Mishima Yukio – "The Lost Samurai"

http://www.japantoday.com/category/opinions/view/yukio-mishima-the-lost-samurai

While I think Mishima was a wonderfully talented writer, I thought the article you linked to was very one sided and also over romanticized (the last paragraph or two, especially). The reaction by Japanese society to his botched seppuku/coup finale was not at all sympathetic nor empathic. The last public figure to kill himself in a traditional manner who did receive national sympathy and empathy was General Nogi Maresuke, who committed junshi with the passing of Meiji Tenno. Mishima was a very strange duck, which probably helped his writing, but he was not really representative of the changing of an era (the era had already changed) as General Nogi's passing or Natsume Soseki's pivotal novel, Kokoro. Perhaps just my opinion.

Ian Shiparii wrote:While I think Mishima was a wonderfully talented writer, I thought the article you linked to was very one sided and also over romanticized (the last paragraph or two, especially). The reaction by Japanese society to his botched seppuku/coup finale was not at all sympathetic nor empathic. The last public figure to kill himself in a traditional manner who did receive national sympathy and empathy was General Nogi Maresuke, who committed junshi with the passing of Meiji Tenno. Mishima was a very strange duck, which probably helped his writing, but he was not really representative of the changing of an era (the era had already changed) as General Nogi's passing or Natsume Soseki's pivotal novel, Kokoro. Perhaps just my opinion.

The post I made was dated January 12th, the article was written January 12th. In other words, it was clearly a "News" post. However, I deliberately did not post it in the News section because it was not directly judo-related, but still sufficiently to the martial arts and because of the link with literature given that Mishima was an author, I posted it in the Documentary section.

The link was not accompanied by any comment from myself, just like most things I post in the News section. In other words, I do not publish these out of sympathy or disdain but from a neutral position to 'inform' the readers. There are exceptions to this and those are then News articles where there is also a personal comment from me. This is often particularly so in the case of an obituary.

When Mishima committed seppuku the 'baka' shouts were not out of the air. Not that that means that they are also so justified, but they were there. I can't really comment much further on that because if I do, I am no longer someone who merely posted a link. From a merely academic point of view I do think that his On Hagakure book is underappreciated en lieu of several of his far more popular books among non-budô people like e.g. Confessions of a mask. His description and comparison of different kinds of love strangely make me think of Kundera ... culturally of course far removed, but similarly brilliant on this aspect.