Queer Places:
Tama Cemetery, 4 Chome-628 Tamachō, Fuchū-shi, Tōkyō-to 183-0002, Giappone
Yukio
Mishima (January 14, 1925 – November 25,
1970), was 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 Yasunari Kawabata.[1]
His works include the novels Confessions of a Mask and The Temple of
the Golden Pavilion, and the autobiographical essay Sun and Steel.
His avant-garde work displayed a blending of modern and traditional aesthetics
that broke cultural boundaries, with a focus on sexuality, death, and
political change.[2]
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 (who later
married Crown Prince Akihito and is now Empress Michiko[16]),
Mishima married Yoko Sugiyama on June 11, 1958. The couple had two children: a
daughter named Noriko (born June 2, 1959) and a son named Iichiro (born May 2,
1962).
While working on Forbidden Colors, Mishima visited gay bars in
Japan.[17]
Mishima's sexual orientation was an issue that bothered his widow, and she
always denied his homosexuality after his death.[18]
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.[19]
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 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 ("Voices of the Heroic Dead"),
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 (Hōjō no Umi),
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 (文化防衛論,
"A Defense of Culture"), that Hirohito should have abdicated and taken
responsibility for the loss of life in the war.
Mishima was active as a nationalist and founded his own right-wing militia,
the Tatenokai. In 1970, he and three other members of his militia staged an
attempted coup d'état when they seized control of a Japanese military
base and took the commander hostage, then tried and failed to inspire a coup
to restore the Emperor's pre-war powers, in accordance with Mishima's
conceptualization of the Kokutai. Mishima then committed ritual suicide by
seppuku. The coup attempt became known as the "Mishima Incident".
The Mishima Prize was established in 1988 to honor his life and works.
My published books:
BACK TO HOME PAGE
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukio_Mishima
- Woods, Gregory. Homintern . Yale University Press. Edizione del
Kindle.
- Homosexuals in History, A Study of Ambivalence in Society, Literature
and the Arts, by A.L. Rowse, 1977