Information AboutYukio Mishima |
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EARLY LIFE Mishima's early childhood was dominated by the shadow of his grandmother, Natsu, who took the boy and separated him from his immediate family for several years. Natsu was of a minor retainer family which had been related to the samurai of the and German , and had an aristocrat's taste for the Kabuki . Natsu famously did not allow Mishima to venture into the sunlight, to engage in any kind of Sport , or to play with boys; he spent much of his time alone, or with female cousins and their dolls. Mishima returned to his immediate family at 12. He entered into a relationship with his mother that some biographers have described as nearly incestuous; it was to his mother that he turned always for reassurance and proofreading. His father, a brutal man with a taste for military discipline, employed such tactics as holding the young boy up to the side of a speeding train; he also raided the young boy's room for evidence of an "effeminate" interest in literature, and ripped up adolescent Mishima's manuscripts wantonly. He is reported to have had no response to these gestures. (One important rejoinder one might add to his oft-fictionized early life is that biographers have often taken certain off-the-cuff remarks and '' Confessions Of A Mask '' as expressions of autobiography. This is problematic, and has led to the more general issue of Mishima as larger-than-life.) SCHOOLING AND EARLY WORKS At 12, Mishima began to write his first stories. He read voraciously the works of Wilde , Rilke , and numerous Japanese classics. Although his family was not as affluent as those of the other students of this institution, Natsu insisted that he attend the elite Peers School . After six miserable years at school, he still was a pale and frail teenager, but he started to do well and became the youngest member of the editorial board in the literary society at the school. He was invited to write a short story for the prestigious Literary Magazine , ''Bungei-Bunka'' (''Literary Culture'') and submitted ''Hanazakari no Mori'' (''The Forest in Full Bloom''). The story was published in book form in 1944 , albeit in a limited fashion due to the shortage of paper in wartime. Mishima received a Draft notice for the Japanese Army during World War II . At the time of his medical check up he had a cold and spontaneously lied to the army doctor about having symptoms of Tuberculosis and thus was declared unfit. Although Mishima was greatly relieved of not having to go to war, he continued to feel guilty for having survived and having missed the chance for a heroic death. Although his father had forbidden him to write any further stories, Mishima continued to write secretly every night, supported and protected by his mother Shizue, who was always the first to read a new story. After school, his father, who sympathized with the Nazis, wouldn't allow him to pursue a writer's career, but instead forced him to study German law. Attending lectures during the day and writing at night, Mishima graduated from the elite Tokyo University in 1947 . He obtained a position as an official in the government's Finance Ministry and was set up for a promising career. However, he exhausted himself so much that his father agreed to his resigning his position within a year in order to devote his time to writing. POST-WAR LITERATURE Mishima began his first novel, ''TÅzoku'' (Thieves), in 1946 and published it in 1948 . It was followed up by ''Kamen no Kokuhaku'' (''Confessions of a Mask''), an Autobiographical work about a young latent Homosexual who must hide behind a mask in order to fit into society. The novel was extremely successful and made Mishima a celebrity at the age of 24. Mishima was a disciplined and versatile writer. He wrote not only novels, popular serial novellas, short stories, and literary essays, but also highly-acclaimed plays for the Kabuki theater and modern versions of traditional Noh drama. His writing gained him international celebrity and a sizable following in Europe and America, as many of his most famous works were translated into English. He travelled extensively, was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature three times, and was the darling of many foreign publications. However, in 1968 his early mentor Yasunari Kawabata won the Prize and Mishima realized that the chances of it being given to another Japanese author in the near future were slim. It is also believed that Mishima wanted to leave the prize to the aging Kawabata, out of respect for the man who had first introduced him to the literary circles of Tokyo in the 1940s. PRIVATE LIFE After ''Confessions of a Mask'' Mishima tried to leave behind the young man who had lived only inside his head, continuously flirting with death. He tried to tie himself to the real, physical world by taking up stringent physical Exercise . In 1955 Mishima took up Weight Training and his workout regimen of three sessions per week was not disrupted for the final 15 years of his life. He also became very skillful at Kendo (Japanese swordfighting). However, the Swimming and weight lifting only trained his upper body, while his legs stayed thin as before--and he found it impossible to get his early Romanticism out of his system. Although he visited gay bars in Japan, Mishima reportedly remained an observer and had affairs only with men when he travelled abroad. After briefly considering an alliance with Michiko Shoda -- she later became the wife of Emperor Akihito -- he married Yoko Sugiyama in 1958. Over the next three years, the couple had a daughter and a son. In 1967 Mishima enlisted in the Ground Self Defense Force (GSDF) and underwent basic training. A year later, he formed the Tatenokai (Shield Society), composed primarily of young patriotic students who studied martial principles and physical discipline and who were trained through the GSDF under Mishima's tutelage. In the last ten years of his life, Mishima acted in several movies and co-directed an adaptation of one of his stories, '' Patriotism, The Rite Of Love And Death .'' RITUAL SUICIDE On , to finish the job. After Mishima was decapitated, Morita also attempted to commit seppuku and was beheaded by Koga. Mishima prepared his suicide meticulously for a year and no one outside the group of hand-picked Tatenokai members had any indication of what he was planning. Mishima must have known that his coup plot would never succeed and his biographer, translator, and former friend John Nathan suggests that the scenario was only a pretext for the ritual suicide that Mishima always dreamed of. Mishima made sure his affairs were in order and even had the foresight to leave money for the defense at trial of the three surviving Tatenokai members. AFTERWORD Much speculation has surfaced regarding Mishima's suicide. At the time of his death he had just completed the final book in his ''Sea of Fertility'' Tetralogy and was recognized as one of the most important postwar stylists of the Japanese language. Mishima wrote 40 novels, 18 plays, 20 books of short stories, and at least 20 books of essays as well as one libretto. A large portion of this oeuvre comprises books written quickly for profit, but even if these are disregarded, a substantial body of work remains. While Mishima espoused a brand of 'patriotism' towards the end of his life (and in death), it is perhaps most appropriate to say that he took a position outside of politics. He was neither 'rightist' nor 'leftist': he was hated by true nationalists for his position, in ''Bunka Boeiron'' (''A Defense of Culture''), that Hirohito should have resigned the throne to take responsibility for the war dead, and was hated by leftists (particularly students) for his outspoken, anachronistic commitment to the code of the samurai. That his politics were in fact dominated by the language of aesthetics evinces this essential quality of 'the outsider', and suggests that the relationship between said politics and the political reality of postwar Japan was at best illusory. The theatrical nature of his suicide, the camp nature of photographs he posed for, and the occasionally bathetic nature of his prose have surely taken their toll on his legacy. In Japanese and Anglo-American academies today, Mishima is virtually unspoken of, although he is undergoing something of reappraisal amongst critics interested in the critique of Japanese capitalism. AWARDS
MAJOR WORKS
FILMS WORKS ABOUT MISHIMA
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