Persona

by Hiroaki Sato

Mishima quickly stepped to the opposite side of the room, turned toward the balcony, sat down correctly, and held the armor-piercer with both hands. When Morita stood behind him to his left, sword poised, Mishima shouted “Yah!” which rang out through the halls. He stabbed his left abdomen and pulled the short sword to the right. Morita swung his Seki no Magoroku down. His first stroke cut into Mishima’s shoulder, his second cut his neck by half. Gen. Mashita saw Mishima’s body fall forward. Morita tried two more strokes, but could not sever Mishima’s head.

  Koga Hiroyasu finished the job.

  Morita took off his uniform and sat down. Ogawa, who was supposed to do the kaishaku, was guarding the front doors. The older Koga did the work. He beheaded Morita with a single stroke.

  The wound Mishima made by disembowelment started 1.6 inches below his navel, 5.5 inches long from left to right, and 1.6 to 2 inches deep. Twenty inches of his intestines came out.

  It was a magnificent seppuku.

  Epilogue

  Here completed is a life of arduous labor and diligence with no breathing space.

  —Takeda Taijun

  “I have yet to know what life is; how can I know what death is?”

  —Kawabata Yasunari quoting Confucius

  At seven on the evening of Mishima’s death, the Defense Agency had a large farewell party for Obata Hisao, who had retired five days earlier as the agency’s administrative vice minister. Every one of any notable rank, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Itaya Ryūichi on down, took part. Over the five hundred bottles of beer, of large Japanese size, readied with buffet-style food, the participants mostly gossiped about, one supposes, what had occurred at the Eastern Army Headquarters earlier that day, at the expense of the retired vice minister. Asked why the party was not postponed, the agency’s director of public affairs replied: “This farewell party had been planned days before, and there’s absolutely no reason something like this is affected by a happening like the Mishima Incident.”

  American-style happenings had become popular among Japanese artists.

  Nagaoka Minoru, director of the Finance Ministry’s secretariat, also attended a party that evening. His position was comparable to that of corporate senior vice president for personnel, and by then all the twenty-five other people who had entered the ministry with him back in late 1947 had dropped away or “descended from heaven.” Nagaoka went home near midnight, slightly tipsy. Mrs. Nagaoka greeted him and told him that their two sons were still up. They wanted to know “why what happened to Mr. Mishima happened the way it did,” she said.

  “Mr. Mishima must have had his own thoughts,” Nagaoka told his sons, ages thirteen and sixteen. “For the moment, I do not have the confidence to explain why this, why that.”

  Mishima’s body was autopsied at the Keio University Hospital before it was returned to the Mishimas, past three on the afternoon of November 26. In accordance with his will, it was dressed in a Shield Society uniform. A sword, some of his writing paper, and his fountain pen were placed in his coffin. A private funeral was held in some haste because his body had to be taken to a crematorium before it closed. The body was incinerated a little after six.

  The Seki no Magoroku Mishima used, with which Morita Masakatsu tried to behead Mishima but failed and with which Koga Hiroyasu completed the beheading and then beheaded Morita, was surrendered to the police. Later it was lost.

  Mishima had specified his funeral be done in Shinto style, even as he had allowed the Hiraoka family to conduct their funeral for him in Buddhist style. He had also asked that the Chinese character bu , “martial,” be incorporated in his posthumous Buddhist name but not bun , “literature” or “writing,” because he had given up on it, he had said. But after some thought, Azusa and Shizue decided to include both. So the Buddhist priest worked out Shōbu-in bunkan Kōi koji , “Martial Illuminator and Literary Mirror Layman Kimitake.”1

  The memorial service for Mishima was held at Tsukiji Honganji, on January 24, 1971. The Honganji is an old Buddhist temple that had been transformed into an Indian-style building when it was rebuilt in 1934. The flower artist Adachi Tōko designed the altar for the occasion and the “clean simplicity” she effected won wide admiration. One hundred relatives and one hundred and eighty guests attended the ceremonies. Kawabata Yasunari officiated. In his remarks, he noted that the memorial service had been delayed by two months because the Mishima family, “to put it in an old-fashioned way, confined themselves at home, by closing their gate, to keep themselves in humility.” As to Mishima’s death, he cited Confucian words: “I have yet to know what life is; how can I know what death is?”2

  Hiraoka Azusa was moved and impressed, not so much by the formally attired relatives and guests that had gathered, as by the ordinary people in everyday dress who made up most of the estimated eighty-two hundred people who came to offer prayers.3

  Mishima had planned to declare disbandment of the Shield Society on November 25, 1970, on the balcony, but he lost the chance to do so as a result of the mêlée he had not exactly expected. Kuramochi Kiyoshi learned of Mishima’s decision in his letter to him—and another to the members of the Shield Society—that Yōko handed him by summoning him that night. Debate ensued within the society, but in the end the members accepted Mishima’s statement in his letters that their organization cease to exist “with the uprising.” On February 28, 1971, they gathered at Shintō Misogi Daikyōkai, in Nishi-Nippori, Tokyo, and Kuramochi read a “declaration” that the society had ceased to exist on the day of Mishima’s death. Yōko attended the ceremony. The Shield Society is known to have held no service or ceremony related to itself or Mishima thereafter.4

  The trial on “the Mishima Incident” was held in seventeen separate sessions, from March 23, 1971 to March 23, 1972. The day it opened, at the Tokyo District Court, it snowed; the day it ended, it was windy. The NHK reporter Date Munekatsu, who attended every session and chronicled the proceedings, called the first session “spring snow,” the last “spring storm,” in his account.

  The trial was for Koga Masayoshi, Ogawa Masahiro, and Koga Hiroyasu who were indicted on “confinement leading to injury, violence, injuries, compelling performance of public duty”—this last would be “obstruction of justice by violence or threat” in US law—and “murder by agreement.” But the trial necessarily focused on Mishima Yukio and his thought.

  Mishima might have approved the chief judge, Kushibuchi Osamu, and the chief of the defense team his lawyer Saitō Naoichi lined up, Kusaka Asanosuke, as appropriate for “the samurai Mishima Yukio,” as Date put it. Both came from families with strong samurai traditions.

  Kushibuchi, who had grown up under the tutelage of his father who was a senior staff officer of the Imperial Japanese Army, was the eighteenth-generation descendant of the warrior-commander Fukushima Masanori (1561–1624) and counted among his forebears the founder of the sword–fighting school Shintō Ichiryū. Among the Kushibuchi heirlooms was a sword of Seki no Magoroku make. Kushibuchi himself practiced suburi, solo sword movement. He was also an amateur violinist who played a 1710 Stradivarius.

  Kusaka had as much samurai blood as Kushibuchi. His greatgrandfather was the founder of one branch of the sword-fighting school Munen-ryū, and his oldest brother, Ryūnosuke, the fourth-generation master of the school, became a vice admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy, as did his paternal cousin, Jin’ichi.

  The two admirals received different postwar assessments, however. Kusaka Ryūnosuke was criticized for his tactical decision not to pursue the US fleet after the initial success at Pearl Harbor. It was, critics said, based on the thinking of Munen-ryū fighting. He also won dubious fame for his action as the last chief of staff of the Combined Fleet; he ordered Vice Adm. Itō Seiichi, the commander-in-chief of the navy’s “last sortie” a few months before Japan’s surrender, to “die gallantly as forerunner of the one hundred million Japanese shattering themselves.” The sortie ended in a destruction of three thousand lives. Yoshida Mitsuru, who survived t
he sortie aboard the flagship Yamato that sank, called it “an operation that will live in the naval annals for its recklessness and stupidity.”5

  In contrast, Kusaka Jin’ichi’s reputation grew after Japan’s defeat. He insisted, for example, that all the “war crimes” his subordinates were accused of were actions derived from his orders.

  Kusaka Asanosuke, at any rate, was one of the top lawyers of the day. He was a Supreme Court justice until the year before, from 1962 to 1970. For the trial of the Mishima Incident, he served as defense counsel for the first time. He foresaw the focus of the trial and lined up witnesses who could explain Mishima’s actions and philosophy best. Among the evidence submitted and accepted was Emmanuel Looten’s poem titled Les Rites de l’Amour et de le Mort. In submitting it, Mayuzumi Toshirō explained that Looten read it at a memorial service for Mishima held in Paris on June 26. The poem was reminiscent of one Harriet Monroe, founder-editor of Poetry, wrote upon learning of the death of Gen. Nogi Maresuke six decades earlier.6

  In his closing argument, Kusaka cited the 1941 Supreme Court decision on the Shinpeitai Incident of 1933 in making his case for leniency. The 1941 decision had let all the defendants go free on the ground that their scheme of inciting a civil war “could not possibly be recognized as intending to illegally change the Constitution and other institutions.” Interestingly, just a year earlier, in 1940, Kusaka himself had served as chief judge at the trial of the Second Shinpeitai Incident, a similar though smaller-scale rightwing plan to assassinate the then prime minister, Adm. Yonai Mitsumasa. In his decision, he found all ten conspirators guilty as charged.

  Chief Judge Kushibuchi handed down his decision on April 27, 1972, sentencing Koga Masayoshi, Ogawa Masahiro, and Koga Hiroyasu to four years in prison minus the one hundred eighty days of detention; they had been held until July 7, 1971, when they were released because they were unlikely to jump bail or destroy evidence. The prosecution had asked for a five-year imprisonment.

  Judge Kushibuchi explained he recognized that the Constitution in general and the status of the Tennō and the military in particular are subject to debate, but the “unexceptionable principle of democracy” requires that “the bases of governance be managed through discussion.” The court, in any event, operates under the Constitution as it exists and is in no position to assess the right or wrong of the views of the accused. Also, when Mishima decided to kill himself, the defendants should have done their best to stop him. Instead, “despite the fact that they are studying at the highest institutions of learning,” they assisted him in that act, thereby “driving a man of great talent to death.” The defendants may say that was bushidō, but “it is extremely doubtful if that has anything to do with true bushidō.”

  Still, “ultimately Mishima was the leader of the entire affair, and the defendants simply carried out the followers’ roles.” The relatives of Mishima and Morita have compensated for the harm done to the SDF officers as best they could. Furthermore, “the defendants maintained gentlemanly manners and a clear, honest attitude showing willingness to accept any judgment of law throughout the trial,” which, except for their conduct in this incident, would be “a model in daily life.” These were the ameliorating factors considered, the judge said.

  In the news conference following the court’s decision, Yōko said, “As he stated in his will to his lawyer, Mr. Saitō Naoichi, my husband had hoped we would help the three people to have a new beginning as soon as possible, and that is also what I had hoped. I have not changed my mind in that regard.”

  The three young men were released, in the fall of 1974; they had served two and a half years of their four-year sentences.

  The day the decision was handed down, ten mass transit labor unions struck, immobilizing 2.5 million commuters. It was also, Date Munekatsu noted, the day five SDF soldiers tried to submit to the Director-General of the Defense Agency a letter saying they would refuse to be sent to the Okinawa Base. Okinawa was to be formally “reverted” to Japan on May 15, but at the end of March a secret agreement between the United States and Japan was exposed in the Diet that the Japanese government would take over the entire “rental” costs of all the land needed for US military facilities as a condition for reversion. In his “manifesto,” Mishima had asked, “What does the Okinawa reversion mean?”

  The five soldiers were subjected to disciplinary dismissal on May 4. They appealed. On July 6, 1995, that is, nearly a quarter century later, the Supreme Court handed down its decision on what had become “the 4.27 Antiwar Defense Forces Personnel Incident.” The verdict: the dismissals were constitutional.7

  On March 3, 1977, four armed men, including two former members of the Shield Society, barged into the head office of the powerful Japan Business Federation and took twelve employees hostage, demanding annulment of “the Yalta-Potsdam Regime.” Told all four were admirers of Mishima, Yōko rushed to the JBF and helped persuade the men to release the hostages and surrender themselves.

  Reflecting on Mishima and his death a dozen years later as he looked at the photos of the day, and marveling how “beautifully dressed he was as he stood erect on the balcony,” Yashiro Seiichi could not help hearing, he wrote, the voice of his deceased actor-friend Akutagawa Hiroshi playing Macbeth, reciting the lines, in Japanese translation—

  To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow

  Creep in this petty pace from day to day

  To the last syllable of recorded time,

  And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

  The way to dusty death. . . .8

  In November 1985, a cenotaph made of rock ten feet high was erected for Mishima Yukio at the top of a hill west of the house where Hiraoka Sadatarō was born. Mishima may have forgotten his paternal grandfather’s birthplace, but the birthplace of one of the most illustrious men the town produced did not forget his illustrious grandson.9

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  Notes

  For important remarks on sources, see the headnote to the Bibliography, particularly with regard to the “complete works” published as Mishima Yukio zenshū (Shinchōsha, 2000–2006), which contain the principal texts of Mishima’s writings used for this book. In these Notes, these volumes are identified as Zenshū, Hokan, or Bekkan, followed by volume and page numbers (e.g., Zenshū 38, 68). Source and page citations from these zenshū volumes are given only to Mishima’s essays and such, but not to his novels, stories, and plays, with a few exceptions.

  Prologue

  1 “Kagi no kakaru heya,” Zenshū 19, 209–12. The short story, based on the diary-like notes Mishima had taken in those days, may recreate the environ best.

  Chapter One: Peasant Ancestors and Grandfather

  1 Imai Seiichi, Taishō democracy, Nihon no rekishi series, vol. 23 (Chūō Kōron Sha, 1966), 408–9.

  2 Shiba Ryōtarō, Banshū-Nada monogatari, vol. 1 (Kōdansha, 2004), 55.

  3 “Sadatarō” can also be read “Jōtarō” and “Teitarō.” Nosaka Akiyuki, Kakuyakutaru gyakkō (Bungei Shunjū, 1991), 241.

  4 “Enshigan no tabibito,” Zenshū 27, 647.

  5 Terasaki Hidenari and Mariko Terasaki Miller, eds., Shōwa Tennō dokuhakuroku (Bungei Shunjū, 1991), 69.

  6 Letter to Mitani, February 6, 1945, Zenshū 38, 909. The hours needed by train from Tokyo to Kakogawa cited earlier come from Mishima’s letter to Mitani, February 11, 1945, on the same page.

  7 “Watashi no isho,” Zenshū 34, 153–56.

  8 “Ajisai no hana,” Zenshū 34, 553–57. Hiraoka Azusa, Segare: Mishima Yukio (Bungei Shunjū, 1996), 69.

  9 Letter to Mitani, January 1, 1945, Zenshū 38, 902.

  10 Andō Takeshi, Mishima Yukio no shōgai (Natsume Shobō, 1998), 87–88. For the call for the entire nation to die, see Hiroaki Sato’s online Japan Focus essay, “Gyokusai or ‘Shattering like a Jewel’: Reflection on the Pacific War” (accessed July 11, 2012).

  11 Letter to Mitani, February 11, 1945, Zenshū 38, 909.


  12 Hiraoka, Segare, 70–73.

  13 Ibid., 71.

  14 Fukushima Jurō, Saitei shiryō: Mishima Yukio (Chōbunsha, 2005), 73–74.

  15 The eleventh Tokugawa shogun, Ienari, is reputed to have had forty concubines and sired fifty-three or fifty-five children with them. His twenty-first daughter, Yō, was married to Maeda Nariyasu, in 1827. The extravagant gate Nariyasu built on that occasion was painted scarlet, hence the name. During the Meiji Era the Maeda mansion was placed under the jurisdiction of the Imperial University. Since then, the Akamon has been the nickname of the University of Tokyo. Kitajima Masamoto, Bappan-sei no kumon (Chūō Kōron Sha, 1974), 296. Hiraoka, Segare, 184. As to the lack of any record at the temple on the donated “red gate” and the possibility that the Akamon story was made up, see Etsugu Tomoko, Mishima Yukio bungaku no kiseki (Kōronsha, 1983), 77–79.

  16 Fukushima, Saitei shiryō, 77–78. One of the oft-quoted condemnations appears to have come from Nakano Shūshūshi in the February 1971 issue of Nōmin Bungaku. Nakano Shūshūshi was the penname of a former reporter for the Sankei Shinbun who was originally from Hyōgo and had visited Mishima’s domicile to write his article. Itasaka Gō, Kyokusetsu: Mishima Yukio: Seppuku to Flamenco (Natsume Shobō, 1997), 80–81. See also the Japanese Wikipedia entry on Hiraoka Takichi, which quotes paragraphs from the article in the August 1972 issue of the monthly Uwasa: http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ (accessed July 11, 2012).

  17 Etsugu, Mishima Yukio bungaku no kiseki, 76–80.

  18 Nosaka, Kakuyaku-taru gyakkō, 121–25.

  19 Some have cast doubt on the credibility of this line of research. The death registers or kakochō before the untouchable class was officially abolished contained information on class distinctions, and they are shown only to scholars with special credentials. See Itasaka, Kyokusetsu: Mishima Yukio, 85–94.