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Yukio Mishima (三島 由紀夫 Mishima Yukio?) was the public name of Kimitake Hiraoka (平岡 公威 Hiraoka Kimitake?, January 14, 1925—November 25, 1970), a Japanese author and playwright, famous for both his highly notable nihilistic post-war writings and the circumstances of his ritual suicide by seppuku.
Early lifeImage:Yukio Mishima 1931.gif Mishima in his childhood April, 1931.
Schooling and early worksImage:Mishima HighSchool.gif Young Mishima in school uniform February, 1940. After six miserable years at school, he still was a pale and frail teenager, but he started to do well and became the youngest member of the editorial board in the literary society at the school. Mishima was attracted to the works of Tachihara Michizo, which in turn created an appreciation for the classical poetry form of the waka. Mishima's first published works included waka poetry, before he turned his attention to prose.[citation needed] Mishima was invited to write a prose short story for the Peers’ School literary magazine and submitted Hanazakari no Mori (The Forest in Full Bloom), a story in which the narrator describes the feeling that his ancestors somehow still live within him, due to a shared love of the sea and the southern sun.[citation needed] Mishima’s teachers were so impressed with the work that they recommended it for the prestigious literary magazine, Bungei-Bunka (Literary Culture) which they helped edit.[citation needed] The story, which makes use of the metaphors and aphorisms which later came to typify Mishima’s writing, was published in book form in 1944, albeit in a limited fashion (4000 copies) due to the wartime shortage of paper. In order to protect Mishima from a backlash from his schoolmates, his teachers coined a pen-name, “Mishima Yukio” for the young Hiraoka Kimitake.[citation needed] Mishima's story Tabako (The Cigarette) 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 club that he belonged to the school’s literary society. This trauma also provided material for the later story Shi o kaku shōnen (The Boy Who Wrote Poetry) in 1954.
Although his father had forbidden him to write any further stories, Mishima continued to write secretly every night, supported and protected by his mother Shizue, who was always the first to read a new story. After school, his father, who sympathized with the Nazis, wouldn't allow him to pursue a writer's career, but instead forced him to study German law.[citation needed] Attending lectures during the day and writing at night, Mishima graduated from the elite Tokyo University 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 Mishima's resignation of his position during his first year in order to devote his time to writing. Post-war literatureMishima began the short story Misaki nite no monogatari (A Story at the Cape) in 1945, and continued to work on it through the end of World War II. In January 1946, he visited famed writer Kawabata Yasunari in Kamakura, taking with him the manuscripts for Chūsei (The Middle Ages) and Tabako, asking for Kawabata’s advice and assistance. In June 1946, per Kawabata's recommendations, Tabako was published in the new literary magazine Ningen (Humanity).[citation needed] Also in 1946, Mishima began his first novel, Tōzoku (Thieves), 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 Kamen no Kokuhaku (Confessions of a Mask), an autobiographical work about a young latent homosexual who must hide behind a mask in order to fit into society. The novel was extremely successful and made Mishima a celebrity at the age of 24.[citation needed] Around 1949, Mishima published a series of essays in Kindai Bungaku on Kawabata Yasunari, of whom he always had a deep appreciation. Mishima was a disciplined and versatile writer. He wrote not only novels, popular serial novellas, short stories, and literary essays, but also highly-acclaimed plays for the Kabuki theater and modern versions of traditional Noh drama. His writing gained him international celebrity and a sizable following in Europe and America, as many of his most famous works were translated into English. Mishima traveled extensively; in 1952 he visited Greece, which had fascinated him since childhood. Elements from his visit appear in Shiosai (The Sound of the Waves), which was published in 1954, and which drew inspiration from the Greek legend of Daphnis and Chloe.[citation needed] Mishima made use of contemporary events in many of his works. Kinkakuji (The Temple of the Golden Pavilion) in 1956 is a fictionalization of the burning of the famous temple in Kyoto. Utage no Ato (After the Banquet) published in 1960 was based so closely on the events surrounding politician Arita Hachiro's campaign to become governor of Tokyo that Mishima was sued for invasion of privacy.[citation needed] In 1962, Mishima published his most avant-garde work, Utsukushii hoshi (Beautiful Planet), which at times comes close to resembling science-fiction. Its failure to attract attention came as a discouraging blow to Mishima's pride, and may have been one factor in his drift away from writing and into radical politics.[citation needed] Mishima was mentioned to get the Nobel Prize for Literature three times,[citation needed] and was the darling 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. It is also believed that Mishima wanted to leave the prize to the aging Kawabata, out of respect for the man who had first introduced him to the literary circles of Tokyo in the 1940s. Private lifeImage:Ishihara Mishima.jpg Yukio Mishima and now governor of Tokyo Shintaro Ishihara in 1956. After Confessions of a Mask, Mishima tried to leave behind the young man who had lived only inside his head, continuously flirting with death. He tried to tie himself to the real, physical world by taking up stringent physical exercise. 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. From the most unpromising material he forged an impressive physique, as the photographs he had taken show. In a later essay published in 1968, Taiyō to tetsu (Sun and Steel), Mishima deplores the emphasis given by intellectuals to the mind over the body. Mishima later also became very skillful at kendo (the Japanese martial art of swordfighting). Although he visited gay bars in Japan, Mishima reportedly remained an observer, and reportedly had affairs with men only when he traveled abroad.[citation needed] Mishima's sexual orientation remains a matter of debate. After briefly considering an alliance with Michiko Shoda—she later became the wife of Emperor Akihito—he married Yoko Sugiyama in 1958. Over the next three years, the couple had a daughter and a son. In 1967, Mishima enlisted in the Ground Self Defense Force (GSDF) and underwent basic training. A year later, he formed the Tatenokai (Shield Society), a private army composed primarily of young patriotic students who studied martial principles and physical discipline and who were trained through the GSDF under Mishima's tutelage, and who swore to protect the emperor.[citation needed] However, under Mishima's ideology, the emperor was not necessarily the reigning emperor, but rather the abstract essence of Japan. In Eirei no koe (Voices of the Heroic Dead) Mishima actually denounces Emperor Hirohito for renouncing his divinity at the end of World War II, as this dishonored the memory of the kamikaze fliers who gave up their lives for him. In the last ten years of his life, Mishima wrote several full length plays, acted in several movies 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, Hōjō no Umi (Sea of Fertility), which appeared in monthly serialized format starting in September 1965. Ritual suicideOn November 25, 1970, Mishima and four members of the Tatenokai under a pretext visited the commandant of the Ichigaya Camp - the Tokyo headquarters of the Eastern Command of Japan's Self-Defense Forces. Once inside, they proceeded to barricade the office and tied the commandant to his chair. With a prepared manifesto and banner listing their demands, Mishima stepped onto the balcony to address the gathered soldiers below. His speech was intended to inspire them to stage a coup d'etat and restore the Emperor to his rightful place.[citation needed] He succeeded only in irritating them and was mocked and jeered. As he was unable to make himself heard, he finished his planned speech after only a few minutes. He stepped back into the commandant's office and committed seppuku. The customary kaishakunin duty at the end of this ritual had been assigned to Tatenokai member Masakatsu Morita. But Morita, who was rumored to have been Mishima's lover, was unable to perform this task properly: after several failed attempts, he allowed another Tatenokai member, Hiroyasu Koga, to finish the job.[citation needed] Morita then attempted seppuku and was also beheaded by Koga.[citation needed] Another traditional element of the suicide ritual was the composition of jisei (death poems), before their entry into the headquarters.[5] Mishima prepared 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.[citation needed] Mishima must have known that his coup plot would never succeed and his biographer, translator, and former friend John Nathan suggests that the scenario was only a pretext for the ritual suicide of which Mishima had long dreamed.[citation needed] Mishima made sure his affairs were in order and even had the foresight to leave money for the defense at trial of the three surviving Tatenokai members. AftermathMuch speculation has surrounded Mishima's suicide. At the time of his death he had just completed the final book in his The Sea of Fertility tetralogy. He was recognized as one of the most important post-war stylists of the Japanese language. Mishima wrote 40 novels, 18 plays, 20 books of short stories, and at least 20 books of essays as well as one libretto. A large portion of this oeuvre comprises books written quickly for profit, but even if these are disregarded, a substantial body of work remains. Mishima espoused a very individual brand of 'nationalism' towards the end of his life (and in death).[citation needed] While he was hated by leftists (particularly students), in particular for his outspoken and, in their view, anachronistic commitment to the bushido code of the samurai, he was also hated by mainstream nationalists for his contention, in Bunka Boeiron (A Defense of Culture), that Emperor Hirohito should have abdicated and taken responsibility for the war dead.[citation needed] Awards
Major works
Plays for the classical Japanese theatreIn 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. (But not for the Bunraku: as a proud Tokyoite he would not even attend the puppet theatre, always associated with Osaka and the provinces).[6] Though Mishima took themes, titles and characters from the Noh canon, his twists and modern settings such as hospitals and ballrooms startle audiences accustomed to the long-settled originals. Donald Keene translated Five Modern Noh Plays (Tuttle, 1981; ISBN 0-8048-1380-9). Many of Mishima's other classical plays remain untranslated (as with much of these genres). Some lack even a clear consistent English title; these may best be referenced using the Romanized title.
Films
Works about Mishima
Notes & References
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