by Hiroaki Sato
29 “Eiyo no kizuna de tsunage kiku to katana,” Zenshū 35, 192–93.
30 Kawabata Yasunari, “Senkyo jimuchō funsen no ki.” “Bungei Shunjū” ni miru Shōwa-shi, vol. 3, 310–26. Kawabata’s view on the security treaty, 319–20.
31 Tanaka, Mishima Yukio: Kami no kagebōshi, 240–43.
32 “Taidan: Ningen to bungaku,” Zenshū 40, 169–70. The four taidan were conducted on July 10, August 17, September 13, and November 10, 1967.
33 Stephen Coote, W. B. Yeats: A Life (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1997), 114.
34 “Nichirin raisan,” Zenshū 37, 473–74. The poem is dated 15.3.20, i.e., March 20, 1940.
35 “Tōsui ni tsuite,” Zenshū 29, 306.
36 Shiine, Heibon Punch no Mishima Yukio, 30–31.
Chapter Twenty-Five: The Shield Society, Counterrevolution
1 “Sakuhin no haikei—Waga tomo Hitler,” “Waga tomo Hitler oboegaki,” and “Ittsui no sakuhin—Sado kōshaku fujin to Waga tomo Hitler,” Zenshū 35, 319–20, 386–88, 472–73.
2 Michel Surya, Georges Bataille: An Intellectual Biography, trans. Kizysztof Fijalkowski and Michael Richardson (London and New York: Verso, 2002), 309, 442. Mishima observed that the Japanese readers of Bataille had been tormented by foul translations until Ikuta Kōsaku’s that he took up for discussing the French writer. In this regard, it is amusing to note that Ikuta translated as “octopus” what the translators of Surya’s book gave as “squid” in the following passage: “She was seated, she held one leg stuck up in the air, to open her crack yet wider she used fingers to draw the folds of skin apart. And so Madame Edwarda’s ‘old tatters’ looked at me, hairy and pink, just as full of life as some loathsome squid. ‘Why,’ I stammered in a subdued tone, ‘why are you doing that?’ ‘You can see for yourself,’ she said, ‘I’m god.’” Michel Surya, Georges Bataille, 305. Mishima, indeed began his review of Muro Junsuke’s translation of Eroticism by saying: “The books I want to read, books that draw my interest, often come, strangely, in bad translation. The translation of this book, too, is terrible.” “Eroticism—Georges Bataille cho, Muro Junsuke yaku,” Zenshū 31, 411–15.
3 “Shōsetsu to wa nani ka,” Zenshū 34, 710–21.
4 Shiine, Heibon Punch no Mishima Yukio, 95–96.
5 Koestler, “For Better or Worse.”
6 “Gunpuku o kiru otoko no jōken,” Zenshū 35, 298–99, 772–73. Shiine, Heibon Punch no Mishima Yukio, 95–97.
7 Muramatsu, Mishima Yukio no sekai (Shinchōsha, 1996), 526.
8 “Chōju no geijutsu no hana o,” Zenshū 35, 220–22.
9 Itasaka Gō, Shinsetsu: Mishima Yukio (Natsume Shobō, 1998), 46–52.
10 “Taidan: Ningen to bungaku,” Zenshū 40, 64–65.
11 Keene, 5 Modern Japanese Novelists, 24–25. Fujita Mitsuo, “Atogaki,” Mishima Yōko and Fujita Mitsuo, eds., Shashinshū: Mishima Yukio: ’25–’70 (Shinchō, 2000). The book is unpaginated.
12 Shima, Yasuda Kōdō, 110.
13 Some of the details from the front-page articles on October 22, 1968 of the Asahi Shinbun.
14 Or a “special correspondent for Shinchōsha,” according to Yamamoto, Mishima Yukio: Yūmon no sokoku bōei fu, 133.
15 Ibid., 135–37.
16 Shibusawa, Mishima Yukio: Oboegaki, 9.
17 Itasaka, Kyokusetsu: Mishima Yukio, 176–79.
18 “Tōdai o dōbutsuen ni shiro,” Zenshū 35, 360–61.
19 “Seiji kōi no shōchōsei ni tsuite,” Zenshū 40, 432, 437.
20 Yamamoto, Mishima Yukio: Yūmon no sokoku bōei fu, 135–36.
21 Hiraoka, “Bōru no gotoku,” quoted in Tokuhon, end of 1968.
22 “Ballet Miranda ni tsuite,” Zenshū 35, 243.
23 “Kaidai,” Zenshū 24, 699.
24 Le Sang et la Rose is the French name given by the editor Shibusawa Tatsuhiko.
25 Shiine, Heibon Punch no Mishima Yukio, 260–62.
26 The 1968 Esquire cover of Muhammad Ali and comments are online (accessed July 11, 2012).
27 The four issues of Chi to bara are partially online. http://homepage2.nifty.com/weird~/titobara.htm (accessed July 11, 2012).
28 In fact, the medical students had gone on strike a year earlier, on March 23, and it had lasted until March 27; but it had not created the kind of chain reactions within Tōdai that the one in January 1968 did. Toyokawa Kōhei, “Genkyō ni mo iwasete hoshii,” “Bungei Shunjū” ni miru Shōwa-shi, vol. 3, 359–76. Toyokawa was dean of the school and was accused of being responsible for the turmoil, hence the title of his article. Hayashi, Shōwa-shi to watashi, 295–96.
29 Kawashima Hiroshi, “Yasuda Kōdō sai-senkyo sengen.” “Bungei Shunjū” ni miru Shōwa-shi, vol. 3, 346, 350.
30 Yomota Inuhiko, High School 1968 (Shinchōsha, 2004), 71.
31 Hayashi, Shōwa-shi to watashi, 315–16.
32 Kawashima, “Yasuda Kōdō sai-senkyo sengen,” 348.
33 Sassa, Tōdai rakujō (Bungei Shunjū, 1996), 123.
34 Ibid., 279–80.
35 Shima, Yasuda Kōdō, 178–80, 271–73.
36 Kawashima, “Yasuda Kōdō sai-senkyo sengen,” 350.
37 Sassa, Tōdai rakujō, 129.
38 Shima, Yasuda Kōdō, 158–76, especially 176.
39 “Minsei no chikara koso osorubeki mono da,” Zenshū 35, 383–84. Also his taidan with Iida Momo, “Seiji kōi no shōchōsei ni tsuite,” Zenshū 40, 422–41.
40 Yomota, High School 1968, 71.
41 Kawashima, “Yasuda Kōdō sai-senkyo sengen,” 348.
42 Andō, “Nichiroku,” 366; also Zenshū 42, 304, and Sassa, Tōdai rakujō, 16. But Sassa, in his book, does not mention the kind of gas Mishima recommended. He may have done so when his account was initially serialized in Bungei Shunjū.
43 Sassa, Tōdai rakujō, 313–15.
44 Muramatsu, Mishima Yukio no sekai, 527–28.
45 “‘Haru no yuki’ ni tsuite,” Zenshū 35, 515.
46 Okuno, Mishima Yukio densetsu, 432–35.
47 Jin Jan as transliterated from the name given in the novel; Jao Jan is one Thai reading from the Chinese characters given for “princess” (jao, “royal”) and “moonlight” (jan or chan, “moon”). A Thai says “Jan Jao” is probably correct.
48 Kojima, Mishima Yukio to Dan Kazuo, 52–61.
49 “Hankakumei sengen,” Zenshū 35, 389–90. The manifesto is followed by hochū, “supplementary notes.” These are the result of the discussions between Mishima and the members of the Shield Society, which he orally summarized. Hosaka, Mishima Yukio to Tate no Kai jiken, 164.
50 “Sōrei naru ‘kyokō’ no tenkai,” Zenshū 35, 426–27.
51 Yamato damashii meaning an iron resolve unique to the Japanese is of relatively recent vintage. When the expression appears in Genji’s words in the Otome chapter of the Tale of Genji, it is used in the sense of “commonsensical judgment”: zae o moto to shite koso, Yamato damashii no yo ni mochiiraruru kata mo tsuyō haberame, “Only when you have Chinese learning as foundation, your ability will be stronger to exercise your commonsensical judgment in daily life.” By the time Takizawa Bakin used the phrase in the late Edo Period, it came to mean a resoluteness unique to the Japanese but not necessarily in the positive sense. In Volume 4 of Part 2 (Chapter 24) of Chinsetsu Yumiharizuki, the deceased Emperor Shutoku (Sutoku), appearing as a ghost, admonishes Minamoto no Tametomo not to hasten to follow him in death, saying, Koto ni semarite shi o karonzuru ha, Yamato damashii naredo ōku wa omoibakari no asaki ni nite, manabazaru no ayamari nari, “Driven up against the wall, it may be the Japanese spirit to make light of death [i.e., to choose to die], but in many cases it resembles shallowness in thinking, an error of the unlearned.”
52 Yamamoto, Mishima Yukio: Yūmon no sokoku bōei fu, 160–63.
53 Hosaka, Mishima Yukio to Tate no Kai jiken, 164–65.
54 Murakami, Kimitachi ni wa wakaranai, 23–25.
55 “Watashi no dokusho-jutsu,” Zenshū 35, 374–75.
Chapter
Twenty-Six: The Yakuza
1 “Tsuruta Kōji ron,” Zenshū 35, 413–17. Tsuneishi Fumiko, “Sandome no jijin,” Eureka (November 2000), 238.
2 Yomota, Nihon eiga-shi 100 nen, 72–73.
3 Yamamoto Jirochō, usually known as Shimizu no Jirochō because of the port where he did his business, counted among his associates some of the prominent officials of the day and was accorded a biography while alive. Amada Guan (1854–1904), of samurai stock, who survived the Boshin War as a young man and became one of Jirochō’s henchmen and was then adopted, published Tōkai yūkyō den, in 1884, as a farewell gift as he annulled the adoption. The hagiographic narrative went on to become the greatest source of countless tales about the man in the years that followed. In Shimizu no Jirochō (PHP Kenkyūsho, 2006; originally Bungei Shunjū, 2002), Kurogane Hiroshi did a two-volume manga recounting of the man’s life and times largely to remedy the hagiography.
4 “Tsuruta Kōji-ron,” Zenshū 35, 413–17.
5 Tsuneishi Fumiko, “Sandome no jijin,” 240–41. Bazin’s words are quoted from Gary Johnson’s online article, “In Focus: The Western, an Overview” (accessed July 11, 2012).
6 Shima, Yasuda Kōdō, 146–47.
7 Yomota, High School 1968, 65.
8 Shiine, Heibon Punch no Mishima Yukio, 45–49.
9 “Shikyaku to kumichō,” Zenshū 40, 515, 791.
10 Hamish Miles, trans., Sardonic Tales (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927), 69. The original title is in English.
11 “Raiō no terasu ni tsuite,” Zenshū 35, 511.
12 “Kawabata bungaku no bi—reien,” Zenshū 35, 448–49. For Zeami’s citation of Teika’s poem, see J. Thomas Rimer and Yamazaki Masaharu, On the Art of the Nō Drama: The Major Treaties of Zeami (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 117. For the original paragraph in Zeami’s treatise Yūgaku shūdō fūken where Teika’s poem is cited, Hisamatsu Sen’ichi and Nishio Minoru, eds., Karon-shū, nōgakuron-shū (Iwanami Shoten, 1965), 444–45. For “snow in a silver bowl” in Zeami’s treatise Kyūi, ibid., 448.
13 “Yumiharizuki no gekika to enshutsu,” Zenshū 35, 730.
14 Urayama Masao and Matsuzaki Hitoshi, eds., Kabuki kyakuhon shū, jō (Iwanami Shoten, 1960), 9–11. The theater critic and tanka poet Ishii Tatsuhiko has provided some of the details here.
15 Gary Wills, Verdi’s Shakespeare: Men of the Theater (New York: Viking, 2011), 8–13.
16 “Chinsetsu yumiharizuki no enshutsu,” Zenshū 35, 732.
17 “Yumiharizuki no gekika to enshutsu,” Zenshū 35, 728.
18 “Hitokiri Tanaka Shinbē ni funshite,” Zenshū 35, 508–10.
19 “Hitokiri shutsuen no ki,” Zenshū 35, 518–19. See also Tokuhon.
20 Letter to Hayashi, June 13, 1969, Zenshū 38, 798–99.
21 Yamamoto, Mishima Yukio: Yūmon no sokoku bōei fu, 168–72. Yamamoto also remembered Mishima going up onto the stage where Matsumoto Kōshirō was rehearsing his role in A Wonder Tale and giving him acting instructions, with Mishima’s wife Yōko alone watching in the audience. But there obviously was confusion in Yamamoto’s memory: It was too early for any rehearsal of the play.
22 “Il se pourrait que ce fût pour voir dans vos yeux une inquiétude, une curiosité du trouble enfin: tout ce que depuis une seconde j’y découvre.” François Mauriac, Thérèse, trans. Gerard Hopkins (London: Penguin, 2002; originally 1928), 109–10. As Mauriac made it clear, the story was based on an actual case in his youth. See Raymond MacKenzie’s translation, Thérèse Desqueyroux (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), 3–4. Thérèse’s motive is at least dual, lesbianism and freedom in daily living, which must both be suppressed in a rural Catholic milieu.
23 “Ce que je voulais? Sans doute serait-il plus aisé de dire ce que je ne voulais pas; je ne voulais pas jouer un personnage, faire des gestes, prononcer des formules, renier enfin à chaque instant une Thérèse qui. . .” François Mauriac, Thérèse 111–12; MacKenzie, Thérèse Desqueyroux, 121.
24 Muramatsu, Mishima Yukio no sekai (Shinchōsha, 1996), 524.
25 Hosaka, Mishima Yukio to Tate no Kai jiken, 199–200.
26 Ibid., 210.
27 See recollections of Suzuki Taka (1883–1971) who served as Hirohito’s nanny for eleven years, before marrying Kantarō, later an admiral, grand chamberlain, and prime minister—Tsurumi and Nakagawa, Tennō hyakuwa, jō, 23–43—as well as recollections of Kanroji Osanaga (1880–1977), an aristocrat who spent a great deal of time at the Imperial Palace (53–57). Suzuki tells how Hirohito, then Prince Michi, loved to wrestle but insisted on having the pants that developed holes at the knees mended, rather than asking for a new pair. That was part of the teachings of Gen. Nogi Maresuke, whom he insisted on calling “His Excellency, the President.” Both Suzuki and Kanroji describe Gen. Nogi’s final visit with Prince Michi, two days before he disemboweled himself to follow Emperor Meiji in death.
The postwar Japanese rightwing and conservatives became increasingly disenchanted with the Tennō institution as the martial (bu) aspect of the Shōwa Emperor before Japan’s defeat was deemphasized and the stress on austerity in imperial life was relegated to lower status as his son became Tennō. Ben-Ami Shillony, “Conservative Dissatisfaction with the Modern Emperors,” in Shillony, Emperors of Modern Japan, 147–54.
28 “‘Tate no Kai’ no koto,” Zenshū 35, 722.
29 “2.25 shōkō to Zengakuren gakusei to no danzetsu,” Zenshū 40, 588.
30 Mishima Yukio vs Tōdai Zenkyōtō: Bi to kyōdōtai to Tōda tōsō (Kadokawa Shoten, 2000; originally 1969). Zenshū 40, 442–506.
31 Yamamoto, Mishima Yukio: Yūmon no sokoku bōei fu, 185–88.
32 Andō, “Nichiroku,” 403–4.
33 Shiine, Heibon Punch no Mishima Yukio, 95.
34 Murakami, Kimitachi ni wa wakaranai, 20.
35 Yamamoto, Mishima Yukio: yūmon no sokoku bōei-fu, 183–84.
36 “‘Tate no Kai’ no koto,” Zenshū 35, 722.
37 “Watashi no kinkyō—Haru no yuki to Honba,” Zenshū 35, 295–96.
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Wang Yangming: “To know is to act”
1 Muramatsu, Mishima Yukio no sekai, 530–32. Hosaka, Mishima Yukio to Tate no Kai jiken, 216–17, 219–20.
2 Yamamoto, Mishima Yukio: Yūmon no sokoku bōei fu, 193.
3 “Kita Ikki ron,” Zenshū 35, 497–504.
4 “Mishima-shi ni zubari 10 shitsumon,” Zenshū 35, 506.
5 Notes for Ran’ryō’ō, Zenshū 20, 777–82.
6 “Nihon to wa nani ka,” Zenshū 35, 693.
7 Kawabata Yasunari, Utsukushii Nihon no watakushi: sono josetsu, with E. G. Seidensticker’s translation (Kodansha, 1969).
8 Yasunari Kawabata, Bi no sonzai to hakken or The Existence and Discovery of Beauty, trans. V. H. Viglielmo (Mainichi Newspaper, 1969).
9 Kawabata, Utsukushii Nihon no watakushi, 16–20; Seidensticker,’s translation 61–63.
10 Kawabata, Bi no sonzai to hakken (Mainichi Shinbun Sha, 1969), 63–64. Yamagishi Tokuhei, ed., Genji monogatari, vol. 5 (Iwanami Shoten, 1963), 345.
11 Letter to Kawabata, August 4, 1969. Zenshū 38, 308. Ōfuku shokan, 199.
12 Letter to Bōjō, March 12, 1969, Zenshū 38, 872–73. Bōjō, Hono’o no gen’ei, 91, 129–36.
13 Shin ren’ai kōza, Zenshū 29, 15–123. The series of twelve “lectures” begins with an overview of Greek (Platonic) love, Christian love, and “Japanese love.”
14 “Haru no yuki ni tsuite,” Zenshū 35, 661.
15 “Nihon to wa nani ka,” Zenshū 35, 699–701.
16 August 3, 1955, Shōsetsuka no kyūka, Zenshū 28, 646–50.
17 Kōdōgaku nyūmon, Zenshū 35, 606–10. Kōdōgaku today means “ethology,” but Mishima did not use it in that sense. One is tempted to apply “actionism,” except that “actionism” is likely to mislead because of the art movement so designated.
18 Kōdōgaku nyūmon, Zenshū 35, 612–14
19 Ibid., 614–15.
20 Hosaka, Mishima Yukio to
Tate no Kai jiken, 229–30. The taidan is not included in Zenshū 39 and 40 or in Shōbu no kokoro.
21 Shiine, Heibon Punch no Mishima Yukio, 73–75.
22 “‘Henkaku no shisō’ to wa,” Zenshū 36, 32
23 Muramatsu, Mishima Yukio no sekai, 532. Quoting the report of the Metropolitan Police Department.
24 Hosaka, Mishima Yukio to Tate no Kai jiken, 233–34. Quoting from the Asahi Shinbun of October 22, 1969.
25 Muramatsu, Mishima Yukio no sekai, 540.
26 Hosaka, Mishima Yukio to Tate no Kai jiken, 234–35. Andō, “Nichiroku,” 379.
27 Kōdōgaku nyūmon, Zenshū 35, 623–27.
28 Yamamoto, Mishima Yukio: Yūmon no sokoku bōei fu, 204.
29 Okamoto Kihachi’s 1966 film Sword of Doom (English title), with Nakadai Tatsuya in the lead role of the blinded swordsman Tsukue Ryūnosuke, is based on this story.
30 Kōdōgaku nyūmon, Zenshū 35, 631–32.
31 Ibid., 635.
32 Ibid., 640.
33 Letter to Shimizu, June 5, 1942, Zenshū 38, 554–55.
34 Owari no bigaku, Zenshū 33, 711–14.
35 “Kakumei tetsugaku to shite no Yōmeigaku,” Zenshū 36, 658–59.
36 “2.26 shōkō to Zengakuren gakusei to no danzetsu,” Zenshū 40, 585.
37 “Dai-Tōa Sensō ka Taiheiyō Sensō ka,” Zenshū 36, 658–659.
38 Gore Vidal, “Japanese Intentions in the Second World War,” Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2002), 72–74, 85–98. Also Vidal’s novel The Golden Age (New York: Doubleday, 2000).
39 Wing-tsit Chan, trans. and comp., A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton University Press, 1963), 654–58, 668–69. “Dynamic idealism” is the translator-compiler Chan’s characterization.
40 Shiba Ryōtarō, Junshi (Bungei Shunjū, 1978), 99, 110–11.
41 Paragraph 162, Seishindō sakki, Sagara Tōru et al., eds., Satō Issai, Ōshio Chūsai (Iwanami Shoten, 1980), 430–31. The origin of this observation is traced to that of Confucius in Zhuangzi: “No sadness is greater than that of the mind dying; next comes someone dying.” Mori Mikisaburō, trans. and annot., Sōji: Gaihen (Chūō Kōron Sha, 1974), 318–19.