Yukio Mishima
Kimitake Hiraoka, known also under the pen name Yukio Mishima, was a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor, model, film director, nationalist, and founder of the Tatenokai. Mishima is considered one of the most important Japanese authors of the 20th century. He was considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968, but the award went to his countryman and friend Yasunari Kawabata. His works include the novels Confessions of a Mask and The Temple of the Golden Pavilion as well as 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".
Mishima's personal life was controversial, and he remains a controversial figure in modern Japan. Ideologically a right-wing nationalist who opposed the westernization of Japan, Mishima formed the Tatenokai, an unarmed civilian militia, for the avowed purpose of restoring power to the Japanese Emperor. On November 25, 1970, Mishima and four members of his militia entered a military base in central Tokyo, took the commandant hostage, and attempted to inspire the Japan Self-Defense Forces to overturn Japan's 1947 Constitution. When this was unsuccessful, Mishima committed seppuku.
Life and work
Early life
Mishima was born in the Yotsuya district of Tokyo. His father was Azusa Hiraoka, a government official, and his mother, Shizue, was the daughter of the 5th principal of the Kaisei Academy. Shizue's father, Kenzō Hashi, was a scholar of Chinese classics, and the Hashi family had served the Maeda clan for generations in Kaga Domain. Mishima's paternal grandparents were Sadatarō Hiraoka and Natsuko Hiraoka. He had a younger sister, Mitsuko, who died of typhus in 1945 at the age of 17, and a younger brother, Chiyuki.Mishima's early childhood was dominated by the presence of his grandmother, Natsuko, who took the boy, separating him from his immediate family for several years. Natsuko was the granddaughter of Matsudaira Yoritaka, the daimyō of Shishido in Hitachi Province, and had been raised in the household of Prince Arisugawa Taruhito; she maintained considerable aristocratic pretensions even after marrying Mishima's grandfather, 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. Through his grandmother, Mishima was a direct descendant of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Natsuko was prone to violence and morbid outbursts, which are occasionally alluded to in Mishima's works. It is to Natsuko that some biographers have traced Mishima's fascination with death. Natsuko did not allow Mishima to venture into the sunlight, to engage in any kind of sport or to play with other boys; he spent much of his time alone or with female cousins and their dolls.
Mishima returned to his immediate family when he was 12. His father was a man with a taste for military discipline, and employed parenting tactics such as holding the young boy up to the side of a speeding train. He also raided Mishima's room for evidence of an "effeminate" interest in literature and often ripped apart the boy's manuscripts.
Schooling and early works
At the age of six, Mishima enrolled in the elite Gakushūin, the Peers' School in Tokyo.At twelve, Mishima began to write his first stories. He voraciously read the works of numerous classic Japanese authors as well as Raymond Radiguet, Oscar Wilde, Rainer Maria Rilke and other European authors, both in translation and in the original. He studied German, French, and English. After six years at school, he became the youngest member of the editorial board of its literary society. Mishima was attracted to the works of the Japanese author Michizō Tachihara, which in turn created an appreciation for the classical Japanese poetry form of waka. Mishima's first published works included waka poetry before he turned his attention to prose.
He was invited to write a short story for the Gakushūin literary magazine and submitted Hanazakari no Mori, a story in which the narrator describes the feeling that his ancestors somehow still live within him. Mishima's teachers were so impressed that they recommended the story to the prestigious literary magazine Bungei-Bunka. The story makes use of the metaphors and aphorisms that later became his trademarks and was published in book form in 1944 in a limited edition because of the wartime shortage of paper. To protect him from a possible backlash from his schoolmates, his teachers coined the pen-name "Yukio Mishima".
Mishima's story Tabako, published in 1946, describes some of the scorn and bullying he faced at school when he later confessed to members of the school's rugby union club that he belonged to the literary society. This trauma also provided material for the later story Shi o Kaku Shōnen in 1954.
Mishima received a draft notice for the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. At the time of his medical check up, he had a cold, and the young army doctor heard rales from the lung which was misdiagnosed as tuberculosis; Mishima was declared unfit for service.
Although his authoritarian father had forbidden him to write any further stories, Mishima continued to write every night in secret, supported and protected by his mother, who was always the first to read a new story. Attending lectures during the day and writing at night, Mishima graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1947. He obtained a position as an official in the government's Finance Ministry and was set up for a promising career. However, Mishima had exhausted himself so much that his father agreed to his resigning from the position during the first year of employment to devote himself to writing.
Post-war literature
Mishima wrote novels, popular serial novellas, short stories and literary essays, as well as highly acclaimed plays for the Kabuki theatre and modern versions of traditional Noh drama. Kemono no Tawamure is considered a parody of the classical Noh play Motomezuka, written in the fourteenth century by the playwright Kiyotsugu Kan'ami. Mishima began the short story Misaki nite no Monogatari in 1945, and continued to work on it through the end of World War II. In January 1946, he visited famed writer Yasunari Kawabata in Kamakura, taking with him the manuscripts for Chūsei and Tabako, and asking for Kawabata's advice and assistance. In June 1946, following Kawabata's recommendations, Tabako was published in the new literary magazine Ningen.Also in 1946, Mishima began his first novel, Tōzoku, a story about two young members of the aristocracy drawn towards suicide. It was published in 1948, placing Mishima in the ranks of the Second Generation of Postwar Writers. He followed with Confessions of a Mask, a semi-autobiographical account of a young homosexual who must hide behind a mask to fit into society. The novel was extremely successful and made Mishima a celebrity at the age of 24. Around 1949, Mishima published a series of essays in Kindai Bungaku on Yasunari Kawabata, for whom he had always had a deep appreciation.
His writing gained him international celebrity and a sizeable following in Europe and the United States, as many of his most famous works were translated into English. Mishima traveled extensively; in 1952 he visited Greece, which had fascinated him since childhood. Elements from his visit appear in Shiosai, which was published in 1954, and drew inspiration from the Greek legend of Daphnis and Chloe.
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 of the famous temple in Kyoto. Utage no ato, published in 1960, so closely followed the events surrounding politician Hachirō Arita's campaign to become governor of Tokyo that Mishima was sued for invasion of privacy. In 1962, Mishima's most avant-garde work, Utsukushii hoshi, which at times comes close to science fiction, was published to mixed critical response.
Mishima was considered for the Nobel Prize for Literature three times and was a favourite of many foreign publications. 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. 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.
Acting and modelling
Mishima was also an actor, and had a starring role in Yasuzo Masumura's 1960 film, Afraid to Die. He also had roles in films including Yukoku, Black Lizard and Hitokiri. He also sang the theme song for Afraid to Die.Mishima was featured as a photo model in Ba-ra-kei: Ordeal by Roses by Eikoh Hosoe, as well as in Young Samurai: Bodybuilders of Japan and Otoko: Photo Studies of the Young Japanese Male by Tamotsu Yatō. American author Donald Richie gave a short lively account of Mishima, dressed in a loincloth and armed with a sword, posing in the snow for one of Tamotsu Yato's photoshoots.
Private life
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. In his 1968 essay Sun and Steel, Mishima deplored the emphasis given by intellectuals to the mind over the body. Mishima later also became very skilled at kendo, traditional Japanese swordsmanship.After briefly considering a marital alliance with Michiko Shōda, Mishima married Yoko Sugiyama on June 11, 1958. The couple had two children: a daughter named Noriko and a son named Iichiro.
While working on Forbidden Colors, Mishima visited gay bars in Japan. Mishima's sexual orientation was an issue that bothered his widow, and she always denied his homosexuality after his death. In 1998, the writer Jiro Fukushima published an account of his relationship with Mishima in 1951, including fifteen letters between himself and the famed novelist. Mishima's children successfully sued Fukushima for violation of his privacy and copyright.
In 1967, Mishima enlisted in the Ground Self-Defense Force and underwent basic training. A year later, he formed the Tatenokai, a private militia composed primarily of young students who studied martial principles and physical discipline, and swore to protect the Emperor of Japan. 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, Mishima denounced Emperor Hirohito for renouncing his claim of divinity after World War II, arguing that millions of Japanese had died in the war for their "living god" Emperor, and that the Showa Emperor's renouncing his divinity meant that all those deaths were in vain.
In the final ten years of his life, Mishima wrote several full-length plays, acted in several films, and co-directed an adaptation of one of his stories, Patriotism, the Rite of Love and Death. He also continued work on his final tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility, which appeared in monthly serialized format from September 1965.
Mishima espoused a very individual brand of nationalism towards the end of his life. He was hated by leftists, in particular for his outspoken commitment to bushido, the code of the samurai, and by mainstream nationalists for his contention, in Bunka Bōeiron, that Hirohito should have abdicated and taken responsibility for the loss of life in the war.
Coup attempt and ritual suicide
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 the Japan Self-Defense Forces. Inside, they barricaded the office and tied the commandant to his chair. With a prepared manifesto and a 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 to restore the power of the emperor. He succeeded only in irritating the soldiers, and was mocked and jeered. He finished his planned speech after a few minutes, returned to the commandant's office and performed seppuku. The assisting kaishakunin duty at the end of this ritual had been assigned to Tatenokai member Masakatsu Morita, who was unable to properly perform the task. After three failed attempts at severing Mishima's head, he allowed another Tatenokai member, Hiroyasu Koga, to behead Mishima. Morita then knelt and stabbed himself in the abdomen and Koga again performed the kaishakunin duty. This coup is called "Mishima jiken" in Japan.Another traditional element of the suicide ritual was the composition of so-called 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 defence of the three surviving Tatenokai members.
Legacy
Much speculation has surrounded Mishima's suicide. At the time of his death he had just completed the final book in his Sea of Fertility tetralogy. He was recognized as one of the most important post-war stylists of the Japanese language. Mishima wrote 34 novels, about 50 plays, about 25 books of short stories, and at least 35 books of essays, one libretto, as well as one film.Mishima's grave is located at the Tama Cemetery in Fuchū, Tokyo. The Mishima Prize was established in 1988 to honor his life and works. On July 3, 1999, "Mishima Yukio Bungaku-kan" was opened in Yamanakako.
A 1985 biographical film by Paul Schrader titled ' depicts his life and work; however, it has never been given a theatrical presentation in Japan. A 2012 film titled ' also looks at Mishima's last day.
In 2014, Mishima was one of the inaugural honourees in the Rainbow Honor Walk, a walk of fame in San Francisco's Castro neighbourhood noting LGBTQ people who have "made significant contributions in their fields."
David Bowie painted a large expressionist portrait of Mishima, which he hung at his Berlin residence.
Awards
- Shincho Prize from Shinchosha Publishing, 1954, for The Sound of Waves
- Kishida Prize for Drama from Shinchosha Publishing, 1955 for
- Yomiuri Prize from Yomiuri Newspaper Co., for best novel, 1956, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
- Shuukan Yomiuri Prize for Shingeki from Yomiuri Newspaper Co., 1958, for
- Yomiuri Prize from Yomiuri Newspaper Co., for best drama, 1961,
- One of six finalists for the Nobel Prize in Literature, 1963.
- Mainichi Art Prize from Mainichi Shimbun, 1964, for Silk and Insight
- Art Festival Prize from Ministry of Education, 1965, for Madame de Sade
Major works
Literature
| Japanese title | English title | Year | English translation, year | ISBN |
| 假面の告白 （仮面の告白） Kamen no Kokuhaku | Confessions of a Mask | 1949 | Meredith Weatherby, 1958, Peter Owen Publishers, reissue due December 2017. | |
| 愛の渇き Ai no Kawaki | Thirst for Love | 1950 | Alfred H. Marks, 1969 | |
| 禁色 Kinjiki | Forbidden Colors | 1951–1953 | Alfred H. Marks, 1968–1974 | |
| 潮騷 Shiosai | The Sound of Waves | 1954 | Meredith Weatherby, 1956 | |
| 金閣寺 Kinkaku-ji | The Temple of the Golden Pavilion | 1956 | Ivan Morris, 1959 | |
| 鏡子の家 Kyōko no Ie | Kyoko's House | 1959 | ||
| 宴のあと Utage no Ato | After the Banquet | 1960 | Donald Keene, 1963 | |
| 黒蜥蜴 Kuro Tokage | The Black Lizard | 1961 | Mark Oshima, 2007 | |
| 獣の戯れ Kemono no Tawamure | The Frolic of the Beasts | 1961 | Andrew Clare, 2018 | |
| スタア "Sutā" | Star | 1960 | Sam Bett, 2019 | 978-0811228428 |
| 午後の曳航 Gogo no Eikō | The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea | 1963 | John Nathan, 1965 | |
| 肉体の学校 Nikutai no Gakkō | The School of Flesh | 1963 | ||
| 絹と明察 Kinu to Meisatsu | Silk and Insight | 1964 | Hiroaki Sato, 1998 | |
| 三熊野詣 Mikumano Mōde | Acts of Worship | 1965 | John Bester, 1995 | |
| サド侯爵夫人 Sado Kōshaku Fujin | Madame de Sade | 1965 | Donald Keene, 1967 | |
| 憂國（憂国） Yūkoku | "Patriotism" | 1960 | Geoffrey W. Sargent, 1966 | |
| 真夏の死 Manatsu no Shi | Death in Midsummer and other stories | 1953 | Edward G. Seidensticker, Ivan Morris, Donald Keene, Geoffrey W. Sargent, 1966 | |
| 鹿鳴館 Rokumeikan | Rokumeikan | 1956 | Hiroaki Sato, 2002 | |
| 葉隠入門 Hagakure Nyūmon | Way of the Samurai | 1967 | Kathryn Sparling, 1977 | |
| 朱雀家の滅亡 Suzaku-ke no Metsubō | The Decline and Fall of The Suzaku | 1967 | Hiroaki Sato, 2002 | |
| わが友ヒットラー Waga Tomo Hittorā | My Friend Hitler and Other Plays | 1968 | Hiroaki Sato, 2002 | |
| 命売ります Inochi Urimasu | Life for Sale | 1968 | Stephen Dodd, 2019 | 978-0241333143 |
| 癩王のテラス Raiō no Terasu | The Terrace of The Leper King | 1969 | Hiroaki Sato, 2002 | |
| 太陽と鐡 （太陽と鉄） Taiyō to Tetsu | Sun and Steel | 1968 | John Bester | |
| 豐饒の海 （豊饒の海） Hōjō no Umi | The Sea of Fertility tetralogy: | 1965–1970 | ||
| I. 春の雪 Haru no Yuki | 1. Spring Snow | 1969 | Michael Gallagher, 1972 | |
| II. 奔馬 Honba | 2. Runaway Horses | 1969 | Michael Gallagher, 1973 | |
| III. 曉の寺 Akatsuki no Tera | 3. The Temple of Dawn | 1970 | E. Dale Saunders and Cecilia S. Seigle, 1973 | |
| IV. 天人五衰 Tennin Gosui | 4. The Decay of the Angel | 1971 | Edward Seidensticker, 1974 |
Plays for classical Japanese theatre
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.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. Most others remain untranslated and so lack an "official" English title; in such cases it is therefore preferable to use the rōmaji title.
| Year | Japanese title | English title | Genre |
| 1950 | 邯鄲 Kantan | The Magic Pillow | Noh |
| 1951 | 綾の鼓 Aya no Tsuzumi | The Damask Drum | Noh |
| 1952 | 卒塔婆小町 Sotoba Komachi | Komachi at the Gravepost | Noh |
| 1954 | 葵の上 Aoi no Ue | The Lady Aoi | Noh |
| 1954 | 鰯賣戀曳網 Iwashi Uri Koi Hikiami | The Sardine Seller's Net of Love | Kabuki |
| 1955 | 芙蓉露大内実記 Fuyō no Tsuyu Ōuchi Jikki | The Blush on the White Hibiscus Blossom: Lady Fuyo and the True Account of the Ōuchi Clan | Kabuki |
| 1955 | 班女 Hanjo | Noh | |
| 1957 | 道成寺 Dōjōji | Dōjōji Temple | Noh |
| 1959 | 熊野 Yuya | Noh | |
| 1960 | 弱法師 Yoroboshi | The Blind Young Man | Noh |
| 1969 | 椿説弓張月 Chinsetsu Yumiharizuki | A Wonder Tale: The Moonbow or Half Moon : The Adventures of Tametomo | Kabuki |
Films
Works about Mishima
- Mishima, Aesthetic Terrorist: An Intellectual Portrait by Andrew Rankin
- Ba-ra-kei: Ordeal by Roses by Eikō Hosoe and Mishima
- Deadly Dialectics: Sex, Violence, and Nihilism in the World of Yukio Mishima by Roy Starrs
- Escape from the Wasteland: Romanticism and Realism in the Fiction of Mishima Yukio and Oe Kenzaburo by Susan J. Napier
- Mishima: A Biography by John Nathan
- Mishima ou la vision du vide
- Rogue Messiahs: Tales of Self-Proclaimed Saviors by Colin Wilson,
- The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima, by Henry Scott Stokes
- The Madness and Perversion of Yukio Mishima by Jerry S. Piven.
- Teito Monogatari by Hiroshi Aramata,
- Yukio Mishima by Peter Wolfe
- "Portrait of the Author as a Historian" by Alexander Lee – an analysis of the central political and social threads in Mishima's novels
- Yukio Mishima, Terror and Postmodern Japan by Richard Appignanesi
- Mishima's Sword – Travels in Search of a Samurai Legend by Christopher Ross
- Yukio Mishima's Report to the Emperor by Richard Appignanesi
- Reflections on the Death Of Mishima by Henry Miller
- ', a film directed by Paul Schrader
- The Strange Case of Yukio Mishima BBC documentary directed by Michael Macintyre
- Yukio Mishima: Samurai Writer, a BBC documentary on Yukio Mishima, directed by Michael Macintyre,
- 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.
- String Quartet No.3, "Mishima", by Philip Glass. A reworking of parts of his soundtrack for the film Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters it has a duration of 18 minutes.
- ', a film directed by Kōji Wakamatsu
- Death and Night and Blood , a song by the Stranglers from the Black and White album
- Forbidden Colours, a song on Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence soundtrack by Ryuichi Sakamoto with lyrics by David Sylvian.
- ' by Naoki Inose with Hiroaki Sato
- Biografia Ilustrada de Mishima by Mario Bellatin
- ' , a documentary film directed by Keiisuke Toyoshima