by Hiroaki Sato
The argument such as Mishima developed with his remarkable knowledge of relevant laws and regulations—he referred to, among other things, the Hague Convention Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land to explain a need for a uniform, and Japan’s Labor Standards Law to clarify what a company was allowed to do with its employees—was that the SDF could play only limited roles in national defense under the US-Japanese Security Treaty. Still, even with the detailed agreement that the document stated had already been worked out with the GSDF, the professed aim was surprisingly modest: eventually to form a hundred-man “private officer corps,” with the first twenty to “experience” the SDF beginning in the upcoming spring. The document ended with a three-stanza song for the proposed corps. The second stanza included the word tate, “shield.”
Although JNG officers were to be unpaid and practically all the expenses were to be taken care of by participating companies, Mishima decided that some funds were needed for the planned organization. Mochimaru knew Sakurada Takeshi, founder and executive director of the Japan Economic Federation (Nikkeiren); Hayashi Fusao, who advised him on fundraising, had put him in touch with the man. Once called, in reference to Buddhist cosmology, “one of the Four Guardian Kings of the corporate world,” and a heavyweight in government circles, Sakurada at the time was also chairman of the Federation of Tokyo Societies for Cooperation with the SDF that was founded in 1966. Even as anti-American sentiments rose with heightening antiwar feelings, many who were concerned about the low status in which the overall society held the SDF created support organizations for it.
So, with Mochimaru, Mishima went to see Sakurada. Sakurada was just one of several he met for fundraising, his first experience in the field, but it did not take him any time to recoil from the pecuniary effort. He was too proud to seek money from people who necessarily tried to assess the worth of his enterprise, if not his own worth, on the spot.7
These meetings also provided Mishima with a reminder that Mochimaru had been receiving money from those in the corporate world for the Nichigakudō he headed. In addition, he learned that Tanaka Seigen (also Kiyoharu) played a sizable role as a sponsor of the Ronsō Journal. Tanaka, a prominent rightwing corporate fixer who had come to national attention in late 1963 when he was shot and badly wounded in front of a public building, in a yakuza infighting, was one fascinating character in modern Japan.
While a student at the Imperial University of Tokyo, Tanaka joined the Communist Party and became the advocate-leader of “an armed CP.” Arrested and jailed in 1930, he married another Communist also in jail. He eventually recanted, though he was not let out for ten years after his change of heart. During the first movements against the US-Japanese Mutual Security Treaty, Tanaka, by then a rightwing leader, nonetheless became famous for his sympathy for the Zengakuren. Among his associates was Friedrich August von Hayek, the Austrian-born professor of economics at the University of Chicago.
Mishima, in any event, soon decided not to get involved with the corporate world in any way.
On January 19, 1968, the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, which, in December 1965, had become the first such carrier to take part in the Vietnam War, steamed into Sasebo, Nagasaki. The United States had asked for permission for the port call the previous September, and the Satō cabinet had given it. The news galvanized those opposed to the war. Not just that Japan was the first country to be attacked with nuclear bombs. Enterprise was regarded as “the core of the unilateral violence in the Vietnam War” that the United States indulged in—its use was a “cowardly” act for it enabled America to bomb Vietnam at will from a spot far out of reach for the Vietnamese, as a participant in the movement against the port call put it. Also, for the Japanese government to admit the carrier into a Japanese port was to openly recognize Japan’s status as a base for America’s war.8
Three days before the carrier arrived, the main opposition parties: Socialist, Clean (Kōmei), and Communist, issued a statement condemning the carrier’s visit. Large numbers of students gathered at the University of Kyūshū, in Fukuoka, not far, by train, from the naval port. Their demonstrations continued until January 23, when the carrier weighed anchor to return to Vietnam, only to reverse course toward the Japan Sea on the news of North Korea’s capture of the intelligence ship USS Pueblo that day.
Most of the mass media and citizens of Sasebo City were sympathetic to the demonstrators. They may not have been particularly ideological, but they did yearn for peace. The expanding war nearby also provoked a sense of nationalism; America was bullying a small country, Vietnam, and taking advantage of another, a country it had defeated, Japan. Worse, the riot police used excessive violence including unrestrained use of tear gas, which, creating terrible burn blisters on the skin, was suspected at once of containing toxic chemicals used in Vietnam. The police even hurtled tear gas canisters into the hospitals the wounded students were carried into. The police chief in charge in the end admitted the excess and apologized.9
The New Left quickly gained momentum. In February students joined the local opposition to the US attempt to build a new field hospital for American soldiers wounded in Vietnam, in Ōji, in northern Tokyo. The US Army had once maintained its Far East cartographical bureau on thirty acres of land but had moved the office to Hawaii, in 1966. Subsequently, the ward had requested a return of the vacated lot in the densely populated residential area, in vain. Now the news was that the unused buildings were to be turned into a hospital. By then the number of American wounded who were brought to Japan was said to reach four thousand every month. About four hundred students clashed with the police guarding the buildings on January 20.
Then, on the 26th, another thousand students joined the local opposition to the building of an airport in Sanrizuka, outside Narita City, Chiba, and clashed with riot police. This protest had little to do with the war in Southeast Asia, but with the Japanese government’s forcible attempt to bury under concrete some of the most fertile land to accommodate Japan’s increasing role in international commerce. It would become the longest-running antigovernment movement in Japan’s modern history.
It was on that day, the 32nd anniversary of the 2.26 Incident, that Mishima signed a blood oath with Bandai, Nakatsuji, Mochimaru, and several others, pledging a willingness to die to prevent “a leftist revolution.” This he did in the editorial office of the Ronsō Journal, which was in a building on the Ginza. All those present in the room, including Mishima, were soon to become part of the first group of JNG men to join the GSDF to “experience” it. The other students came from Waseda, Kanagawa, and Meiji universities, as well as the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. Mochimaru had recruited them. There was considerable excitement and tension in the room.
“All of us who were there, only about ten really, made an incision on our small fingers with a knife,” Mochimaru explained. “If the blood congealed, we wouldn’t be able to use it with a brush [that is, as ink], so we had a plate ready with salt in it. We wrote ‘We hereby pledge to become the cornerstones of our Imperial Nation’ on rolled paper and signed it by turns. Of course, Mr. Mishima signed it first, eagerly. He used his real name, Hiraoka Kimitake.”10
One aspect of the blood oath, however, evidently became a sticking point for Mishima later. Just about a month before his suicide, Mishima got in touch with Mochimaru, who had grown alienated from him by then. They met in Café Almond, in Roppongi. Mishima quickly came to the point. He said he’d been concerned with the blood oath, adding that he’d remembered Mochimaru had kept the signed paper. Mochimaru had. He took it to the Roman Gekijō, in Kanda, the following day, as asked. Mishima burnt it right before his eyes. The oath, which had been made before Mishima formally launched the Shield Society, clearly indicated a close linkage to the Ronsō Journal. Mishima wanted to erase any suggestion of that linkage because of Tanaka Seigen. The Shield Society was entirely created and maintained with Mishima’s own money.
Col. Yamamoto Kiyokatsu
Col. Yamamoto
Kiyokatsu’s imagination was stirred when shown the pamphlet “Why a Fatherland Defense Corps Is Necessary.” Fujiwara Iwaichi, then in retirement after serving as commander of the First Division of the GSDF, saw it and asked Col. Hirahara Kazuo to pass it on to Yamamoto, director of information education at the GSDF Research School. “Information” here was yet another linguistic camouflage for the new military and actually meant “intelligence.” Fujiwara was the second to head the school, which Yamamoto had helped to found, in 1954. During the Second World War, Fujiwara’s intelligence and propaganda unit in India and elsewhere in Southeast Asia was known as the F-Kikan that helped establish the Indian National Army.11
As he handed the pamphlet to Yamamoto and conveyed Fujiwara’s suggestion that he meet its author, Hirahara, director of research at the school, said simply that he couldn’t follow Mishima’s argument. Perhaps Yamamoto should have taken that observation to heart. After all, as a professional soldier, Yamamoto also had some reservations about Mishima’s idea when he read the pamphlet. But not long afterward he met Mishima, as arranged by Fujiwara, and, impressed by Mishima’s apparent resolve, went on to spend some crucial moments with Mishima in developing his “fatherland defense corps.”
Yamamoto was a graduate of the prewar Military Academy and the Military Staff College.12 At the time of Japan’s defeat he was a major and an instructor at the army’s Nakano School that trained spies, and, like many with similar backgrounds, later joined the ranks of the military created despite Article 9 of the Constitution: the National Police Reserve Force, in 1950, which became the Security Force, in 1952, then the SDF, in 1954. He was sent to the United States, to the Special Warfare School, in 1958, including two months at Fort Bragg to study special operations.13 At the time he met Mishima, he was in charge of nurturing intelligence officers in case the GSDF had to do “special” domestic security work.
During the First Haneda Incident and thereafter, the police at times faced the danger of being overwhelmed by demonstrators and by the people who were sympathetic to the demonstrators. Students happily resorted to violence, and regular citizens often sided with them, throwing stones at the police. But that alone would not put the matter within the parameters of the GSDF’s domestic security concerns. What Yamamoto and others feared was the outcome of the Cultural Revolution. Should the pro-Soviet forces win in that power struggle, and should the war in Vietnam turn out badly for the United States, then China’s or Chinese-USSR’s indirect or even direct invasion of Japan could become a distinct possibility. And were that to occur and were Japan’s New Left to work with Chinese infiltrators, the police would be inadequate.14
By law, the GSDF was allowed to get itself involved in domestic security matters only under strict conditions. Equally important, the position of the SDF at the time was precarious, with the Japanese populace on the whole indifferent or hostile to it. The core of the force that the GSDF might deploy for domestic security would be infantry, but if a tank or an armored vehicle were to crush and kill a female college student in a turmoil of the kind some expected and if that were to be caught by a TV camera and broadcast, public sentiment would instantly turn against the SDF. On the other hand, if a citizens’ group were crushed and bloodied while opposing student demonstrators who were obviously backed up by foreign infiltrators, then demand for the SDF to send out its domestic security force would quickly rise.
What Yamamoto was doing at the GSDF Research School was to develop intelligence personnel just for such a contingency. And for such intelligence work, civilian collaboration would be indispensable, particularly in urban warfare. But civilian collaboration could not be arranged overtly. Mishima’s idea of having a militia as spelled out in his blueprint for a “fatherland defense corps” could fill the void. It was, for Yamamoto, a dream come true.
“Truly, I thought a duck came to me carrying scallions on its back,” Yamamoto said, using the metaphor for someone unexpectedly showing up with exactly what you wanted. By the time he made the remark, in the mid-1990s, he was living in leisurely comfort. In 1972, after serving as vice commandant of the Research School, he had retired from the SDF with the rank of major general. He then worked for a construction company as an executive, in a typical “descent-from-heaven” arrangement.
However, the revelations after Mishima’s death of his relationship to the famous man had created some controversy. As a result, Yamamoto was compelled to write his own account of it, and one of the things he felt he had to clarify was that the promotion to the rank of major general was a matter of formality: he held it just half a day. He had to do this, he wrote, because he was disconcerted to find that Mishima’s father, Azusa, had written in his account that a SDF general who had “betrayed” his son was “still in good health and skillfully keeping up his popularity.”15
In any event, Yamamoto had some reservations about Mishima’s idea for a fatherland defense corps. For one, such a corps, Mishima argued, would require the GSDF’s “guidance and assistance.” It would also require “funding assistance by minzoku capital”—an amorphous term that could mean a patriotic entity or a group of capitalists. As Yamamoto saw it, such an entity or group would necessarily be political. Suppose Mishima was trying to avoid any political involvement and therefore proposing dependence on the GSDF, the force already had the SDF Reserve, as well as the Taiyūkai, a veterans association, government-certified but with no overt political affiliation.
Second, Yamamoto suspected that a “free, voluntary warrior corps” of the kind Mishima envisioned would assume, however tacitly, the people’s right to bear arms. Historically, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, after unifying Japan, took that right away from the peasants through the “sword hunting” order, in 1588, and the Meiji government took it away from the samurai through “the sword-abolishment order,” in 1876. To insist on the right to bear arms now would not just erode the political foundation of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, Yamamoto thought, but also render moot the raison d’être of the SDF. Without arms, however, any private “warrior corps” would collapse from within.
Despite such concerns, Yamamoto, who agreed with Mishima in his view of the Tennō as the central factor of the identity of Japanese culture, admired, even more importantly, Mishima’s grasp of global power relations and domestic laws. So he was eager to meet the man when the occasion arose, toward the end of 1967, at a Japanese restaurant in Akasaka.
As often happens in such meetings, however, neither Fujiwara, let alone Hirahara, nor Mishima would bring up the subject that Yamamoto thought was the purpose of the meeting as they drank and idly chatted. Exasperated, Yamamoto, who had arrived somewhat late because he wasn’t familiar with the fashionable part of Akasaka, blurted out, a little ironically, as he recalled: “I assume, sir, that writing about something and acting it out are very different. You are a man of letters. You should concentrate on writing, shouldn’t you, sir, because you can certainly achieve your purpose through your writing?”
Mishima looked Yamamoto in the eye and said in the loud voice that would soon become familiar to him: “I’ve already given up on writing. I don’t have a smidgen of interest in things like the Nobel Prize.” With that Yamamoto decided to do whatever he could for Mishima.16
If Yamamoto felt lucky to meet Mishima, Mishima was impressed to meet him. Here was a man who was neither a callow university student nor an officer produced by the SDF, a postwar outfit, but one of the elite from the prewar Imperial Army, and on active duty. So, when Yamamoto raised probing issues, Mishima was quick to admit his lack of knowledge in military matters. Theirs, then, was a happy encounter. Following Mishima’s death, nonetheless, Yamamoto would often wonder if Mishima would have killed himself the way he did had he not sought Mishima out and worked with him. In the end he wrote five books on Mishima before his own death, in 2001.
What Is Fiction?
Giving up on writing was, on the face of it, simply false. Mishima was still serializing The Runaway Horse, with two more novels to go to com
plete the tetralogy. Further, he, if anything, would go on to write many more polemical essays as well as entertainment pieces—the latter, a sizable source of income, which would become indispensable for financing the activities of his JDG, soon to be renamed the Shield Society. Even if he had not thought of the extra expenses to come just at the moment Yamamoto asked him about his writing, what did he mean by that statement, assuming that he meant something by it?
For now, just one extended essay of his may be mentioned: “What Is Fiction?” Mishima began serializing it in Nami in the spring of 1968 and would end it in the issue that came out in the month of his death. It dealt with the nature of what lay at the core of his writing profession.17 And in the closing installment of the series that lasted for three years, he chose to discuss two things—one broad, the other something close at hand.
Mishima compared “the ideal fiction” to “the bizarre, giant marine beast” he had recently seen in a zoo: the Southern elephant seal. His description of the animal—with its “bodily smell, its beastliness, its solitude, the naturalness it stubbornly maintains in a place utterly quarantined from nature, its spindle-shape morphological necessity to ride the ocean currents, its absolute absence of conversation and its boundless ability to depict ordinariness, its humorous monotony that never bores you, its obstreperous refrain of a theme, and its shit”—is a tour de force of keen observation and information digested on the spot.