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Irony and Purity: Mishima
I. A Puzzling Event at Ichigaya Garrison1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2008
Extract
Tokyo: 25 November 1970, midday. The parade ground of the Self Defence Force's Ichigaya garrison was crowded with personnel. All looked up at the balcony of the main hall, knowing that in the adjoining room the commandant had been taken hostage. On the parapet of the balcony stood one captor, dressed in a brown uniform and donning a headband with an ancient samurai motto, shichishōhōkoku (‘serve the nation for seven lives’). He was Mishima Yukio, the famous writer and founder of a militia named Tatenokai (Shield Society). Hardly able to make himself heard through the wail of sirens and the jeers from the crowd, Mishima held a speech in which he called the constitutional curtailment of the military a threat to Japan's culture. Nothing new, as he had been flirting openly with the extreme right for years. His plea to the men below to follow him in a revolt was greeted with howls of derision.
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References
2 Muecke, D. C., Irony (London, 1976), pp. 77ff.Google Scholar
3 Nathan, , Mishima—a Biography, p. 94.Google Scholar
4 Sun and Steel, translated by Bester, John (London, 1970), p. 5.Google Scholar
5 Ibid., p. 6.
6 Ibid., p. 7.
7 Ibid., p. 27ff.
8 Ibid., p. 17.
9 Ibid., p. 27.
10 Ibid., p. 31.
11 Ibid., p. 29.
12 In a way this holds true for every writer, of course, but in Mishima's case it was a deliberate procedure, at least since 1951, when he divided himself over the characters in Kinjiki (Forbidden Colours): a cerebral writer and a narcissistic homosexual.Google Scholar
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15 Ibid., p. 31.
16 Ibid., p. 37.
17 Ibid., p. 41.
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19 In: The Sea of Fertility (Harmondsworth 1980), p. 478.Google Scholar
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21 In fact, although the Shinto idea of nature being alive with spirits is alien to Taoism, both religions celebrate nature as we find it. So the Taoistic ‘earthiness’ of Zen may well have been the main reason for its influence on Japanese culture.Google Scholar
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23 Derived from Dumoulin, Heinrich, Zen Buddhism, a History; Japan (New York, 1990, p. 380).Google Scholar
24 Freely rendered from Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829), creator of the concept of Romantic Irony.Google Scholar
25 The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (Harmondsworth, 1987), p. 2.Google Scholar
26 This is an original version from the Mumonkan, translated by Sikeda, Katsuki, in Two Zen Classics (New York, 1977), p. 58. Mishima could not resist turning the kōan into a longer and rather better running story.Google Scholar
27 The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, p. 214.Google Scholar
28 Ibid., p. 216.
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30 Derived from Becker, Carl B., ‘Buddhist views of suicide and euthanasia’, in Philosophy East and West XL:4, pp. 543–56.Google Scholar
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33 Adapted from Ibid., pp. 48 ff.
34 Ibid., p. 49.
35 Hence the affinity Mishima felt for the samurai book Hagakure, to which he owed ‘my firm insistence on the “Combined Way of the Scholar and Warrior”’ (On Hagakure; Hagakure nyûmon; Harmondsworth, 1977, p. 19). This book, written by the samurai-turned-Zenist Yamamoto Tsunetomo, was based on shiniguriu (‘rushing crazily into death’), which idea belonged to the pre-Confucian, Zenist core of the samurai ethos. Tsunetomo stressed that there was no shame in dying ‘a dog's death,’ for all that mattered was one's determination to die, i.e. to find fulfilment of one's vocation as a samurai and so transcend the I/not-I. I have to abstain from discussing On Hagakure here (my article is ornate enough as it is) but I do recommend it to any reader interested in the relation Zen—samurai.Google Scholar
36 Sun and Steel, p. 52.Google Scholar
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