by Martin Schwarz

Jul 24, 2024

Martin Schwarz discusses the heroic core of Yukio Mishima’s life and death.

This essay was first published in German in 1999.

We show you a value that stands higher than the respect for life. It is not freedom or democracy. It is Japan, the land of our history and tradition, the Japan we love.

— Mishima, Gekibun [Manifesto]

Mishima occupies a special place among the heroes of this ending dark century because he was a decadent. After a delicate childhood, he discovered his sadomasochistic tendencies with a homoerotic inclination and, consequently, Western decadent authors like Thomas Mann. Amidst his disguises as an actor, photo model, poetic prince, and political journalist, he followed his true calling: to bear witness to the eternal Japan in the only remaining possible form: the pure affirmation of the eternal through the death of the transient.

He was not an earthly archangel like Codreanu, not an ascetic scapegoat like Rudolf Hess, nor a martial Buddha like Ungern-Sternberg. He was a decadent writer who proved that it is possible to ascend to heroism even from such a starting point. The realization of the principles upon which order, tradition, and patriotism are based obligates one to the consequence of action. The excuse that one is not cut out for heroism no longer holds. In the Hagakure, the guide of the Samurai philosophy, it is written: “A Nabeshima samurai needs neither intellectual power nor talent; in one word: it suffices that he has the will to carry the princely house on his shoulders.”

And Mishima comments on this source of energy, accessible to all people of determined will, in his selection from the Hagakure: “Jocho [the author of Hagakure] points out that this is the great and original force that moves man to his actions. If normal life is restricted by the virtue of modesty, then an idea of an action that surpasses these exercises in intensity cannot arise from daily practice. It requires a high degree of self-confidence and, at the same time, the conviction that one must carry the house on one’s shoulders alone. Like the Greeks, Jocho was well aware of the magic, the radiance, and the terror of what is called hubris.” (Mishima, Towards an Ethics of Action).

This hubris is what is missing today. Everyone who is still capable of perceiving the decay around us in depth seems to think that others should do something, or that one’s own actions are meaningless as long as others do nothing, or that first 1,000, then 10,000, then 100,000 must be gathered, or, or, or — but nothing is done.

On November 25, 1970, Mishima entered the headquarters of the Japanese army with only four followers, students, in stylish self-designed uniforms, delivered a final “literary lecture” in the form of a call for a coup to the assembled soldiers, and affirmed his principles through the highest testimony, through death in the Japanese form of seppuku, “belly cutting”: “Let us return Japan to its true form, and let us die. Or do you only want to hold life high and let the soul die?” The heart of the true, imperial form of Japan is the Emperor, the Tenno. He is the center between heaven and earth, the heart of the Japanese people. His state power may be limited, but he acts through his mere existence, his being, representing humans before the gods as a human, and representing the gods before humans as a deity. Precisely because the Tenno does not act but is, he requires protective organizations, male bonds, and warriors who enable the expansion of his imperial power. Mishima founded such an organization in 1968 with the Tate-no-kai (Shield Society). A few dozen students, for whom Mishima himself designed modern uniforms, were trained more in sports than in military exercises on the maneuvering grounds of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces at the foot of sacred Mount Fuji. Their loyalty was not centered on Mishima — but through him to the Tenno!

These modern samurai were welded together, like the old ones, not through the merit of a virtuous life but through the potentiality of a virtuous death; this is the death for the nation and its highest expression: the Tenno. The purpose of such combat communities is therefore not the achievement of political goals but dying together. Political consequences — and Mishima naturally had state-philosophical ideas — arise as by-products of pure action. Pure action is the highest form of approximation to the pure being of the Tenno.

Since tradition is no longer present in the Westernized, democratized decaying world of modern Japan, the act of seppuku also has an aspect of sacrifice that can and should bring about a return, the sunrise of Nippon. Mishima foreshadowed the inner sunrise in one of his last novels:

Isao took a deep breath, ran his left hand over his body, then closed his eyes to guide the point of the dagger grasped in his right hand to the designated spot and, with the fingers of his left hand in place, to stab with all the strength of his right arm. Just at the moment the blade pierced his belly, the glowing red disc of the sun rose behind his eyelids.

— Mishima, Under the Storm God

Mishima had a solid literary career behind him, which had begun with a scandalous erotic-tinted book, Confessions of a Mask. He practiced bodybuilding, liked dancing with men, and beat his wife. Not that these activities are unrelated to his philosophy and ultimately to the form of his death — no, they too clearly reflect his attempts to approach beauty, strength, and death. But with earthly means, one can only show them, not realize, not be them. In death, the samurai can realize the eternal principles if he has previously undergone an inner transformation, which we summarize with Julius Evola in four stages: 1. Becoming master over external impressions and drives (male asceticism). 2. Asserting one’s own authority over the organism — steadfastness (corresponds to military training in the narrower sense). 3. Control over passions and feelings, but in the form of inner balance (without becoming numb). 4. The rejection or detachment of the self. (Julius Evola, The Way of the Samurai)

Only by letting go, with no longer taking the self seriously, is one ready for the heroic death in battle, as well as for seppuku. Not everyone who throws away his life by suicide is betrothed to death. The wedding with death must be prepared and chosen. Then there is no failure, as this small dialogue scene between a lieutenant and a coup-willing student from Under the Storm God expresses:

‘The uprising of the Storm God Alliance was a failure; does that not bother you?’

‘It was not a failure.’

‘Do you think so? Well, and on what do you base your belief?’

‘On the sword,’ replied Isao, without saying a word too many.

The lieutenant was silent for a while. He seemed to consider the following question within himself first. ‘Well, then I’d like to know what you wish for most ardently.”

Murmuring, but with determination, Isao declared: ‘In the face of the sun… on a steep cliff at sunrise, to worship the rising disc… to look down at the glittering sea… then at the foot of an old, venerable pine — to kill myself with the sword… That would be my greatest wish.’

(translated by Constantin von Hoffmeister)