4 ms·

Mishima is unfortunately pretty popular in the alt-rightish kinds of circles too (one of the few articles I could find about him in English were published on Qu

Mishima is unfortunately pretty popular in the alt-rightish kinds of circles too (one of the few articles I could find about him in English were published on Quilette, for instance), but don't let that colour your impression too much. There's worlds of difference between the kind of nationalism and militarist creed that Mishima was espousing, and whatever people latch onto his work. (Which is not to say that the appropriation is not at least in part understandable.) Nevertheless, I think Mishima is best interpreted completely on his own terms, as he essentially gave a blueprint for his life in his work - and vice versa. His personal life story and the themes he engages are both equally as fascinating and deeply intertwined, and I personally feel there's lots of beautiful and unique insights about the sorts of questions that are timeless. I can only recommend Schrader's Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (curiously not mentioned in this article.) It's obviously a rather poetic/movie-style retelling of Mishima's work and story, and I did go into it rather sceptical, seeing as its context is rather removed from Mishima's, but it actually holds together really well, and I never felt that at any point the movie did not give the material the time and depth it deserved. Check it out if the article piqued your interest.

Red_Tarsius 6y ago
Yes I'm sure Mishima would have loved to see his own country flooded with migrants. When you think about it, Mishima was totally a liberal ally, not like those other right-wingers. /s >In the sociological sense, recuperation is the process by which politically radical ideas and images are twisted, co-opted, absorbed, defused, incorporated, annexed or commodified within media culture and bourgeois society, and thus become interpreted through a neutralized, innocuous or more socially conventional perspective. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuperation_(politics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuperation_(politics)
- morelisp 6y ago
  I'm not aware of any left-leaning attempts to recuperate his image, but sure, if someone really claims that they're lying. But any adoption of his ideology into the modern alt-right, IDW, or nationalist populist movements currently in vogue are also firmly recuperation. Mishima was absolutely right-wing, but also would find no common ground with e.g. Quilette (at least nominally an extremely pro-Enlightenment, pro-capitalist, pro-West line), the materialist and populist aspects of Trumpism, or the crassness of the alt-right. A quote from Spring Snow comes to mind: "Your slow-witted friends—with their sentimentality, their vicious narrow-mindedness that condemns as effeminate anyone who is not like themselves, their harassment of the underclassmen, their fanatical worship of General Nogi... you with all your sensitivity will be seen cheek-by-jowl with these people when they stop to think about our times in years to come. You see, this is the easiest way to establish the essence of our era — to take the lowest common denominator. Once the churning water has settled to a calm surface, you can see the rainbow oil slick floating there. And that’s the way it will be. After we’re all dead, it will be easy to analyze us and isolate our basic elements for everyone to see. And of course this essence, the thought that is the foundation of our era, will be considered quite benighted a hundred years from now. And you and I have no way of escaping the verdict, no way to prove that we didn’t share the discredited views of our contemporaries. And what standard will history apply to that outlook? What do you think? The thoughts of the geniuses of our age? Of great men? Not at all. Those who come after us and decide what was in our minds will adopt the criterion of the uncritical thought patterns of your friends on the kendo team. In other words, they’ll seize upon the most primitive and popular credos of our day. You see every era has always been characterized solely in terms of such idiocies."

Red_Tarsius 6y ago

Yes I'm sure Mishima would have loved to see his own country flooded with migrants. When you think about it, Mishima was totally a liberal ally, not like those other right-wingers. /s >In the sociological sense, recuperation is the process by which politically radical ideas and images are twisted, co-opted, absorbed, defused, incorporated, annexed or commodified within media culture and bourgeois society, and thus become interpreted through a neutralized, innocuous or more socially conventional perspective. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuperation_(politics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuperation_(politics)

morelisp 6y ago
I'm not aware of any left-leaning attempts to recuperate his image, but sure, if someone really claims that they're lying. But any adoption of his ideology into the modern alt-right, IDW, or nationalist populist movements currently in vogue are also firmly recuperation. Mishima was absolutely right-wing, but also would find no common ground with e.g. Quilette (at least nominally an extremely pro-Enlightenment, pro-capitalist, pro-West line), the materialist and populist aspects of Trumpism, or the crassness of the alt-right. A quote from Spring Snow comes to mind: "Your slow-witted friends—with their sentimentality, their vicious narrow-mindedness that condemns as effeminate anyone who is not like themselves, their harassment of the underclassmen, their fanatical worship of General Nogi... you with all your sensitivity will be seen cheek-by-jowl with these people when they stop to think about our times in years to come. You see, this is the easiest way to establish the essence of our era — to take the lowest common denominator. Once the churning water has settled to a calm surface, you can see the rainbow oil slick floating there. And that’s the way it will be. After we’re all dead, it will be easy to analyze us and isolate our basic elements for everyone to see. And of course this essence, the thought that is the foundation of our era, will be considered quite benighted a hundred years from now. And you and I have no way of escaping the verdict, no way to prove that we didn’t share the discredited views of our contemporaries. And what standard will history apply to that outlook? What do you think? The thoughts of the geniuses of our age? Of great men? Not at all. Those who come after us and decide what was in our minds will adopt the criterion of the uncritical thought patterns of your friends on the kendo team. In other words, they’ll seize upon the most primitive and popular credos of our day. You see every era has always been characterized solely in terms of such idiocies."