The Pleasures of an Analog Enthusiast / Special: A Squint-Eyed Look at Yukio Mishima (2025 Creative Award Entry)
A Squint-Eyed Look at Yukio Mishima
All lies are a form of originality.
They are a technique for standing out from others and creating a unique self.
――From "The Course on Immoral Education" by Yukio Mishima
Film: "MISHIMA" directed by Paul Schrader
In the memorial year of
Yukio Mishima's 100th birthday
This year (2025), which marks the memorial year of Yukio Mishima's 100th birthday, will surely see various commemorative projects rolled out leading up to the Yukoku-ki (the anniversary of his death). Therefore, I would like to humbly offer a proposal. Let us take this opportunity to lift the seal on the film "MISHIMA" (1985), which has been considered a phantom movie, and release it for general screening.
Although several speculations circulate regarding why this Japanese-American co-production, made 15 years after Mishima's death, has been treated as a taboo in Japan, the truth remains in the dark. As a result, it has never been officially screened, and even now, the only way to watch it is to play foreign software on a computer. Because of this, it is saddled with an impression of being something bizarre, and it would be a great pity if it were to pass by without ever being seen by most Japanese people. This is because it is a bona fide major film, with Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas as executive producers, and involving a stellar staff including director Paul Schrader, art direction by Eiko Ishioka, and music by Philip Glass.
Moreover, what is even more striking is that the cast is almost entirely composed of Japanese actors, with a galaxy of stars such as Ken Ogata, Naoko Otani, Haruko Kato, Toshio Hosokawa, Yasusuke Bando, Koichi Sato, Hisako Manda, Chishu Ryu, Kenji Sawada, Sachiko Hidari, Setsuko Karasuma, Tadanori Yokoo, Ri Reisen, Toshiyuki Nagashima, Ryo Ikebe... and so on. This magnificent spectacle reminds one of the series of "Chushingura" films produced during the golden age of Japanese cinema that frequently boasted an "all-star cast." Is this a far-fetched association? I do not think so.
The film "MISHIMA" begins with a scene of Yukio Mishima (Ken Ogata) waking up in bed in a white Western-style mansion in Magome, Tokyo, and putting on his "Tatenokai" uniform, and ends with a scene shortly after noon at the Eastern Army Headquarters of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force in Ichigaya, where he sits in seiza, opens his uniform jacket, and plunges the tip of a sword into his hairy abdomen. In other words, it centers on Mishima's actions on November 25, 1970 (Showa 45), punctuating the episodes of his life path leading up to this point with monochrome footage, and further inserting excerpts from three of his works, "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion," "Kyoko's House," and "Runaway Horses," as plays-within-a-play, overlaid with a verbose narration based on Mishima's own words, highlighting the conflict of binary oppositions such as words and reality, spirit and body, Emperor and revolution...
In this way, by combining a documentary recreation of the incident that shocked the world with flashbacks and fictional dramas, and wrapping it in an abundance of words, it is sublimated from a single moment in history into a legend. Is this not similar to the way "Chushingura" turned the incident where Oishi Kuranosuke and his band of former Ako retainers took revenge on Kira Yoshinaka into a legend?
The climax of "Chushingura" is likely the scene where the Ako ronin, having raided the Kira residence at dawn and annihilated the enemy, find that dawn is approaching without having located the crucial Yoshinaka. Similarly, in "MISHIMA," it is the scene where Mishima, along with four students including Masakatsu Morita of the "Tatenokai," binds the commandant at the Self-Defense Force base, takes him hostage, demands the assembly of all personnel, and begins a speech from the balcony in front of them, only to have it drowned out by noisy shouts and mockery. Under a limited time limit, the Ako ronin were able to achieve their goal at the last minute, but Mishima's life-long challenge ended in vain.
We have waited four years. The last year we waited passionately. We can wait no longer. We cannot wait for those who desecrate themselves. But let us wait thirty more minutes, the last thirty minutes. Let us rise together and die together for the sake of righteousness. Let us return Japan to its true form and die there. Is it acceptable for the soul to die just for the sake of respecting life? What kind of army is it that has no value higher than respecting life? Now we will show you the location of a value higher than respecting life. It is not freedom, nor is it democracy. It is Japan. The country of history and tradition that we love, Japan. ...
This is a passage from the "檄" (檄文/Manifesto) prepared at that time. These words, which Mishima carved into the end of his 45-year life, are still wandering, released into the void in vain. On the memorial year of his 100th birthday, would it not be significant for us to face it again as an unprecedented legend in order to think about the future of Japan?
Book: "The Course on Immoral Education" by Yukio Mishima
His relaxed pen
inadvertently reveals his inner thoughts
Shueisha launched "Weekly Myojo" in 1952 for young female readers, and one of its flagship projects was a serialized essay by the popular author of the day, Yukio Mishima, titled "The Course on Immoral Education." For the 27-year-old Mishima at the time, this work for a new medium seemed to be particularly enjoyable, and he wielded his pen with unusual relaxation, and it is very interesting to see glimpses of where he seems to have inadvertently revealed his inner thoughts.
The first installment, titled "You Should Go to a Bar Even with a Man You Don't Know," describes an episode where he invited three girls he met on a back street in Ginza one weekend night to a "rockabilly cafe." Of course, this is not a behavior to be praised today, but let's overlook that for now.
The trio followed me, jumping and skipping, and they were so innocent that I didn't feel bad about it either. Regardless of appearance, I like innocent people the best. We introduced ourselves to each other. A-ko looked a bit like the old actress Akiko Shiga, wore eyeliner under her eyes, and had rich features, but sometimes showed an expression of weariness that didn't suit her age. C-ko had a long face that looked like a mature woman. B-ko was the cutest, looked like my first love, had a dazed feeling, and in fact, she looked like she was trying her best to imitate her two bad friends, knowing nothing at all. All three of them said they were second-year high school students.
The "person of my first love" in the text likely refers to Kuniko, the younger sister of his Gakushuin classmate Shin Mitani, who was the model for "Sonoko Kusano" who appears in "Confessions of a Mask" (1949). Reporting on a key person who holds significant meaning in his literary world by superimposing her onto a girl he met for the first time seems to me unlike Mishima, who is usually thorough in everything. After this, while chatting idly to the accompaniment of a jazz band, as the girls playfully pulled on Mishima's hairy arms, his mood suddenly changed.
But from my point of view, I felt that at least A-ko and C-ko had something that betrayed their initial fresh impression. Thinking that, I felt strangely dejected. I didn't feel any malice toward them, but somehow, seeing their profiles as they smoked cigarettes, showing a mismatched cocktail of an attitude of walking with their chests puffed out with vitality and a somewhat languid attitude, with weariness oozing from their eyeliner-lined eyes at the age of seventeen or eighteen, I felt very sorry for them, felt they were pitiful. Adults don't just blindly yearn for youth; from an adult's perspective, one can also well understand the pathos of youth.
What is the reason for this naivety? Isn't this a completely different face from the Mishima who, as a standard-bearer of postwar literature, was depicting the love patterns of the "après-guerre" (postwar generation) in "Thirst for Love" (1950) and "Forbidden Colors, Part 1" (1951) in such a naked manner? There, I am reminded of something. Jakucho Setouchi, in her memoir "Kien Mandara" (2008) written in her later years, left behind her impression of when she first visited Mishima's home and met him shortly after her debut as a writer, like this:
"Mishima-san, who appeared without having to wait in a small room by the entrance, was wearing a navy-blue kasuri kimono with short hems, looking just like a student, and didn't look like the dazzling popular writer at all. I was overwhelmed by the thickness of the chest hair peeking out at the chest, and the magnificent body hair that didn't match his poor-looking, onion-like legs visible when he stood or sat. His complexion was pale, his build was slender, and if you didn't see his thick body hair, you could say he had a feminine build."
It is thought that Setouchi visited just around the time Mishima was writing the "Course on Immoral Education" series. As her observant eye aptly perceived (Onion-like legs!), at the time he was far from the image of a popular writer, wearing a slender and feminine atmosphere, and that probably extended not only to his appearance but also to his inner self. As is well known, in later years, Mishima began a physical transformation into a "warrior" through bodybuilding, and eventually rushed toward seppuku at the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force Ichigaya base, so we tend to be captivated by his "thought" and "action," but in fact, we should also know that such a feminine and naive "sensibility" resided within his heart.
Later, in the installment of this serialized essay titled "You Should Tell Great Lies," the following words were written.
All lies are a form of originality. They are a technique for standing out from others and creating a unique self.
Music: Opera "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion" composed by Toshiro Mayuzumi
Only then
will I be free
The reason why Toshiro Mayuzumi, a composer of the same generation as Yukio Mishima, took on the opera "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion" is due to the following circumstances. Around 1968, a plan for a new Japanese opera performance was brought up by Gustav Rudolf Sellner, the general director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, through music critic Hidekazu Yoshida, and after repeated discussions by both sides, it was in 1970 that Mishima's novel "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion" (1956) was decided as the material. So, in the summer of that year, when Mayuzumi approached Mishima for permission to adapt it into an opera and to write the libretto, it is said that after agreeing to the former, he returned the following answer:
"When it comes to opera, I love Italian opera in the style of Shinpa grand tragedy, and Sellner's style of expressionism doesn't suit my temperament, so please excuse me from the libretto. But I will be happy to go see the premiere."
However, this should be called an excuse. At this time, while Mishima was working on the completion of his life's work "The Sea of Fertility," he was planning a "final action" in which the "Tatenokai" and the Self-Defense Force would stage an armed uprising, so he should not have had such spare energy or remaining time. In the end, it settled into a form where Mayuzumi would compose music for a German libretto compiled by Klaus M. Henneberg of the Deutsche Oper Berlin.
Thus, an opera requiring a total of 10 singers, a mixed chorus, and a full orchestra, consisting of 3 acts and taking about 2 hours of actual performance time, was completed in 1976 after Mishima's death, and after its world premiere in Berlin in June of the same year, it had its Japanese premiere in August 1991 (the live recording of this is on CD), and has been repeated several times since then to the present day.
On stage, instead of the first-person confessional style of the original work, the mixed chorus introduces the profile of the protagonist, Mizoguchi, and then he himself declares, "The Golden Pavilion must be burned," and it begins. From there, it goes back to the past, and against the backdrop of music that is extremely vivid, applying Mayuzumi's tone row technique, Mishima's literary world is reproduced with suffocating reality. On the other hand, with the adaptation into a German opera, changes occurred that seemed to go against Mishima's intentions, but I think that should not be taken as "alteration" or "falsification," but rather as a kind of "criticism."
The biggest example of this is likely that Mizoguchi's "stutter" in the original work was changed to paralysis of one hand. Of course, although it was an unavoidable measure for opera singing, this was originally a condition that Mishima set to prevent Mizoguchi from interacting smoothly with reality and to make him obsessed with the realm of abstract beauty, based on the fact that the actual perpetrator of the Golden Pavilion arson incident, Hayashi Shoken, was a stutterer. By transferring this "stutter" to singing expression, the thought-drama that had been secretly taking place within Mizoguchi's inner self was externalized.
Thus, it leads to an even more significant point of contention. Mizoguchi in the original work repeatedly asks himself questions, perceiving the beauty that stands between himself and reality as a conflict between cognition and action, and his thought that "beauty is an enemy" grows, but when it comes to the motive for leaping from such delusional ideas to the execution of the Golden Pavilion arson, it remains ambiguous and unclear until the end.
"If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha; if you meet the patriarch, kill the patriarch; if you meet the Arhat, kill the Arhat; if you meet your parents, kill your parents; if you meet your relatives, kill your relatives; only then will you attain liberation."
Even when it comes to the final execution, while thinking of this passage from the "Linji Lu" in his head, he is still muttering and ruminating that what he is trying to do is futile after all. However, the Mizoguchi of the opera is completely different. He takes up the above Zen dialogue and sings it out loudly.
… so tote ich ihn,
tote alles, was sich zwischen mich und die Wahrheit stellt …
… denn nur so fallt die Fessel, nur so werde ich frei.
… Then I will kill the Buddha.
I will kill everything that stands between the truth and me.
Only then will I be free.
(Translated by Toshiro Mayuzumi)
Freedom! This word, which Mishima never let Mizoguchi use even once in the original work, seems to have been an indispensable keyword for the German opera. Even if it ended in a terribly mediocre conclusion because of that, I think it still fulfills a significant issue-raising for Mishima's literary world as it is. This is because Mishima himself said the following about Hayashi Shoken, the perpetrator of the aforementioned Golden Pavilion arson incident, in his dialogue with critic Hideo Kobayashi, "The Form of Beauty" (1957):
"That, you know, in reality, it seems like a trivial motive. Sightseers come, young people come in beautiful clothes, they come to sightsee as couples, that gets on his nerves, he's being left out, he's dressed miserably, and his youth is being ruined. It seems to be something like that."
Freedom from jealousy. Freedom from the self that is tied up in jealousy of beauty. To do that, one must kill the Buddha. One must burn the Golden Pavilion... People who live in reality are probably just such mediocre beings. This is the reason why I judge that the opera "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion" is established as a "criticism" to recover the conceptual thought-drama that Mishima depicted back into a human comedy of reality.
Book: "Childhood's End" by Arthur C. Clarke
To think that we are
nothing but apes after all...
Arthur C. Clarke's early novel "Childhood's End" (1952), which can be seen as the prototype for the immortal sci-fi film "2001: A Space Odyssey," seems to have rubbed Yukio Mishima the wrong way. In his essay "What is a Novel?" (1970), written just before he broke into the Self-Defense Force and committed suicide, he recalled Shichiro Fukasawa's debut work "The Ballad of Narayama," which he himself was involved in selecting for the Chuo Koron Newcomer Award, as a masterpiece without complaint but "an unpleasant masterpiece," and then proceeded to argue as follows:
"I have had an experience like this once more since then, and that was when I read Arthur Clarke's sci-fi 'Childhood's End.' This work by Clarke is one that I do not hesitate to call the greatest masterpiece among the more than one hundred sci-fi novels I have read, but while 'Childhood's End' is exactly the opposite of 'The Ballad of Narayama' in that it is a thoroughly intellectual work, the indescribable unpleasantness of the aftertaste is common to both."
And after spending a considerable amount of space following the story, he concludes by discussing the setting where the "Overlords," who come from space and rule the human world, have the appearance of devils, saying, "One can imagine how unpleasant it must be for a Christian to read this novel." In other words, he only explained the reason why it would be unpleasant for general readers in the West, and did not say anything at all about the circumstances under which he himself felt an "indescribable unpleasantness." Mishima's unpleasantness must have been that serious.
The plot is roughly like this. Just as the US and the Soviet Union were competing for advancement into space, giant discs suddenly appeared in the skies all over the world, and although the aliens never show their figures, they conquer the Earth against the backdrop of an overwhelming difference in scientific technology. People call their representative the "Overlord," and under his command, the world is ordered under the United Nations, and instead of losing the right to self-determination of nations and peoples, they come to enjoy a peaceful and affluent life.
Eventually, half a century passes, and at the timing when humanity has become completely accustomed to it, the "Overlord" finally appears from the disc, and as Mishima emphasized, he had the appearance of a devil with horns and a tail. In other words, they had visited Earth in the distant past and made contact with humanity, and that memory seems to have been passed down to this day as the legend of the devil. The purpose of such aliens coming again was to support evolution to a higher dimension, just as they once helped humanity acquire intelligence. The old humanity is left behind on Earth as a useless existence, and the children who are now being born will fly into space as a new humanity. The "Overlord" tells the world as follows:
"Within a few years, this change will be complete. And humanity will be torn in two. And there is no way back from there. And there is no future for this world you know. All the hopes and dreams of Earth humanity have perished here. Earth humanity has produced successors. But sadly, Earthlings cannot understand their own successors—they don't even have a bond of heart to heart. In fact, they do not have a heart in the form you know today. While you are the sum of countless cell groups, they become a single existence. You will no longer be able to think of them as human. In fact, that is exactly right." (Translated by Masami Fukushima)
The irreversible process of evolution. Just as an ape can no longer do anything but look up at a human who has branched off from the same ancestor, were we, as humans, not presented with the vision that we would become dropouts of evolution and be able to do nothing but look up at future generations, and did the proud Mishima not feel an "indescribable unpleasantness"? That we are nothing but apes after all... Is it too much of a stretch to understand that his mentality, which on the other hand could not help but accept such realism of evolution, split his self and led to that final action of taking young men with him?
As an aside, a personal memory. During my job hunting in my fourth year of university, there was a question on a written exam asking me to explain in English a book that left an impression on me. While I was bewildered, I immediately wrote down,
CHILDHOOD'S ENDI have no memory of what I continued with after that, and even less confidence that it was worthy of any evaluation, but in any case, because the acceptance notice arrived, I, who have no pride like Mishima, still hold a feeling of affection for this work.
Film: "Patriotism" (Yukio Mishima: Original Work, Production, Screenplay, Director, Starring)
As if the protagonist
were the military uniform
My directorial plan was to treat the role of the young officer entirely as a robot. He had to be just a soldier, just one who dies for a great cause, just one who devotes himself to morals, just the incarnation of a pure and innocent military spirit. I knew that the faces and expressions of all famous actors would hinder that image. Therefore, I had Lieutenant Takeyama wear his military cap deep over his eyes, just like a Noh mask, and tried to express his actions through the military cap and military uniform. His every move had to be made by the military cap and military uniform, rather than a living human being acting.
This is a passage from a note Yukio Mishima wrote about the film "Patriotism" (1965).
This film is a monochrome work of about 28 minutes, based on his own short story of the same title (1961), which he produced, wrote the screenplay for, directed, and starred in himself. After the incident in November 1970 (Showa 45) where Mishima broke into the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force Ichigaya base with members of the "Tatenokai," called for a coup d'etat, and committed seppuku, it was sealed by the strong intention of the bereaved family and became a "phantom film," but it was miraculously restored in the beginning of this century, and can now be viewed on the DVD of the supplementary volume of "The Complete Works of Yukio Mishima."
The story is as if it doesn't exist. Set in the 1936 (Showa 11) February 26 Incident, where Lieutenant Takeyama, who was not invited to rise up by the young officer ringleaders because he was a newlywed, decides to commit suicide with his wife, the film depicts the scene of his final moments. Only Mishima, playing Lieutenant Takeyama, and actress Yoshiko Tsuruoka, playing his wife, appear on a simple set imitating a Noh stage to perform a silent play, and the military uniform, as in the quote above, played an extremely important role there. It seems his obsession was extraordinary, as it is said that he went to various military supply stores in search of the military uniform to wear in the play, but was not satisfied, and eventually found an old craftsman from the past to recreate the military uniform of the time.
For Mishima, who had never been sent to war, was this not the first time he had worn a bona fide military uniform, even if it was for a film?
Perhaps that is why one can see a desperate performance that goes beyond the initial plan of expressing the protagonist's actions through the military cap and military uniform. After Lieutenant Takeyama shares his final affection with his wife, he shows himself with a Japanese sword, wearing only a white loincloth with a military cap on his head, and when it comes to the stage of seppuku, he opens the military uniform jacket he put on again, and as the tip of the sword plunged into his abdomen moves slowly sideways, his internal organs spill out (it is said that pig intestines were used for filming), his whole body becomes blood-stained, and his wife, who stabbed her throat with a sword, falls down and they become one... The protagonist of this drama, which has the union of Eros and death unique to Mishima as its theme, is, in this way, the military uniform. Not only that, it even begins to look as if the military uniform is controlling Mishima.
Shortly after this film was completed, while Mishima was facing his major work "The Sea of Fertility," he expressed his desire to join the Self-Defense Force for experience, and at the same time, began to create a militia defense organization as a counter to the leftist revolutionary forces, and in October 1968, he led students from Waseda University and others to launch the "Tatenokai." At this time, with the support of Seiji Tsutsumi, president of Seibu Department Stores, he had custom-made military uniforms created by Kyuju Igarashi, who is said to have designed the clothes for French President de Gaulle, as uniforms for the members. Mishima triumphantly argued the following in his essay "The Aesthetics of Masculinity" (1969), but can't one hear the quiet echo of the film "Patriotism" from it?
If there is nothing beautiful as men's clothing other than kendo wear and military uniforms, then it must be clear that clothing, no matter how much one tries to deceive, is nothing but an expression of the characteristics of sex, the aggressive and combative characteristics of the male. Clothing is sexual. And the further clothing moves away from things that are sexual, the more it becomes filled with the technique of deception as an embodiment of power and other abstractions.
Of course, kendo wear does not hold up if someone who does not wield a bamboo sword wears it, and military uniforms do not hold up if someone who does not accompany military action wears them. The rest is just falling into the "technique of deception as an embodiment of power and other abstractions." If Mishima had remained unrelated to such an obsession with military uniforms, he might not have met such an end, and this film stirs up such imagination.
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