Mishima Yukio and his Suicide

Abstract

Mishima Yukio killed himself on 25 November 1970 at the age of forty-five in the traditional Japanese warrior manner of seppuku after a vain attempt to incite a unit of the Self-Defence Forces to a coup d'état. The event shocked and alarmed not only the Japanese but also people abroad. Many were reminded of the 1936 coup by young army officers, and some, especially abroad, became worried about a possible revival of Japanese militarism. But the jeering by the rank and file troops whom Mishima tried to rouse to action proves that such a possibility is very slight. The Japanese Government, including Mr Nakasone, the Minister of Defence, positively disapproved of Mishima's action. The Prime Minister, Mr Sato, was anxious lest such scandalous behaviour on the part of an eminent writer might tarnish the reputation of the country founded on economic prosperity. Nevertheless, nothing seems farther from the truth than the Prime Minister's statement that Mishima had ‘gone mad’. In every detail Mishima's suicide was an act calculated well in advance. In its political implications it was a challenge to the kind of stability and prosperity of present-day Japan of which the Prime Minister himself is the representative. Mishima detested the progressive or left-wing Japanese intellectuals, but he did not align himself with the Liberal Democratic Party either. Nor was he prepared at all to link with the right-wing organizations, in spite of the ultra-nationalism of his own Shield Society. Ironically enough, Mishima could have agreed with the dissident students of the New Left who played the leading role in the 1968–69 university upheavals.