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In Which We Were Safe with Yukio Mishima (2017)
- jhanschoo 7y ago20th century Japanese literature is very interesting. Its authors are people who are living through, or have lived through a society growing from a fairly rational and proud Westernized and modernized society into an increasingly desperate, fanatical, and repressive one, before having their entire society and common values do an about turn and figuring out how to live in a new, contradictory world beyond their wildest expectations. Among their most celebrated are authors who think of themselves as very broken people.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y agoIt's a shame that the blog doesn't mention Mishima's most famous work, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (a fictionalized account of the real case of a deranged monk burning down Kyoto's most famous temple), or (IMHO) his magnum opus, the Sea of Fertility tetralogy, which he finished immediately before his death. Both showcase Mishima at his finest: intense, dense, obsessed with sex and death. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Temple_of_the_Golden_Pavilion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Temple_of_the_Golden_Pavil... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sea_of_Fertility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sea_of_Fertility
- ArtWomb 7y agoAgreed. Many in the West were introduced to Mishima by Paul Schrader's film, which masterfully realizes that moment of epiphany inside the temple ;) Soundtrack by Philip Glass https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9rB33JnvyM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9rB33JnvyM
- leoh 7y agoI read Golden Pavilion earlier this year. What an incredibly powerful book. I scarcely can think of a novel that felt so psychologically realistic, that portrayed humiliation so clearly. Oe's "Personal Matter" and Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" deal with similar themes — the destruction that can be wrought by a sense of humiliation and alienation.
- Overtonwindow 7y agoAbsolutely fantastic essay. Mishima’s death is one of legend, albeit sad and a great loss. His story Patriotism encapsulated true honor and tradition perfectly.
- uxp100 7y agoIt's kind of odd to see profiles of Mishima without the word fascist. That doesn't discount his work, but he's a figure like D'Annunzio, a fascist sense of aesthetics that drove idiosyncratic politics, maybe more truly fascist than any 20th century butcher. It seems cute in retrospect since they were so unsuccessful (in politics.)
- greenie_beans 7y agolove his work but, yeah
- greenie_beans 7y agowell, idk about love, but enjoy
- leoh 7y agoAn excellent piece by the late Donald Keene shortly after Mishima's suicide. The two were good friends in spite of Keene being an American and Mishina being deeply skeptical of the changes America imposed on Japan after the war. https://www.nytimes.com/1971/01/03/archives/mishima-mishima.html https://www.nytimes.com/1971/01/03/archives/mishima-mishima....