Asian Literary Voices Codexery

Yukio Mishima

Japanese novelist and far-right activist who died by seppuku.

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In the 1960s, including 1968 when the award went to his countryman Yasunari Kawabata, Mishima was a Nobel Prize in Literature nominee on five occasions.[1] Author Andrew Rankin described Mishima's writing as having "its luxurious vocabulary and decadent metaphors, its fusion of traditional Japanese and modern Western literary styles, and its obsessive assertions of the unity of beauty, eroticism, and death."[2]

Key facts and history

At age six he enrolled in the elite Gakushūin, the Peers' School in Tokyo.[3] He began writing stories at age 12, inspired by myths and European authors such as Oscar Wilde and Thomas Mann.[3] He was declared unfit for army service in 1945 after a misdiagnosis of tuberculosis.[4] On 25 November 1970, he and four militia members entered a military base, took the commandant hostage, and died by seppuku after failing to inspire a coup.[5]

His grandmother Natsuko dominated his early childhood, taking him and keeping him apart from his immediate family for several years.[6] On 9 September 1944, Mishima graduated at the top of his Gakushūin High School class as a graduate representative, and Emperor Hirohito, who attended the ceremony, later gave him a silver watch at the Imperial Household Ministry.[7] After graduating from the University of Tokyo in 1947, Mishima obtained a position in the Ministry of Finance, but his father agreed to let him resign after just one year of employment because Mishima had exhausted himself.[8]

What the cited sources add

A 2019 RadioFreeEurope article notes that the KGB flagged Mishima's autobiographical essay "Sun and Steel" as "a manual on the technology of sex with corresponding illustrations."[9] A 2012 blog post on Mishima's kendo history states he participated in the 1st World Kendo Championships in Tokyo in 1970, the year of his suicide.[10] The same blog post includes a commenter's claim that Mishima "only got his fifth dan thanks to his influence and fame as a writer."[10] A 2013 Japan Times article describes Mishima as donning "a variety of masks: novelist, playwright, essayist-critic, martial artist... actor, singer, political commentator and sometimes activist."[11]

A 2015 Japan Times article calls Mishima "arguably the best-connected man in Japan, hobnobbing not just with all the literary elite, but also with politicians, generals, newspaper editors and foreign celebrities."[12]

References

  1. Wikipedia, "Yukio Mishima" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: McCarthy, "Revealing the many masks of Mishima", The Japan Times, 5 May 2013 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  2. Wikipedia, "Yukio Mishima" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Rankin, "Mishima, Aesthetic Terrorist: An Intellectual Portrait", University of Hawaii Press, 2018, p. 119 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  3. Wikipedia, "Yukio Mishima" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Guide to Yamanakako Forest Park of Literature (Mishima Yukio Literary Museum)" (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  4. Wikipedia, "Yukio Mishima" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Mishima, Shueisha }} collected in {{Harvnb, January 1957; ; ; Scott-Stokes 1974, p. 105-106 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  5. Wikipedia, "Yukio Mishima" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Walker, "The Double Scission of Mishima Yukio: Limits and Anxieties in the Autofictional Machine", Positions: Asia Critique, 2010-02-01, p. 145–169; Igarashi, "Bodies of Memory", Princeton University Press, 2012-12-31; Mishima's Geki (last Manifesto) on 25 November 1970 was collected in; ; ; ; ; ; ; (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  6. Wikipedia, "Yukio Mishima" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Liukkonen, "Yukio Mishima", Books and Writers (kirjasto.sci.fi); ; Family tree of the Matsudaira family in; reichsarchiv.jp, 28 May 2010; ; ; ; "Mishima, Yukio (1925–1970)"; "Yukio Mishima (January 14, 1925 – November 25, 1970" (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  7. Wikipedia, "Yukio Mishima" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: ; Mishima, March 1957; ; Mishima, March 1957; ; (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  8. Wikipedia, "Yukio Mishima" (CC BY-SA 4.0) en.wikipedia.org
  9. "Inside The Soviet KGB's Secret War On Western Books", RadioFreeEurope RadioLiberty, 21 April 2019. facts only, no text reused. rferl.org
  10. "Yukio Mishima's kendo history", kendo.info.wordpress.com, 22 October 2022. facts only, no text reused. kendoinfo.wordpress.com
  11. McCarthy, "Revealing the many masks of Mishima", The Japan Times, 5 May 2013. facts only, no text reused. japantimes.co.jp
  12. Flanagan, "Yukio Mishima's enduring, unexpected influence", The Japan Times, 21 November 2015. facts only, no text reused. japantimes.co.jp

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Yukio Mishima (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.

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Sources

Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.

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