The Special Quality of Hell

“Perfect purity is po ssible if you turn your life into a line of poetry written with a splash of blood.”

— Yukio Mishima

Yukio Mishima was born as Kimitake Hiraoka in 1925. Also known as the “Japanese Hemingway,” Mishima was arguably the best known Japanese author of the twentieth century. Many of his works were translated into English, and he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature on three occasions.

Mishima was an enigma wrapped within a swirling vortex of contradictions. For a man so offended by Western culture, his home was decorated in overblown Victorian opulence. Mishima was an ardent Japanese patriot, but was terrified of combat and managed to avoid service during WWII with a false tuberculosis diagnosis.

Although he was gay, he married a beautiful woman giving the outward appearance of the perfect union. Beautiful home, charming wife, well-scrubbed children, the whole enchilada. To the casual observer, Mishima was living the dream.

Although he was a fan of the good life, Mishima spoke out about the materialism and emptiness of post-war Japanese society. To counter western influence he felt it was important to revive the value system of medieval Japan.

For example, Mishima wanted to reestablish the divinity of the emperor, even though he didn’t believe the emperor was inherently divine. Mishima believed the emperor’s divinity derived from embodying the living essence of Japan. Mishima also felt that bushido (‘the samurai way’) should be a thing again.

Although not a militarist, claiming that “… most foreigners mix up militarism and the samurai spirit,” Mishima formed his own militia in 1968. The Tatenokai (Shield Society) was made up of roughly 100 college students who learned martial arts and physical discipline under Mishima’s tutelage and swore to protect the emperor.

By 1970, Mishima spoke increasingly of the lack of “great causes” worth dying for in modern Japanese culture. In an interview, he described the difference between the samurai notion of killing oneself as “brave hara-kiri,” as opposed to the Western idea of suicide as “defeatist.”

In Mishima’s case, he definitely planned his demise out beforehand. He had written the traditional death poems (jisei no ku) and provided for his wife and children well in advance.

On November 25, 1970, “Japan’s Renaissance Man” Yukio Mishima stood before a crowd of over one thousand servicemen at the national Self-Defense Forces headquarters in Tokyo. He challenged them to rise up against Japan’s post-WWII constitution, which prohibited war and imposed strict limitations on the country’s military capabilities. Rather than complying, the soldiers laughed, mocking him.

After delivering his speech and seeing his attempted coup had failed, Mishima and four of his followers reentered the room they had previously barricaded themselves in and performed Harakiri, also sometimes called Seppuku.

This ritualistic suicide involves the person driving a razor-sharp blade into their abdomen and slicing it open as their second simultaneously beheads them. This is done in a precise manner so a bit of skin is still attaching the head to the body so the head hangs down as if in an embrace.

Unfortunately for Mishima, his second, Masakatsu Morita, was unsuccessful, and after several hacks Hiroyasu Koga had to take over and complete the beheading.

Right after the failed coup, a Tokyo police official was quoted as saying,

“Mishima has gone and actually done what these rightists only talk about. And it is not only the rightists who are stirred. Here in Japan, there must be thousands of frustrated people. They have no outlet for their pent-up feelings.

Suddenly, along comes Mishima and his young followers of the Shield Society. They not only preach restoration of the emperor-centered values of traditional Japan, they try to do something about it.”

The kamikaze spirit never completely died out in Japan, surrender or no surrender.