Early life On 14 January 1925, was born in Nagazumi-cho, Yotsuya-ku of
Tokyo City (now part of
Yotsuya,
Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo). His father was , a government official in the
Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce. His mother, , was the daughter of the 5th principal of the
Kaisei Academy. Shizue's father, , was a scholar of the
Chinese classics, and the Hashi family had served the
Maeda clan for generations in
Kaga Domain. Mishima's paternal grandparents were
Sadatarō Hiraoka, the third Governor-General of
Karafuto Prefecture, and . Mishima received his birth name Kimitake (公威, also read
Kōi in
on-yomi) in honor of
Furuichi Kōi who was a benefactor of Sadatarō. He had a younger sister, , who died of
typhoid fever in 1945 at the age of 17, and a younger brother, . Mishima's childhood home was a rented house, though a fairly large two-floor house that was the largest in the neighborhood. He lived with his parents, siblings and paternal grandparents, as well as six maids, a houseboy, and a manservant. Mishima's early childhood was dominated by the presence of his grandmother, Natsuko, who took the boy and separated him from his immediate family for several years. She was the granddaughter of
Matsudaira Yoritaka, the
daimyō of
Shishido, which was a branch domain of
Mito Domain in
Hitachi Province; this relationship made Mishima a descendant of
Tokugawa Ieyasu, the founder of the
Tokugawa Shogunate, through his grandmother. Natsuko's father, , had been a
Supreme Court justice, and Iwanojō's adoptive father,
Nagai Naoyuki, had been a
bannerman of the Tokugawa House during the
Bakumatsu. Sadatarō's father, , and grandfather, , had been farmers. to which some biographers have traced Mishima's fascination with death. She did not allow Mishima to venture into the sunlight, engage in any kind of sport, or play with other boys. He spent much of his time either alone or with female cousins and their dolls. He also raided his son's room for evidence of an "effeminate" interest in literature, and often ripped his son's manuscripts apart. Although Azusa forbade him from writing any further stories, Mishima continued to write in secret, supported and protected by his mother, who was always the first to read a new story.
Schooling and early works Mishima was enrolled at the age of six in the elite
Gakushūin, the Peers' School in Tokyo, which had been established in the
Meiji period to educate the Imperial family and the descendants of the old feudal nobility. Mishima began to write his first stories aged 12, taking inspiration from
myths (
Kojiki,
Greek mythology, etc.) and the works of numerous classic Japanese authors, as well as
Raymond Radiguet,
Jean Cocteau,
Oscar Wilde,
Rainer Maria Rilke,
Thomas Mann,
Friedrich Nietzsche,
Charles Baudelaire,
l'Isle-Adam, and other European authors. He also studied
German. After six years as a pupil, he became the youngest member of the editorial board of its literary society. Mishima was particularly drawn to the works of Japanese poet ,
Haruo Satō, and
Michizō Tachihara, who inspired Mishima's appreciation of classical Japanese
waka poetry. Mishima's early contributions to the Gakushūin literary magazine included
haiku and
waka poetry before he turned his attention to prose. In 1941, at the age of 16, Mishima was invited to write a short story for the
Hojinkai-zasshi, where he submitted , a story in which the narrator describes the feeling that his ancestors somehow still live on within him. The story displays several metaphors and aphorisms that would become Mishima's hallmarks. He also sent a copy of the manuscript to his teacher , who was so impressed that he and his fellow editorial board members decided to publish it in their literary magazine . They took "Mishima" from
Mishima Station, which Shimizu and his fellow
Bungei Bunka board member
Hasuda Zenmei passed through on their way to the editorial meeting, which was held in
Shuzenji, Shizuoka. The name "Yukio" came from
yuki (
雪), the Japanese word for "snow", because of the snow they saw on
Mount Fuji as the train passed. The story was later published as a limited book edition (4,000 copies) in 1944 due to a wartime paper shortage. Mishima had it published as a keepsake to remember him by, as he assumed that he would die in the war. In the editorial notes of
Bungei Bunka magazine in 1941, when this debut work was serialized, Hasuda praised Mishima's genius: "This youthful author is a heaven-sent child of eternal Japanese history. He is much younger than we are, but has arrived on the scene already quite mature." Hasuda, who became something of a mentor to Mishima, was an ardent nationalist and a fan of
Motoori Norinaga (1730–1801), a scholar of
kokugaku from the
Edo period who preached
Japanese traditional values and devotion to the emperor. Hasuda had previously fought for the Imperial Japanese Army in China in 1938, and in 1943 he was recalled to active service for deployment as a first lieutenant in the Southeast Asian theater. At a farewell party thrown for Hasuda by the
Bungei Bunka group, Hasuda offered the following parting words to Mishima: "I have entrusted the future of Japan to you." According to Mishima, these words were deeply meaningful to him, and had a profound effect on the future course of his life. Later in 1941, Mishima wrote an essay about his deep devotion to
Shintō, titled . Mishima's story , published in 1946, describes a homosexual love he felt at school and being teased from members of the school's
rugby union club because he belonged to the literary society. Another story from 1954, , was similarly based on Mishima's memories of his time at Gakushūin Junior High School. On 9 September 1944, Mishima graduated Gakushūin High School at the top of the class, becoming a graduate representative. Emperor
Hirohito was present at the graduation ceremony, with Mishima later receiving a silver watch from him at the Imperial Household Ministry. On 27 April 1944, during the final years of World War II, Mishima received a
draft notice for the
Imperial Japanese Army, barely passing his conscription examination on 16 May 1944 with a less desirable rating of "second class" conscript. Scholars have argued that Mishima's failure to receive a "first class" rating on his conscription examination (reserved only for the most physically fit recruits), in combination with the illness which led him to be erroneously declared unfit for duty, contributed to an inferiority complex over his frail constitution that later led to his obsession with physical fitness and bodybuilding. Mishima had a cold during his medical check on convocation day (10 February 1945), which the army doctor misdiagnosed as
tuberculosis; Mishima was consequently declared unfit for service and sent home. Mishima would later hint in his quasi-autobiographical novel
Confessions of a Mask (1949) that he might have lied to the doctor in order to secure the misdiagnosis. Mishima wrote: Why had I looked so frank as I lied to the army doctor? Why had I said that I'd been having a slight fever for over half a year, that my shoulder was painfully stiff, that I spit blood, that even last night I had been soaked by a night sweat?...Why when sentenced to return home the same day had I felt the pressure of a smile come pushing so persistently at my lips that I had difficulty in concealing it? Why had I run so when I was through the barracks gate? Hadn't my hopes been blasted? What was the matter that I hadn't hung my head and trudged away with heavy feet? I realized vividly that my future life would never attain heights of glory sufficient to justify my having escaped death in the army... The veracity of this account is impossible to know for certain, but what is unquestionable is that Mishima did not speak out against the doctor's diagnosis of tuberculosis. Researchers have speculated that Mishima's guilt at allowing himself to escape death in the war left a lasting impression on his life and writing, possibly contributing to his later suicide. The unit that Mishima would have enlisted in was eventually sent to the
Philippines, with few survivors. In a 21 April 1945 letter to a friend, Mishima wrote: It was through the kamikazes that "modern man" has finally been able to grasp the dawning of the "present day", or perhaps better said, "our historical era" in a true sense, and for the first time the intellectual class, which until now had been the illegitimate child of modernity, became the legitimate heir of history. I believe that all of this is thanks to the kamikazes. This is the reason why the entire cultural class of Japan, and all people of culture around the world, should kneel before the kamikazes and offer up prayers of gratitude. He wrote in his diary, "Only by preserving Japanese irrationality will we be able contribute to world culture 100 years from now." Four days after Japan's surrender, Mishima's mentor Zenmei Hasuda, who had been drafted and deployed to the Malay peninsula, shot and killed his superior officer, who blamed Japan's defeat on the Emperor. Hasuda had long suspected the officer to be a Korean spy. Around the same time, he also learned that , a classmate's sister whom he had hoped to marry, was engaged to another man. Mishima used these events as inspiration and motivation for his later literary work. Attending lectures during the day and writing at night, Mishima graduated from the
University of Tokyo in 1947. He obtained a position in the
Ministry of Finance and was set for a promising career as a government bureaucrat. However, after just one year of employment, Mishima had exhausted himself so much that his father agreed to allow him to resign from his post and devote himself to writing full time. In 1945, Mishima began the short story and continued to work on it throughout World War II. After the war, the story was praised by poet , whom Mishima respected.
Post-war literature '', 12 May 1948 issue). He was known as a cat-lover. Yōko (his wife) was jealous of his pet cat, and disliked him petting it. Although Mishima was just 20 years old at this time, he worried that his type of literature, based on the 1930s , had already become obsolete. Mishima had heard that the famed writer
Yasunari Kawabata had praised his work before the end of the war. Uncertain of who else to turn to, Mishima took the manuscripts for and with him, visited Kawabata in
Kamakura, and asked for his advice and assistance in January 1946. Kawabata was impressed, and in June 1946, following Kawabata's recommendation,
The Cigarette was published in the new literary magazine , followed by
The Middle Ages in December 1946.
The Middle Ages is set in Japan's historical
Muromachi Period and explores the motif of
shudō (man-boy love) against a backdrop of the death of the ninth
Ashikaga shogun
Ashikaga Yoshihisa in battle at the age of 25, and his father
Ashikaga Yoshimasa's resultant sadness. The story features the fictional character Kikuwaka, a beautiful teenage boy who was beloved by both Yoshihisa and Yoshimasa, who fails in an attempt to follow Yoshihisa in death by committing suicide. Thereafter, Kikuwaka devotes himself to spiritualism in an attempt to heal Yoshimasa's sadness by allowing Yoshihisa's ghost to possess his body, and eventually dies in a
double-suicide with a
miko (shrine maiden) who falls in love with him. Mishima wrote the story in an elegant style drawing upon
medieval Japanese literature and the
Ryōjin Hishō, a collection of medieval
imayō songs. This elevated writing style and the homosexual motif suggest the germ of Mishima's later aesthetics. published an autobiographical work describing his experience of falling in love for the first time with a boy two years his junior. In 1946, Mishima began his first novel, , a story about two young members of the aristocracy drawn towards suicide. It was published in 1948, and placed Mishima in the ranks of the
Second Generation of Postwar Writers. The following year, he published
Confessions of a Mask, a semi-autobiographical account of a young homosexual man who hides behind a mask to fit into society. The novel was extremely successful and made Mishima a celebrity at the age of 24. In 1947, a brief encounter with
Osamu Dazai, a popular novelist known for his suicidal themes, left a lasting impression on him. Around 1949, Mishima also published a literary essay about Kawabata, for whom he had always held a deep appreciation, in . Mishima enjoyed international travel. In 1952, he took a world tour and published his travelogue as . He visited
Greece during his travels, a place which had fascinated him since childhood. His visit to Greece became the basis for his 1954 novel
The Sound of Waves, which drew inspiration from the
Greek legend of
Daphnis and Chloe.
The Sound of Waves, set on the small island of "
Kami-shima" where a traditional Japanese lifestyle continued to be practiced, depicts a pure, simple love between a fisherman and a
female pearl and abalone diver. Although the novel became a best-seller, leftists criticized it for "glorifying old-fashioned Japanese values", and some people began calling Mishima a "fascist". Looking back on these attacks in later years, Mishima wrote, "The ancient community ethics portrayed in this novel were attacked by progressives at the time, but no matter how much the Japanese people changed, these ancient ethics lurk in the bottom of their hearts. We have gradually seen this proven to be the case." in 1956 Mishima made use of contemporary events in many of his works.
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, published in 1956, is a fictionalization of the burning down of the
Kinkaku-ji Buddhist temple in
Kyoto in 1950 by a mentally disturbed monk. In 1959, Mishima published the artistically ambitious novel
Kyōko no Ie. The novel tells the interconnected stories of four young men who represented four different facets of Mishima's personality. His athletic side appears as a boxer, his artistic side as a painter, his narcissistic, theatrical side as an actor, and his secretive, nihilistic side as a businessman who goes through the motions of living a normal life while practicing "absolute contempt for reality". According to Mishima, he was attempting to describe the time around 1955 in the novel, when Japan was entering into its era of
high economic growth and the phrase "The postwar is over" was prevalent. Mishima explained, "
Kyōko no Ie is, so to speak, my research into the nihilism within me." Although the novel was well received by a small number of critics from the same generation as Mishima and sold 150,000 copies in a month, it was widely panned in broader literary circles, It was Mishima's first major setback as an author, and the book's disastrous reception came as a harsh psychological blow. Until 1960, Mishima had not written works that were seen as especially political. In the summer of 1960, Mishima became interested in the massive
Anpo protests against an attempt by U.S.-backed Prime Minister
Nobusuke Kishi to revise the
Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security Between the United States and Japan (known as "
Anpo" in Japanese) in order to cement the
U.S.–Japan military alliance into place. Although he did not directly participate in the protests, he often went out in the streets to observe the protestors in action and kept extensive newspaper clippings covering the protests. In June 1960, at the climax of the protest movement, Mishima wrote a commentary in the
Mainichi Shinbun newspaper, entitled "A Political Opinion". In the critical essay, he argued that leftist groups such as the
Zengakuren student federation, the
Socialist Party, and the
Communist Party were falsely wrapping themselves in the banner of "defending democracy" and using the protest movement to further their own ends. Mishima warned against the dangers of the Japanese people following ideologues who told lies with honeyed words. The next year, Mishima published
The Frolic of the Beasts, a parody of the classical Noh play
Motomezuka, written in the 14th-century by playwright
Kiyotsugu Kan'ami. In 1962, Mishima produced his most artistically
avant-garde work
Beautiful Star, which at times comes close to science fiction. Although the novel received mixed reviews from the literary world, prominent critic
Takeo Okuno singled it out for praise as part of a new breed of novels that was overthrowing longstanding literary conventions in the tumultuous aftermath of the Anpo Protests. Alongside
Kōbō Abe's
Woman of the Dunes, published that same year, Okuno considered
A Beautiful Star an "epoch-making work" which broke free of literary taboos and preexisting notions of what literature should be in order to explore the author's personal creativity. In 1965, Mishima wrote the play
Madame de Sade that explores the complex figure of the
Marquis de Sade, traditionally upheld as an exemplar of vice, through a series of debates between six female characters, including the Marquis' wife, the Madame de Sade. At the end of the play, Mishima offers his own interpretation of what he considered to be one of the central mysteries of the de Sade story—the Madame de Sade's unstinting support for her husband while he was in prison and her sudden decision to renounce him upon his release. Mishima's play was inspired in part by his friend
Tatsuhiko Shibusawa's 1960 Japanese translation of the Marquis de Sade's novel
Juliette and a 1964 biography Shibusawa wrote of de Sade. Shibusawa's sexually explicit translation became the focus of a sensational obscenity trial remembered in Japan as the , which was ongoing as Mishima wrote the play. Mishima was considered for the
Nobel Prize for Literature in 1963, 1964, 1965, 1967 and 1968 (he and
Rudyard Kipling are both the youngest nominees in history), and was a favorite of many foreign publications. However, in 1968 his early mentor Kawabata won the Nobel Prize and Mishima realized that the chances of it being given to another Japanese author in the near future were slim. In a work published in 1970, Mishima wrote that the writers he paid most attention to in modern western literature were
Georges Bataille,
Pierre Klossowski, and
Witold Gombrowicz.
Acting and modeling Mishima was also an actor, and starred in
Yasuzo Masumura's 1960 film,
Afraid to Die, for which he also sang the theme song (lyrics by himself; music by
Shichirō Fukazawa). He performed in films like
Patriotism or the Rite of Love and Death directed by himself, 1966,
Black Lizard directed by
Kinji Fukasaku, 1968 and
Hitokiri directed by
Hideo Gosha, 1969. Maki Isaka has discussed how his knowledge of performance and theatrical forms influenced short stories including . Mishima was featured as the photo model in the photographer
Eikoh Hosoe's book , as well as in
Tamotsu Yatō's photobooks and . The American author
Donald Richie gave an eyewitness account of seeing Mishima, dressed in a loincloth and armed with a sword, posing in the snow for one of Tamotsu Yatō's photoshoots. In the men's magazine
Heibon Punch, to which Mishima had contributed various essays and criticisms, he won first place in the "Mr. Dandy" reader popularity poll in 1967 with 19,590 votes, beating second place
Toshiro Mifune by 720 votes. In the next reader popularity poll, "Mr. International", Mishima ranked second behind French President
Charles de Gaulle.
Private life In 1955, Mishima took up
weight training to overcome his weak constitution, and his strictly observed workout regimen of three sessions per week was not disrupted for the final 15 years of his life. In his 1968 essay
Sun and Steel, Mishima deplored the emphasis given by intellectuals to the mind over the body. He later became very skilled (
5th Dan) at
kendo (traditional Japanese swordsmanship), and became 2nd Dan in
battōjutsu, and
1st Dan in
karate. In 1956, he tried
boxing for a short period of time. In the same year, he developed an interest in
UFOs and became a member of the . In 1954, he fell in love with , who became the model for main characters in and . Mishima hoped to marry her, but they broke up in 1957. After briefly considering marriage with
Michiko Shōda, who later married
Crown Prince Akihito and became Empress Michiko, Mishima married , the daughter of the Japanese-style painter
Yasushi Sugiyama, on 1 June 1958. The couple had two children: a daughter named (born 2 June 1959) and a son named (born 2 May 1962). Noriko eventually married the diplomat
Koji Tomita. While working on his novel
Forbidden Colors, Mishima visited
gay bars in Japan. Mishima's sexual orientation was an issue that bothered his wife, and she always denied his homosexuality after his death. Mishima's children successfully sued Fukushima and the publisher for copyright violation over the use of Mishima's letters. The publisher
Bungeishunjū had argued that the contents of the letters were "practical correspondence" rather than copyrighted works. However, the ruling for the plaintiffs declared, "In addition to clerical content, these letters describe the Mishima's own feelings, his aspirations, and his views on life, in different words from those in his literary works." In February 1961, Mishima became embroiled in the aftermath of the
Shimanaka incident. In 1960, the author
Shichirō Fukazawa had published the satirical short story in the mainstream magazine
Chūō Kōron. It contained a dream sequence (in which the Emperor and Empress are beheaded by a guillotine) that led to outrage from right-wing ultra-nationalist groups, and numerous death threats against Fukazawa, any writers believed to have been associated with him, and
Chūō Kōron magazine itself. On 1 February 1961,
Kazutaka Komori, a seventeen-year-old rightist, broke into the home of
Hōji Shimanaka, the president of
Chūō Kōron, killed his maid with a knife and severely wounded his wife. In the aftermath, Fukazawa went into hiding, and dozens of writers and literary critics, including Mishima, were provided with round-the-clock police protection for several months; Mishima was included because a rumor became widespread that Mishima had personally recommended
The Tale of an Elegant Dream for publication, and even though he repeatedly denied the claim, he received hundreds of death threats. In later years, Mishima harshly criticized Komori, arguing that those who harm women and children are neither patriots nor traditional right-wingers, and that an assassination attempt should be a one-on-one confrontation with the victim at the risk of the assassin's life. Mishima also argued that it was the custom of traditional Japanese patriots (such as
Otoya Yamaguchi) to immediately commit suicide after committing an assassination. As a result of this ideological conflict, Mishima quit Bungakuza and later formed the troupe with playwrights and actors who had quit Bungakuza along with him, including , , and
Nobuo Nakamura. When Neo Littérature Théâtre experienced a schism in 1968, Mishima formed another troupe, the , and worked with Matsuura and Nakamura again. During the
1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Mishima interviewed various athletes every day and wrote articles as a newspaper correspondent. He had eagerly anticipated the long-awaited return of the Olympics to Japan after the
1940 Tokyo Olympics were cancelled due to Japan's war in China. Mishima expressed his excitement in his report on the opening ceremonies: "It can be said that ever since
Lafcadio Hearn called the Japanese "the Greeks of the Orient", the Olympics were destined to be hosted by Japan someday." Mishima hated
Ryokichi Minobe, who was a socialist and the governor of Tokyo beginning in 1967. Influential persons in the conservative
Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), including
Takeo Fukuda and
Kiichi Aichi, had been Mishima's superiors during his time at the
Ministry of Finance, and Prime Minister
Eisaku Satō came to know Mishima because his wife, Hiroko, was a fan of Mishima's work. Based on these connections LDP officials solicited Mishima to run for the LDP as governor of Tokyo against Minobe, but Mishima had no intention of becoming a politician. Mishima especially loved reading the boxing manga
Ashita no Joe in
Weekly Shōnen Magazine every week.
Ultraman and
Godzilla were his favorite
kaiju fantasies, and he once compared himself to "Godzilla's egg" in 1955. On the other hand, he disliked
story manga with
humanist or
cosmopolitan themes, such as
Osamu Tezuka's
Phoenix. He praised
Arthur C. Clarke's ''
Childhood's End'' in particular. While acknowledging "inexpressible unpleasant and uncomfortable feelings after reading it," he declared, "I'm not afraid to call it a masterpiece." Mishima traveled to
Shimoda on the
Izu Peninsula with his wife and children every summer from 1964 onwards. In Shimoda, Mishima often enjoyed eating local seafood with his friend
Henry Scott-Stokes. in which he denounced Emperor
Hirohito for
renouncing his own divinity after World War II. Mishima argued that the soldiers who had died in the
February 26 incident and the
Kamikaze had died for their "living god" Emperor, and that Hirohito's renunciation of his own divinity meant that all those deaths had been in vain. In February 1967, Mishima joined his fellow-authors
Yasunari Kawabata,
Kōbō Abe, and
Jun Ishikawa in issuing a statement condemning China's
Cultural Revolution for suppressing academic and artistic freedom. However, only one Japanese newspaper carried the full text of their statement. In September 1967 Mishima and his wife visited India at the invitation of the Indian government. He traveled widely and met with Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi and President
Zakir Hussain. He left extremely impressed by
Indian culture, and what he felt was the Indian people's determination to resist
Westernization and protect traditional ways. Mishima feared that his fellow Japanese were too enamored of modernization and Western-style materialism to protect traditional Japanese culture. In a series of critical essays in the late 1960s, Mishima exalted what he viewed as traditional Japanese values. In 1967, he published , an impassioned plea for a return to
bushido, the putative "samurai code" of Japan's past. Mishima praised the
Hagakure, a treatise on warrior virtues authored by the samurai
Yamamoto Tsunetomo during the
Edo period that valorized the warrior's willingness to die, as being at the core of his literary production and "the source of his vitality as a writer". Mishima concluded, What
Hagakure is insisting is that even a merciless death, a futile death that bears neither flower nor fruit, has dignity as the death of a human being. If we value so highly the dignity of life, how can we not also value the dignity of death? No death may be called futile. The political consequences of Japan's rapid economic growth had created civil unrest. Post war Japan was defined by this economic growth and influence from the United States bloated consumerism. Mishima's writings and public affairs shined light upon his views of postwar society crippling the countries future. In , Mishima preached the centrality of the emperor to Japanese culture, and argued that Japan's
postwar era was a time of flashy but ultimately hollow prosperity (a "
Shōwa Genroku"), lacking any truly transcendent literary or poetic talents comparable to the 18th century masters of the original
Genroku era, such as the playwright
Chikamatsu Monzaemon or the poet
Matsuo Bashō. In 1968, Mishima wrote a play titled
My Friend Hitler, in which he depicted the historical figures of
Adolf Hitler,
Gustav Krupp,
Gregor Strasser, and
Ernst Röhm as mouthpieces to express his own views on fascism and beauty. Mishima explained that after writing the all-female play
Madame de Sade, he wanted to write a counterpart play with an all-male cast. Mishima wrote of
My Friend Hitler, "You may read this tragedy as an allegory of the relationship between
Ōkubo Toshimichi and
Saigō Takamori" (two heroes of Japan's
Meiji Restoration who initially worked together but later had a falling out). Given the play's provocative title, Mishima was repeatedly asked if he intended to express admiration or support for Hitler. Mishima wrote in a program note,To be honest, I feel a terrifying interest in Hitler, but if the question is whether I like or dislike him, I can only answer, I don't like him. Hitler was a political genius but was not a hero. He thoroughly lacked the refreshing, sunny quality indispensable to becoming a hero. Hitler is as gloomy as the twentieth century. That same year, he wrote
Life for Sale, a humorous story about a man who, after
attempting suicide, advertises his life for sale. In a review of the English translation, the novelist
Ian Thomson called it a "pulp noir" and a "sexy, camp delight", but also noted that, "beneath the hard-boiled dialogue and the gangster high jinks is a familiar indictment of consumerist Japan and a romantic yearning for the past." Like many other right-wingers, Mishima was extremely alarmed by the riots and revolutionary actions undertaken by radical "
New Left" university students, who
took over dozens of college campuses in Japan in 1968 and 1969. On 25 February 1968, he and several other right-wingers met at the editorial offices of the recently founded
minzoku-ha monthly magazine , where they pricked their little fingers and signed a blood oath promising to die if necessary to prevent a left-wing revolution from occurring in Japan. Mishima showed his sincerity by signing his birth name, Kimitake Hiraoka, in his own blood. At this debate, Mishima told the students, "As long as you refer to the Emperor as 'Emperor,' I will gladly join forces with you," but in the end the ideological differences between Mishima and the students could not be overcome. Mishima ended by saying, "I believe in your passion. I believe in this alone. Even if I believe in nothing else of yours, I want you to know that I believe in this alone." In an essay written after the debate Mishima said that "they could not escape established leftist thinking" and that "the discussion was inevitably at a stalemate." He argued that the ultimate values that should be protected were the "
Three Sacred Treasures," which represent the identity of Japanese culture, and the Emperor. The four completed novels were
Spring Snow (1969),
Runaway Horses (1969),
The Temple of Dawn (1970), and
The Decay of the Angel (published posthumously in 1971). Mishima aimed for a very long novel with a completely different ''raison d'être
from Western chronicle novels of the 19th and 20th centuries; rather than telling the story of a single individual or family, Mishima boldly set his goal as interpreting the entire human world. In The Sea of Fertility
, four stories convey the transmigration of the human soul as the main character goes through a series of reincarnations. The novelist Paul Theroux blurbed the first edition of the English translation of The Sea of Fertility'' as "the most complete vision we have of Japan in the twentieth century" and critic Charles Solomon wrote in 1990 that "the four novels remain one of the outstanding works of 20th-Century literature and a summary of the author's life and work".
Coup attempt and suicide From 12 April to 27 May 1967, Mishima underwent basic training with the
Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF). Mishima had originally lobbied to train with the GSDF for six months, but was met with resistance from the Defense Agency. Finding that his plan for a large-scale Japan National Guard with broad public and private support had failed to catch on, Mishima formed the
Tatenokai ("Shield Society"), a private militia composed primarily of right-wing college students, on 5 October 1968. Mishima accepted no outside money, and funded the activities of the Tatenokai using royalties from his writing. The Tatenokai primarily focused on martial training and physical fitness, including traditional
kendo sword-fighting and long-distance running. Live-fire training was also conducted. Mishima personally oversaw this training. Initial membership was around 50, and was drawn primarily from students from
Waseda University and individuals affiliated with the
Controversy Journal. The number of Tatenokai members was later increased to exactly 100. Once inside, they barricaded the door to Mashita's office and tied him to his chair. Mishima wore a white
hachimaki headband with a red
hinomaru circle in the center bearing the
kanji for , a reference to the last words of
Kusunoki Masasue, the younger brother of the 14th-century imperial loyalist samurai
Kusunoki Masashige, as the two brothers died fighting to defend the emperor. Holding a prepared manifesto and a banner listing their demands, Mishima stepped out onto the balcony to address the soldiers gathered below. His speech was intended to inspire a coup d'état to restore direct rule to the emperor. He succeeded only in irritating the soldiers, and was heckled, with jeers and the noise of helicopters drowning out some parts of his speech. In his speech, Mishima rebuked the JSDF for their passive acceptance of a constitution that "denies (their) own existence" and shouted to rouse them, "Where has the spirit of the
samurai gone?" In a final written appeal,
Geki, that Morita and Ogawa scattered copies of from the balcony, Mishima expressed his dissatisfaction with the half-baked nature of the JSDF: "It is self-evident that the United States would not be pleased with a true Japanese volunteer army protecting the land of Japan." Scholars argue that Mishima’s rebellion was less about militarism itself and more about resisting Japan’s total submission to U.S. democratic ideals, which he saw as a direct opposition to Japanese imperialistic tradition. Mishima emphasized the importance on the emperor and how important he was to Japanese culture. With the emperor losing status and importance, the lack of authority was a significant part of Mishima's attempted coup. Mishima argued the state of the emperor displayed a broader loss of national identity and culture. Mishima then committed
seppuku, a form of ritual suicide by disembowelment associated with the samurai. Morita had been assigned to serve as Mishima's second (
kaishakunin), cutting off his head with a sword at the end of the rite to spare him unnecessary pain. However, Morita proved unable to complete his task, and after three failed attempts to sever Mishima's head, Hiroyasu Koga had to step in and complete the task. However, Mishima attempted to dissuade them and three of the members acquiesced to his wishes. Nevertheless, after Mishima's seppuku, Morita knelt and stabbed himself in the abdomen and Koga acted as
kaishakunin again. Another traditional element of the suicide ritual was the composition of
death poems by the Tatenokai members prior to their entry into the headquarters. This coup attempt is called the in Japan. Mishima had planned his suicide meticulously for at least a year, with no one outside a small group of hand-picked Tatenokai members knowing of his plans. Mishima had made sure his affairs were in order and left money for the legal defense of the three surviving Tatenokai members involved in the incident. and had asked a publisher to pay the long-term subscription fee for children's magazines in advance and deliver them every month. Much speculation has surrounded Mishima's suicide. One of Mishima's biographers, translator
John Nathan, suggests that the coup attempt was only a pretext for the ritual suicide of which Mishima had long dreamed. Mishima's friend Henry Scott-Stokes, another biographer, noted a meeting with Mishima in his diary entry for 3 September 1970 at which Mishima, with a dark expression on his face, said: Japan has lost its spiritual tradition, and instead has become infested with materialism. Japan is under the curse of a green snake. There is a green snake in the bosom of Japan. There is no way to escape this curse. In 1990, Scott-Stokes told , who was entrusted with the
Geki by Mishima just before the Mishima Incident, that he understood the meaning of "green snake" was the U.S. dollar. One researcher has speculated that Mishima chose 25 November for his coup attempt in order to set his period of
bardo until his reincarnation, such that the 49th day after his death would coincide with his birthday, 14 January. Mishima's remains were returned to his family the day after the incident, and were buried in the grave of the Hiraoka family at
Tama Cemetery on what would have been his 46th birthday, 14 January 1971. ==Legacy==