This article is based on the paper read at the seminar presided over by Mr Richard Storry at the Far East Centre, St Antony's College, Oxford, on Wednesday, 5 May 1971. Acknowledgments are due to the Oxford hosts and also to Dr Carmen E. Blacker and Dr Douglas E. Mills, whose critical advice proved most useful to the author in revising the paper for publication.

¹ On this point see the Appendix.

² See Sei, Itoh, Shōsetsu no Hōhō (The Method of the Novel), Tokyo, 1948.Google Scholar Also useful for the genealogy of the ‘I-novel’ is Nakamura Mitsuo, Fūzoku-shōsetsu-ron (On the Novel of Manners), Tokyo, 1950.Google Scholar

³ It is commonly observed that while the sea is the symbol used by Mishima to represent eternity, another important symbol in Mishima's works is evening, which stands for the glorious moment of apocalypse. The protagonist of The Temple of the Golden Pavilion associates the Golden Pavilion in his imagination with the sea and evening on various occasions. In The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea the significance of the sea as a symbol of eternity in contrast to the mundane life is self-evident.

⁴ There is a catachetic Zen problem, ‘Nan Ch'üang Kills a Kitten’ or ‘Joshu Wears a Pair of Sandals on his Head’. This is first cited by the Superior of the Temple of the Golden Pavilion on 15 Augest 1945, the day of Japanese defeat (Chapter III). The episode is rather ambiguous in its implication but is used deliberately by Mishima because of its very ambiguity. When it is mentioned for the second time (Chapter VI) by Kashiwagi, a Mephistophelian counsellor and in a sense the counterpart of the protagonist, it becomes clear that the kitten, as much as the Golden Pavilion, is a symbol of beauty. And there seem to be three attitudes that one could assume towards beauty. The first is a vulgar one adopted by the priests who dispute over the possession of the kitten as a pet. This must be transcended by the two opposing attitudes: the one represented by Nan Ch'üang who kills the kitten as a solution to the dispute, and the other represented by Joshu who expresses his opposition to his master by wearing his sandals on his head. The former corresponds to Kashiwagi's attitude to beauty and the latter to that of the protagonist. When the episode is mentioned for the third time (Chapter VIII), however, there is a sign that the protagonist changes his position with Kashiwagi, moving towards his final act of setting fire to the Golden Pavilion. Further, in connexion with the episode, we may well draw attention to Nan Ch'üang's callousness in killing the kitten. This is a parallel to the callousness of those precocious boys who kill a kitten in The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea. It has also to do with Mishima'a unflinching readiness to shed his own blood for the sake of his aesthetic cause as demonstrated in his suicide.

⁵ See note 3.

⁶ Part I, chapter 5. Translation by John Nathan.

⁷ See note 4.

⁸ It is noteworthy that while Wang Yang-ming's philosophy was assimilated by such a conformist thinker as Kumazawa Banzan (1619–91), it also provided resources for a larger number of non-conformist radicals such as Ōshio Heihachirō (1794–1837) and Yoshida Shōin (1830–59). The influence of these latter on Mishima is more than accidental.

⁹ A letter to Shimizu Fumio quoted by the addressee in his tribute to Mishima, the Shinchō (New Current), a special number (January 1971), p. 198.

¹⁰ ‘What is the Novel?’, chapter 11, reprinted from the Nami (Waves), the Shinchō (New Current), a special number (January 1971), pp. 125–6. Author's translation.

¹¹ The date adapted to the solar calender. There is no doubt that Mishima chose the same day of the same month for his coup and suicide.

¹² ‘What is the Novel?’, the Shinchō (New Current), a special number (January 1971), p. 126. Author's translation.

¹³ Ibid., 127. Author's translation.

¹⁴ The present writer intends to write a separate article on this masterpiece as it deserves a detailed discussion. Mishima incorporated into it his life-long concerns with his mature techniques. The action of the tetralogy turns on the Buddhist concept of ‘transmigration’. The last of the four books ends with utter nihilism and preoccupation with death, which gruesomely coincides with Mishima's own suicide.

¹⁵ This is a tentative response by the present writer to Mr Richard Storry's illuminating prediction that ‘Mishima's emulators may come from the New Left rather than the Old Right’ and that a revolutionary situation, if it ever arises in Japan, would be ‘strongly nationalist’. For Mr Storry's argument see his article on the social implication of Mishima's suicide in the forthcoming volume, Reform and Revolution in Asia, edited by G. F. Hudson.

¹⁶ The sense of powerlessness on the part of Japan may now be turning to the sense of frustration at the prospective power shift in the Pacific Area which has loomed since the announcement of President Nixon's new policies in the summer of 1971.

¹⁷ The record of this confrontation is most interesting. See Mishima Yukio vs. Todai Zenkyoto (Mishima Yukio vs. the University of Tokyo Solidarity), Tokyo: Shinchō-sha, 1969.Google Scholar

¹⁸ At the time of the confrontation Mishima flattered the students with a suggestion that he was willing to agree with their cause and tactics only if they agreed with his vindication of the Imperial authority. But the students showed no sympathy whatsoever with Mishima' flattery. Mishima's view of the Imperial authority may be touched upon in this connexion. To him the Emperor is not the Emperor as he is but the idealized concept. This is best epitomized by a phrase from The Voices of the Heroic Dead: ‘Why has the Emperor become humanized?’.

¹⁹ I must hasten to add that the mode of acquiring an international outlook is still in the making and sometimes misguided: packaged tours, notably of the Nōkyō, hitch-hiking youths stranded abroad, and so on. The last-mentioned incidentally was started by Oda Makoto himself, whose Namdemo Miteyaro (Let's See Everything) was a best-selling book some ten years ago.