Edward G. Seidensticker 1956
Template:Ubl The Sound of Waves 1954 Meredith Weatherby 1956 Template:ISBNT
Template:Ubl "The Boy Who Wrote Poetry" 1954 Ian H. Levy (Hideo Levy) 1977<ref name="trans" />
Template:Ubl The Sunken Waterfall 1955  
Template:Ubl The Temple of the Golden Pavilion 1956 Ivan Morris 1959 Template:ISBNT
Template:Ubl Rokumeikan 1956 Hiroaki Sato 2002 Template:ISBNT
Template:Ubl Kyoko's House 1959  
Template:Ubl After the Banquet 1960 Donald Keene 1963 Template:ISBNT
Template:Ubl Star (novella) 1960<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Sam Bett 2019 Template:ISBNT
Template:Ubl "Patriotism" 1961 Geoffrey W. Sargent 1966 Template:ISBNT
Template:Ubl The Black Lizard 1961 Mark Oshima 2007 Template:ISBNT
Template:Ubl The Frolic of the Beasts 1961 Andrew Clare 2018 Template:ISBNT
Template:Ubl Beautiful Star 1962 Stephen Dodd 2022<ref>Margolis, Eric. "The Resurgence of a Japanese Literary Master: Fifty Years after his Death, Yukio Mishima is Reemerging in Translation." Metropolis. 31 July 2020.</ref><ref>"[1]"</ref> Template:Ubl
Template:Ubl The School of Flesh 1963  
Template:Ubl The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea 1963 John Nathan 1965 Template:ISBNT
Template:Ubl Silk and Insight 1964 Hiroaki Sato 1998 Template:ISBNT
Template:Ubl "Acts of Worship" 1965 John Bester 1995 Template:ISBNT
Template:Ubl "The Peacocks" 1965 Andrew Rankin 1999 Template:ISBNT
Template:Ubl Madame de Sade 1965 Donald Keene 1967 Template:ISBNT
Template:Ubl "The Voices of the Heroic Dead" 1966  
Template:Ubl The Decline and Fall of The Suzaku 1967 Hiroaki Sato 2002 Template:ISBNT
Template:Ubl Life for Sale 1968 Stephen Dodd 2019 Template:ISBNT
Template:Ubl My Friend Hitler and Other Plays 1968 Hiroaki Sato 2002 Template:ISBNT
Template:Ubl Template:Ill 1969 Hiroaki Sato 2002 Template:ISBNT
Template:Ubl The Sea of Fertility tetralogy: 1965–1971   Template:ISBNT
　　I. 春の雪Template:Avoid wrap 　　　1. Spring Snow 1965–1967 Michael Gallagher 1972 Template:ISBNT
　　II. 奔馬Template:Avoid wrap 　　　2. Runaway Horses 1967–1968 Michael Gallagher 1973 Template:ISBNT
　　III. 曉の寺Template:Avoid wrap 　　　3. The Temple of Dawn 1968–1970 E. Dale Saunders and Cecilia S. Seigle 1973 Template:ISBNT
　　IV. 天人五衰Template:Avoid wrap 　　　4. The Decay of the Angel 1970–1971 Edward Seidensticker 1974 Template:ISBNT

Critical essayEdit

Japanese title English title Year (first appeared) English translation, year ISBN
Template:Ubl The Cup of Apollo 1952  
Template:Ubl Lectures on Immoral Education 1958–1959  
Template:Ubl My Wandering Period 1963  
Template:Ubl Sun and Steel 1965–1968 John Bester Template:ISBNT
Template:Ubl On Hagakure: The Samurai Ethic and Modern Japan 1967 Kathryn Sparling, 1977 Template:ISBNT
Template:Ubl On the Defense of Culture 1968  
Template:Ubl Template:Ubl 1970 Harris I. Martin, 1971<ref name="trans" />

Plays for classical Japanese theatreEdit

In addition to contemporary-style plays such as Madame de Sade, Mishima wrote for two of the three genres of classical Japanese theatre: Noh and Kabuki (as a proud Tokyoite, he would not even attend the Bunraku puppet theatre, always associated with Osaka and the provinces).<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Though Mishima took themes, titles and characters from the Noh canon, his twists and modern settings, such as hospitals and ballrooms, startled audiences accustomed to the long-settled originals.

Donald Keene translated Five Modern Noh Plays (Tuttle, 1981; Template:ISBN). Most others remain untranslated and so lack an "official" English title; in such cases it is therefore preferable to use the rōmaji title.

Year (first appeared) Japanese title English title Genre
1950 Template:Ubl The Magic Pillow Noh
1951 Template:Ubl The Damask Drum Noh
1952 Template:Ubl Komachi at the Gravepost Noh
1954 Template:Ubl The Lady Aoi Noh
1954 Template:Ubl The Sardine Seller's Net of Love Kabuki
1955 Template:Ubl The Waiting Lady with the Fan Noh
1955 Template:Ubl Template:Ubl Kabuki
1957 Template:Ubl Dōjōji Temple Noh
1959 Template:Ubl Yuya Noh
1960 Template:Ubl The Blind Young Man Noh
1969 Template:Ubl Template:Ubl Kabuki

FilmsEdit

Mishima starred in multiple films. Patriotism was written and funded by himself, and he directed it in close cooperation with Masaki Domoto. Mishima also wrote a detailed account of the whole process, in which the particulars regarding costume, shooting expenses and the film's reception are delved into. Patriotism won the second prize at the Tours International Short Film Festival in January 1966.<ref>Template:Cite journal collected in Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal collected in Template:Harvnb booklet</ref>

Year Title United States release title(s) Character Director
1951 Template:Ubl Unreleased in the U.S. an extra (dance party scene) Hideo Ōba
1959 Template:Ubl Unreleased in the U.S. himself as navigator Katsumi Nishikawa
1960 Template:Ubl Afraid to Die Template:Ubl Yasuzo Masumura
1966 Template:Ubl Template:Ubl Template:Ubl Template:Ubl
1968 Template:Ubl Black Lizard Human Statue Kinji Fukasaku
1969 Template:Ubl Tenchu! Tanaka Shinbei Hideo Gosha

Works about MishimaEdit

Collection of Photographs
Books
Film, TV

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Music
Theatre
  • Yukio Mishima, a play by Adam Darius and Kazimir Kolesnik, first performed at Holloway Prison, London, in 1991, and later in Finland, Slovenia and Portugal.
  • M, a ballet spectacle work homage to Mishima by Maurice Béjart in 1993<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>
Manga, Games

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Poetry
Art

See alsoEdit

NotesEdit

Template:Notelist

ReferencesEdit

Template:Reflist

SourcesEdit

Template:Refbegin

Template:Refend

External linksEdit

Template:Sister project Template:Sister project 

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