by Hiroaki Sato
42 “Akutagawa Ryūnosuke ni tsuite,” Zenshū 28, 404–6.
43 Shōsetsuka no kyūka, Zenshū 28, 565–67.
44 Tanaka Miyoko, “Kaisetsu,” Mishima Yukio, Shōsetsuka no kyūka (Shinchōsha, 1982), 300.
45 Shōsetsuka no kyūka, Zenshū 28, 610–11.
46 “Shi no bunryō,” Zenshū 28, 186–89.
47 Shōsetsuka no kyūka, Zenshū 28, 646.
48 “‘Junbungaku to wa?’ sonota,” Zenshū 32, 81.
49 “Watashi no henreki jidai.” Zenshū 32, 323.
50 Dōmoto Masaki, Kaisō: kaitentobira no Mishima Yukio (Bungei Shunjū, 2005), 70–71.
51 Muramatsu, Mishima Yukio no sekai, 386.
52 Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, trans., Demons (New York: Vintage, 1995), 617, 621.
53 “Hinuma-shi to shi,” Zenshū 35, 184–85.
54 Jijin is traditionally applied to the act of killing oneself with a sword. But Mishima used the same word when the marathon runner Tsuburaya Kōkichi (1940–68), second lieutenant of the GSDF, committed suicide because of his inability to participate in the Mexican Olympic Games. Tsuburaya used a razor blade. “Tsuburaya nii no jijin,” Zenshū 34, 652–54.
55 Quoted in Allen Guttmann, The Erotic in Sports (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 70. Lingis’s article, “Orchids and Muscles,” originally appeared in Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, 1986. It was later collected in Foreign Bodies (London: Routledge, 1994).
56 “Tōgyūshi no bi,” Zenshū 34, 130–31.
57 “France no terebi ni Hatsu-shutsuen,” Zenshū 34, 31–32.
58 “Nentō no mayoi,” Zenshū 34, 284–87. A. E. Hotchner has pointed out the possibility that Hemingway might have killed himself exasperated by the FBI’s hounding. A. E. Hotchner, “Hemingway, Hounded by the Feds,” New York Times, July 1, 2011.
59 “Dōzō to no taiwa—Saigō Takamori,” Zenshū 34, 665–66. “A Pact” in Richard Sieburth, ed., Ezra Pound: Poems and Translations (New York: Library of America, 2003), 269.
Chapter Twenty-Two: Death in India
1 Mishima noted that there are four conjectures on where the suggestive title came from: an allusion to Saigyō’s tanka (Hagakure ni chiritodomareru hana nomi zo shinobishi hito ni au kokochi suru); the suggestion that Yamamoto provided service to his lord in seclusion as his abode was hidden in foliage; a reference to the persimmon tree near Yamamoto’s abode that was called Hagakushi (leaves hiding the fruit); and the fact that Saga Castle, of the Nabeshima fiefdom that Yamamoto served, was famous for its many trees with glorious foliage. Hagakure nyūmon, Zenshū 34, 491–92. Saigyō, despite his reputation as an ascetic seeker of enlightenment, left a great many tanka on koi, “love.” This one is in the cluster of “love” poems in the middle volume of his collection Sankashū (no. 599). It comes with the heading, “Love in the metaphor of a remaining flower,” and says, “This flower that has stayed, without scattering, behind the leaves—I feel as if I’ve met the person I long for.” Shinobu koi, love one simply “endures” without disclosing it to the person one yearns for, is an important theme in classical verse. It was the kind of “love” that Yamamoto argued was at the heart of a samurai’s loyalty and devotion to his lord. Mishima agreed wholeheartedly.
2 Hagakure nyūmon, Zenshū 34, 474–540. When it was published in 1967, Mishima’s commentary was accompanied by a body of excerpts with translations into modern Japanese by Kasahara Nobuo which formed Part 2. The zenshū omits that part.
3 “Utsukushii shi,” Zenshū 34, 440–41.
4 The film was based on the account of the same name, compiled by the Pacific War Research Society led by Handō Kazutoshi and published by Bungei Shunjū, in 1965. Kodansha International published its English translation in 1968. For an account of Anami’s seppuku, see Tsunoda Fusako’s biography, Isshi, daizai o shasu: rikugun daijin Anami Korechika (Shinchōsha, 1983), 442–56. Tsunoda is an unusual biographer of military leaders. Finding herself with her emaciated baby when Japan surrendered, she decided, a few decades later, to look into some of the military leaders who might have been responsible for the fate of Japan. Other than Anami, she wrote about Gen. Honma Masaharu, who was executed for what happened in Bataan, and Gen. Imamura Hitoshi, who dedicated his life after defeat to the welfare of his former soldiers.
5 Nakamura, Resshi to yobareru otoko, 1–69.
6 “‘Dōgiteki kakumei’ no ronri,” Zenshū 34, 348–71.
7 Mishima’s letter to Kawabata, February 13, 1967, and Kawabata’s letter to Mishima, February 26, 1967, Kawabata Yasunari and Mishima Yukio, Ōfuku shokan, 182–84.
8 “‘Gakumon geijutsu ni jiritsusei o’: Kawabata-shi ra Bunka Kakumei ni appeal,” Asahi Shinbun, March 1, 1967. “Bunka Dai-Kakumei ni kansuru seimei,” Zenshū 36, 505.
9 “Kono ‘ichimai no shashin’ o dō miru ka,” Zenshū 34, 331. Mishima’s remarks quoted in the weekly Asahi, February 24, 1967.
10 Mori Mari, Watashi no bi no sekai (Shinchōsha, 1984), 152–60.
11 The Mori Mari special of the monthly Eureka: Poetry and Criticism, December 2007, 192.
12 The name Peter may be out of place, for the character is supposed to be Russian and it should be “Pyotr.” In any case, we can assume that the story contains a good deal of autobiographical material. Japan had a sizable number of Russian immigrants during the period Mori describes, from the end of the Russo-Japanese War well into the 1920s.
13 Mori Oto, Chichioya to shite no Mori Ōgai (Chikuma Shobō, 1993), 124–28.
14 “Anata no rakuen, anata no gin no saji,” Zenshū 34, 372–78.
15 “Taidan: Ningen to bungaku,” Zenshū 40, 145.
16 Letter to Kikuchi, October 20, 1967. Zenshū 38, 460.
17 Most of what he did and observed is detailed by Mishima himself in the interview Tokuoka conducted for the Mainichi Shinbun. “Indo no inshō,” Zenshū 34, 585–94.
18 Tokuoka, Gosui no hito, 90–96.
19 Ibid., 99–100.
20 Laurens van der Post, The Admiral’s Baby (New York: William Morrow, 1996), 236.
21 Letter to Shibusawa, October 23, 1967, Zenshū 38, 535.
22 “Indo tsūshin,” Zenshū 34, 595–600.
23 Tokuoka, Gosui no hito, 110–11.
24 Ibid., 101–5, 130–31.
25 Hiraoka, Segare, 210–12 (Chiyuki’s recollections). Letter to Araki, October 23, 1967, Zenshū 38, 188.
26 “Suzaku-ke no metsubō ni tsuite,” Zenshū 34, 566–67.
27 Ibid., 568–70.
28 “Kaidai,” Zenshū 24, 725–26.
29 Ibid., 688.
30 “Chūsei o tēma no sansaku,” Asahi Shinbun (evening edition), 29 September 1967.
31 Junshi, to kill oneself to follow one’s lord’s death, was forbidden early in the Tokugawa regime, as in the buke sho-hotto, Various Regulations for the Military Houses, in 1663. Ishii, Kinsei buke shisō, 458. Nogi’s junshi prompted Harriet Monroe to pen an ode, published in the second issue of Poetry, the magazine she had just started. Among others, the American journalist Stanley Washburn wrote an admiring biography, Nogi.
32 Abe Kōbō, Tomodachi, Enomoto Takeaki (Kawade Shobō Shinsha, 1967), 126.
33 Fukuzawa Yukichi, Yasegaman no setsu, Meiji jūnen: Teichū kōron (Kōdansha, 1985). His argument was originally published in 1901.
34 Abe, Tomodachi, Enomoto Takeaki, 127. As Abe noted in his afterword, 221–22, the play was based on his novel with the same title that elicited diametrically opposing views of the Enomoto as presented by Abe.
Chapter Twenty-Three: The Anti-Vietnam War Movement
1 After 1961, the anti-Yoyogi Faction was run by the Revolutionary Marxist Faction (known by its acronym Kakumaru-ha), but in 1963 it spawned a faction within it, the National Committee of the Alliance of Revolutionary Communists (Chūkaku-ha). In 1966, the Chūkaku-ha and two other subfactions of the anti-Yoyogi Faction—the Alliance of Socialist Students (Shagakudō; also called by the German Bund) and the Liberation Faction of the Alliance
of Socialist Youths (Shaseidō Kaihōha)—formed a united front, creating “the Three Factions,” Sanpa Zengakuren. In 1968, their unity crumbled, but the three groups continued to be called by their group name. See chart in Sassa Atsuyuki, Tōdai rakujō (Bungei Shunjū, 1993), 43. Also the entry on gakusei undō in Heibonsha’s encyclopedia Sekai dai-hyakka jiten.
2 “Tōdai o dōbutsuen ni shiro,” Zenshū 35, 361.
3 Quoted in the October 14, 1967 online entry “Sengo gakusei undō kōsatsu.” www.marino.ne.jp/~rendaico/sengogakuseiundo.htm (accessed July 11, 2012).
4 “Joint Statement of Japanese Prime Minister Sato and US President Johnson,” dated November 15, 1967, “The World and Japan” Database Project: Database of Postwar Japanese Politics and International Relations, Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo. Online. The Japanese text uses the word Okinawa as well as Ryūkyū but the English sticks to the word Ryukyu. www.ioc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~worldjpn/documents/texts/JPUS/19671115.D1E.html (accessed July 11, 2012).
5 “JNG ka’an,” Zenshū 34, 623–25.
6 “Sokoku bōeitai wa naze hitsuyō ka,” Zenshū 34, 626–43.
7 Hosaka, Mishima Yukio to Tate no Kai jiken, 125–26.
8 Shima Taizō, Yasuda Kōdō: 1968–1969 (Chūō Kōron Sha, 2005), 2–4.
9 Ibid., 7–10.
10 Hosaka, Mishima Yukio to Tate no Kai jiken, 130–31.
11 F-Kikan, “F” standing for Fujiwara and kikan meaning “service,” has a number of Internet references. Fujiwara’s greatest success was his help in forming the Indian National Army. Joyce Chapman Lebra’s book, The Indian National Army and Japan (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2008; originally published as Jungle Alliance: Japan and the Indian National Army, by Asia/Pacific Press, 1971), is a full account of Fujiwara’s effort to create the Indian National Army. Lebra was most likely the only foreign woman on the Ichigaya compound the day Mishima pulled his final act; she was doing her research on her book. Joyce Lebra, “Eyewitness: Mishima,” New York Times, November 28, 1970.
Lebra’s book is based on Japanese documents and Indian views and describes the complicated wartime ventures dispassionately. Louis Allen is dismissive of Japanese wartime intelligence efforts in general and of the Indian National Army in particular: the latter was, he wrote, “dissolved in 1942 by its chief, Captain (later General) Mohan Singh, and was resurrected under the aegis of Subhas Chandra Bose in 1943. It took part, almost entirely ineffectively, in the campaign against the British in Arakan and Manipur in 1944, but played a small part in the achieving of Indian independence in 1947, as a result of public opinion roused by the court-martial of three of its leaders in the Red Fort, Delhi, in 1945.” Louis Allen, “Japanese Intelligence Systems,” Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 22, no. 4, 1987, 559.
12 Rikugun Daigakkō, which existed from 1883 to 1945. It was modeled after the German Kriegsakademie and was comparable to the US War Army College. Bōei Daigakkō that came into being in 1954 sounds similar to the prewar institution by name, but as its English name, The National Defense Academy, suggests, it is the equivalent of the US Military Academy. By the time Yamamoto went there, the staff college’s study period was reduced from three years to one.
13 Yamamoto, Mishima Yukio: Yūmon no sokoku bōei fu, 82–88.
14 Ibid., 48–49.
15 Ibid., 27–29.
16 Ibid., 62–68.
17 “Shōsetsu to wa nani ka,” Zenshū 34, 683–758.
18 Isoda, Junkyō no bigaku, 395. Murakami’s book was titled Senchūha no jōri to fujōri (The Wartime Generation’s Rationality and Irrationality).
19 “20 nen de puttsuri kireteiru—saichō no gengō Shōwa.” Zenshū 36, 242.
20 “Shōbu no kokoro to funnu no jojō,” Zenshū 34, 608–21. Also, Shōbu no kokoro: Mishima Yukio taidan-shū (Nihon Kyōbun Sha, 1970), 172–89.
21 Letter to Kikuchi, April 4, 1968, Zenshū 38, 461–62.
22 Hosaka, Mishima Yukio to Tate no Kai, 133–35.
23 Nakamura, Resshi to yobareru otoko, 93.
24 Shiine, Heibon Punch no Mishima Yukio, 18–23.
25 Ibid., 95.
26 Letter to Tsutsumi, December 29, 1967, Zenshū 38, 693–98.
27 Quoted in Matsumoto, Tokuhon, in its April–May 1968 section (the book is unpaginated). Muramatsu Takeshi gives a slightly different account in Mishima Yukio no sekai, 503–4.
28 Yamamoto, Mishima Yukio: Yūmon no sokoku bōei fu, 96–116.
29 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Anatol Rapoport (London: Penguin, 1968; original trans. 1908). Clausewitz says: “War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means” (119). In his famous tract Clausewitz insists that “War is an instrument of policy” (411). Mao’s words come from On Protracted War. See online “Quotations from Mao Tsetung.” www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_09.htm(accessed July 11, 2012).
30 “Kokka kakushin no genri,” Zenshū 40, 209.
31 “Gogatsu kakumei,” Zenshū 35, 137–38.
32 Tony Judt, “Three More Memoirs,” New York Review of Books, February 25, 2010, 19. Also by Judt see Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (London: Penguin Books, 2006), 411–12, and The Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, Aron, and the French Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 151.
33 “Kokka kakushin no genri,” Zenshū 40, 207.
34 “Kurotokage ni tsuite,” Zenshū 35,119. The government-sponsored broadcasting corporation (NHK) started experimental TV broadcasting in June 1956, and the private broadcasting company TBS started TV broadcasting in April 1955.
35 “Furui haru,” Zenshū 35, 114. The essay appeared in the June issue of the monthly devoted to fiction.
Chapter Twenty-Four: Sun and Steel
1 “Jo (Yatō Tamotsu shashin-shū Hadaka matsuri),” Zenshū 35, 121–28.
2 “Genda Minoru—konna kōho konna hitogara,” Zenshū 35, 129.
3 Hayashi, Shōwa-shi to watashi, 329.
4 “Kaidai,” Zenshū 35, 769. The quotation is from a summary of the council’s statement.
5 “Filter no susuharai,” Zenshū 35, 131.
6 “Makeru ga kachi,” in Mishima Yukio, Wakaki samurai no tame ni (Bungei Shunjū Sha, 1966), 201–3.
7 “Watashi no jishu bōei ron,” Zenshū 35, 233.
8 Hayashi, Shōwa-shi to watashi, 291.
9 “Tōdai o dōbutsuen ni shiro,” Zenshū 35, 364–65.
10 According to Shibusawa Tatsuhiko, who said he helped Mishima in Western “decadent art,” the Beardsley picture Mishima chose, Sōjō, “priest,” was an illustration of Beardsley’s erotic writing, Under the Hill, that appeared in the first issue of the magazine, The Savoy. Shibusawa, Mishima Yukio: Oboegaki, 63. A great deal of Beardsley material is online, including what appears to be the complete edition of Under the Hill, but it is difficult to identify Mishima’s choice without recourse to the summer 1968 issue of Hihyō where his article and the artworks he chose appeared.
11 “Decadence bijutsu,” Zenshū 35, 115–16.
12 Shiine, Heibon Punch no Mishima Yukio, 69, and Fukuda Kazuya, “Kaisetsu,” Mishima Yukio: Wakaki samurai no tame ni (Bungei Shunjū Sha, 1996), 273–74.
13 “Samurai ni tsuite,” Zenshū 34, 676–79.
14 Bōjō, Hono’o no gen’ei, 29–33.
15 “Bunjaku no to ni tsuite,” Zenshū 35, 100–102.
16 Hashikawa Bunzō, “Wakai sedai to sengo seishin,” Hashikawa Bunzō chosakushū, vol. 4, 298–301.
17 Haga Mayumi is the “M. H.” in Mishima’s open exchange of letters in the February 1947 issue of Gozen on “the future of mankind and the fate of the poet.” “M. H.-shi e no tegami: jinrui no shōrai to shijin no unmei,” Zenshū 26, 596–603.
18 John Nathan, “Tokyo Story,” New Yorker, April 9, 2001, 108.
19 Hashikawa Bunzō, “Yōsetsusha no kin’yoku,” Hashikawa Bunzō chosakushū, vol. 1,
266–72. Included in the Gunzō special Nihon no sakka 18: Mishima Yukio, 26–31.
20 Letter to Hashikawa, May 29, 1966, Zenshū 38, 766–67.
21 “Hashikawa Bunzō-shi e no kōkaijō,” Zenshū 35, 205–6.
22 “2.26 shōkō to Zengakuren gakusei to no danzetsu,” Zenshū 40, 587.
23 Mishima was not feigning knowledge of avant-garde tanka. In 1956, when Tsukamoto Kunio dedicated to him his first book of tanka Tale of Burial at Sea (Suisō monogatari) and sent him a copy, Mishima, evidently taken by Tsukamoto’s pieces that rejected tradition except for the form, at once recommended him to Bungakukai, which duly reprinted a group of ten tanka from it. Tsukamoto, who put himself at the forefront of the avant-garde movement in tanka soon after the war, retained that status till his death, in 2005, effortlessly combining his knowledge of “old European things” with that of “Japan’s medieval vocabulary,” as Mishima characterized his tanka, although, in the same letter noting that, in 1965, Mishima told him that he, along with Fukuda Tsuneari, did not believe in the characterization of “avant-garde.” Letter to Tsukamoto, February 12, 1965, Zenshū 38, 692.
24 Gunjin chokuyu may be read online. www.asahi-net.or.jp/~uu3s-situ/00/Gunzin.tyokuyu.html (accessed July 11, 2012).
25 Quoted by Takeuchi Yoshimi, “Kenryoku to geijutsu,” Nihon gendai bungaku zenshū 93 (Kōdansha, 1968), 351. Robert Dahl, How Democratic Is the American Constitution? (2001), 111–15. Dahl calls US presidency “a hybrid.”
26 Nakamura, Nihon no kindai, 357–58.
27 Hashikawa Bunzō, “Bi no ronri to seiji no ronri,” Hashikawa Bunzō chosakushū, vol. 1, 239–58. Hashikawa traces the origins of Mishima’s view of culture as a “comprehensive totality” as well as “the Tennō as a cultural concept” to the ideas of National Learning proponents such as Motoori Norinaga (1730–1801). He characterizes as “an astonishing idea in the history of human thought” the worldview such as propounded by Moto’ori Norinaga in Tamakushige that both good and bad things occur by divine decree so that attempts to eliminate bad things are vain (250–52).
28 “Hashimoto Bunzō-shi e no kōkaijō,” Zenshū 35, 206.