The year 2025 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Yukio Mishima. He is a great writer who has left his mark on Japanese literary history. His last day was so sensational that people tend to focus only on that part of his life. However, his literature itself and the impact it had on Japan are even more important. In this article, I would like to introduce his career, his major works, and the places associated with him.
Itinerary
He was born in Tokyo in 1925. Influenced by his grandmother, he became familiar with literature at an early age and wrote his first novel, “The Flowering Forest” at the age of 16. He established himself as a writer with “Confessions of a Mask,” published at the age of 24. Thereafter, she wrote many works, including “The Sound of the Waves” and “The Temple of the Golden Pavilion”. His works have been translated and read around the world beyond the boundaries of the Japanese language. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, but never won.
At the age of 43, he formed the “Tatenokai”, a civil defense organization, and became involved in political activities, leading to the “Mishima Incident” on November 25, 1970, where he died a spectacular death at the age of 45.
Character and Style
Mishima has a deep knowledge of ancient, medieval, and early modern Japanese literature, and his works tend to draw from classical sources and revive them. He is the same age as the Showa period, and his life is linked to the events of the Showa period. While his works are based on social events and issues, he has no aversion to the Showa period’s wars.
As well as being a novelist and playwright, he was also a political activist in his later years, and from the late 1960s he took actual action by joining the Japan Self-Defense Forces on a trial basis. He then went on to form the “Tatenokai,” which would lead to his final days.
Mishima-related places
Yukio Mishima Literature Museum
Opened in 1999 near Lake Yamanaka in Yamanashi Prefecture, close to Mt. Fuji. Mishima has included the name Lake Yamanaka in many of his works.
The collection includes many autograph manuscripts, notes on his creative works and interviews, letters, paintings, photographic materials, books, research books, translations, magazines, and film and theater materials. Autograph manuscripts and other materials are special materials from the Mishima family, some of which were written by Mishima in his teens. Through rare first editions and chronological displays, visitors can experience Mishima’s dramatic life and literature.
Ministry of Defense Ichigaya Memorial Hall
On November 25, 1970, Mishima committed suicide by ritual suicide after delivering his last statement, “Proclamation,” at the Self Defense Forces Ichigaya Camp (now the Ministry of Defense Headquarters). Tours are available to visit the historical site of Mishima’s final days. The Ichigaya Memorial Museum is located on the grounds of the Ministry of Defense and can be visited by appointment; the wooden door to the former Minister of the Army’s office on the second floor bears three scars from Mishima’s beloved sword. It is reminiscent of his fight for his life.
Selected Works
Confessions of a Mask
This is Yukio Mishima’s second full-length novel, a highly successful masterpiece and autobiographical work. It is the story of the confession of “I” who, troubled by his different sexual tendencies, objectively vivisects himself from his birth. The awareness of his own sexual orientation and his attempts and failures to find love between a man and a woman are depicted in an intelligent and poetic style full of pain and sorrow. At the time, Mishima’s nakedness about the theme of homosexuality attracted a great deal of attention, and this work catapulted him to the age of 24, making him a prominent writer. It is a landmark work in the history of Japanese literature, both in terms of its heterogeneity.
The Sound of the Waves
This work has been made into a number of movies and is generally very popular. Set on an island in Mie Prefecture, the story follows a young and naive pair of lovers, a fisherman and a diver, as they overcome numerous obstacles and difficulties to fulfill their pure love. The work was inspired by the ancient Greek prose work “Daphnis and Chloe”.
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
It is not only Mishima’s most successful masterpiece, but is also considered one of the most representative masterpieces of modern Japanese literature. It is highly acclaimed not only in Japan but also abroad. The story is told in the form of a first-person confessional account of how a Buddhist monk becomes obsessed with the beauty of the Temple of the Golden Pavilion and sets it on fire. Against the backdrop of the midwar and postwar periods, the ambivalent psychology and ideas of a curse and obsession with the beauty of the Golden Pavilion, which stands in the way of the fate of a severe stutterer, are described in a rigid and precise style. Even those who had previously been skeptical and negative toward Mishima gave him high praise, and Mishima established himself as a representative writer of Japanese literature in both name and reality.
My Favorite Works: The Sea of Fertility
This is his last full-length novel, a tale of dreams and reincarnation based on “Hamamatsu Chunagon Monogatari,” a story from the 11th century. It consists of four volumes: Spring Snow, Runaway Horses, Temple of Dawn, and The Decay of the Angel. The day he submitted the final volume, which ended earlier than planned, was the last day of his life.
Although each volume can be read independently, the flow of reincarnation runs through all four volumes. The world of the work is based on traditional Japanese ideas of Buddhism, Shintoism, and Noh, as well as oriental traditions such as spring, summer, autumn, and winter. It is also a work full of mystery, with various “hints” that can be interpreted in various ways depending on how one reads it. I have read this work many times, and each time I read it, I notice something different.
Message to Mishima
His life is a work of art. I even feel that his life was a work of art until the very end, just as he wrote it. I can’t stop thinking about what he would have left behind if his life had been longer. But it is precisely because he chose to live this way that we are so drawn to his work.