Yukio Mishima 三島 由紀夫 (1925 - 1970)

Started by Guldur, August 28, 2013, 07:33:39 PM

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Guldur

Many times, crawling through the veils of industrial music, i have come upon the name of this influential historical figure. However i haven't been able to actually tell how in particular he had influenced act's like Grey Wolves, Genocide Organ, Death in June or others. It's because of his life and death, literature, poetry, movies he made? Any suggestions where to start in discovering Mishima's specific influence on industrial culture?



Guldur

By books you mean plays, novels, essays or poems? He has pretty wide bibliography, so it would be handful to know where to start...

Vigilante Ecstasy

Yukio Mishima is inspiring as an outstanding individual in many ways, his ideals, poetry, books, politics and suicide are all parts of the fascinating whole.

Nice tribute video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxpG9KW9Axg
I'm tensed up/To watch the sex film

online prowler

I recommend starting on his book "The temple of the golden pavilion". In short it is a book about trauma, dedication, obsession and sacrifice. His literature covers a wide range of topics, so I suggest that you do a little bit of research online so that you can connect with the themes that you find most interesting. Maybe you can find some second hand editions online as well.

As a curiosity and new way of viewing and understanding Mishima I suggest to check out the film he did in '66 titled: Yûkoku, aka Patriotism, aka Rite of Love & Death. You can stream it for free via UBUWEB. See link below.

http://www.ubu.com/film/mishima_rite.html

Enjoy!

HongKongGoolagong

The suicide, the politics and the masochist sexuality are similar to how people think about heroin and guns with Burroughs - secondary to the work itself but they certainly helped to bolster a legend.

Temple of the Golden Pavilion is one of his most serious works, but I also enjoy novels with almost trashy thriller-type qualities like The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea and Forbidden Colours. The final epic The Sea of Fertility fused the philosophical and the narrative qualities very well. The only non-fiction I've read was his very thought-provoking book On Hagakure. His autobiographical debut novel Confession Of A Mask is very revealing of who he was as a young man - a lonely, physically weak and alienated homosexual guy whose real-life destiny after that book seems impossible to imagine.

FreakAnimalFinland

For Finns (or why not others too), I got in Sarvilevyt  MISHIMA "Thoughts and Perspectives" (vol 8) series. Edited by Troy Southgate, includes various authors about Mishima. Also plenty of other books of this series (Pound, Evola, Junger,...).
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tiny_tove

obsessed by him since I have read midsummernight death.

very interested by many of his aspects. military man, narcissist, sexually ambiguos, genious...
the idea of builing his own little army is fantastic...

watched the video of his final hours over and over again...

fave books: confessions of a mask, runaway horses, and of course his book on hagakure...

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Guldur

Thanks, that 's enough hint for start. I belive the as for the rest i shall be guided by his books themselves. I have found a small collection of his works, so i think i will start with them:

Death in Midsummer and other stories
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
Patriotism

The Sea of Fertility tetralogy, comprising:
Spring Snow
Runaway Horses
The Temple of Dawn
The Decay of the Angel

redswordwhiteplough

Quote from: FreakAnimalFinland on August 29, 2013, 07:48:35 AM
For Finns (or why not others too), I got in Sarvilevyt  MISHIMA "Thoughts and Perspectives" (vol 8) series. Edited by Troy Southgate, includes various authors about Mishima. Also plenty of other books of this series (Pound, Evola, Junger,...).

There was a decent article about Mishima in the Misantropian historia book.

Bloated Slutbag

Temple of the Golden Pavilion, no question.

Once, in a fit of extreme pretentiousness (to contrast with my fits of more run-of-the-mill pretentiousness), I  supplemented an Incapacitants review with a lengthy passage from this book; the point at which the narrator first encounters the Golden Pavilion. (Or the point at which the narrator first encounters the pleasures of flehsh? Both? Will need to dig through some dusty boxes.) The metaphor simply seemed to work perfectly, re- an aesthetic (artificial? illusory?) splitting of consciousness, or something. I forget. Fortunately, I deleted that review and came up with something much more pretentious. Whew. Face saved.
Someone weaker than you should beat you and brag
And take you for a drag

FreakAnimalFinland

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simulacrum

Mishima is probably such a striking figure to those into noise and, by extension, its aesthetics is because Mishima's literary practice is based upon principles that more or less parallel topics, either directly or tangentially, that are heavily explored in noise: misanthropy; isolation; the cold, detached practice of dispassion espoused in the Chief's teaching in The Sailor and, although unspoken of as such, unconsciously practiced by most if not all of his protagonists; destruction, usually committed based upon the protagonist's search for and failure to find beauty, as well as his own warped views of beauty; internalization; etc.
Japanese literature has a style that is very sparse, terse and rigid. Entire chapters could take place in one's own internal space, all besides what is in one's own head being of no consequence.
Also, his supreme commitment and tragic resolution of his devotion to a cause makes him a more emblematic figure than one who died as quietly as he wrote.
Also, let's be honest: the guy organized a militia, staged a coup, albeit a failed one, and disembowled himself after having stated his demands.

Jordan

My problem with The Sea Of Fertility tetralogy has always been that it seemed like Mishima was trying to prove that he was a Buddhist, or accepted reincarnation, for nationalist reasons, much like his hauling around Shinto shrines around Japan earlier, but really, he was an atheist, and didn't believe in any of that shit. In fact, he was publicly against the dethroned emperor whom he wanted to reinstate, he was just captivated by the idea, and not necessarily the beliefs associated with it so much. So much of The Sea Of Fertility just always seemed to me like he was trying to prove that he really believed in such ideas, when privately, it was known all over that he didn't, and it wasn't until I read The Life And Death Of Yukio Mishima by Henry Scott-Stokes, who was Time's Japanese corespondent, who knew him intimately for sometime (#nohomo), that I found validation of my hunches.

simulacrum

Maybe Mishima was merely being objective, using an exploration of Buddhism as a vehicle toward the reader's better understanding of its views regarding the transmigration of souls since that is what the Sea of Fertility is concerned with. There would not be much of a thread especially linking Spring Snow to Runaway Horses had Honda not suspected that Kiyoaki had been reborn as Iinuma; thus it could have rightly existed as a standalone novel. The subsequent entries would not altogether comprise a tetralogy but would all be separate entries not linked by a common thread if Buddhist's beliefs of reincarnation were not explored, discussed and used as the underlying theme of the series.