5 Major Works Of Japanese Writer Yukio Mishima

In post-World War II times, very few fiction authors appear interesting and inspiring. Either they have weak narrative and stylistic talent or lack firm ideas to hinge their skill upon (or both).

Yukio Mishima, the pen name of Japanese author Kimitake Hiraoka (1925-1970), is however one such unusual literary persona. As with many other literary cult figures, he was something of a renaissance man or at least a more sophisticated Jack of all Trades, as he wrote various novels, essays and plays, appeared in films, practiced kendo as well as natural bodybuilding, and did some modeling. He was also a political activist and devoted family man.

There are many firm and masculine ideas within his works, combined with a dazzling prose. I would like to describe five of his best works below. The brackets include the release years for the first editions in Japanese and the somewhat later translations into English.

The Sound of Waves (1954, 1981)

The Sound of Waves is a brilliant novel about heterosexual love in a simple maritime environment. Even though it is obviously linked to a particular location and context, a fictive island in Japan, it includes an almost universal depiction of love, before urban modernity penetrated the lives of most common men. Although one does not have much use of this book these days, as it is romantic, it still shows how real love can manifest itself under particular circumstances.

The book includes several beautiful descriptions of the surrounding environments, and shows how magnificent nature can be even today. A man, regardless of age, can be captured by the objective truth of the world’s nature and gain strength from it:

The boy felt a consummate accord between himself and this opulence of nature that surrounded him.

The main character, Shinji, is a poor and simple but physically able boy who possesses real character:

The only thing that really counts in a man is his get-up-and-go. If he’s got get-up-and-go he’s a real man, and those are the kind of men we need here on Uta-jima. Family and money are all secondary.

Although those types of qualities unfortunately are less significant these days, one could still emphasize them as good ideals in a better future.

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (1956, 1959)

A less cheerful yet enthralling and likewise extremely well-written story is The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. Those who have been to Kyoto might have visited the golden pavilion, Kinkaku-ji, and been rapt by its majestic and profound beauty.

This building was burned down in 1950 (and rebuilt in 1955), and around that fact Mishima has elaborated a story about the mind of a young deranged male person who lets his shortcomings and almost mysterious misanthropy guide him.

Theme-wise it does partly resemble another book by Mishima, The sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea, and Swedish Nobel prize in literature laureate Pär Lagerkvist’s book The Dwarf (1944), but unlike Lagerkvist’s dwarf the stuttering protagonist does not represent pure evil as his personality appears more complex and caleidoscopic. If one is interested in Zen Buddhism, this book is highly recommended but can be read regardless of one’s religious inclinations.

Amid the moon and the stars, amid the clouds of the night, amid the hills which bordered on the sky with their magnificent silhouette of pointed cedars, amid the speckled patches of the moon, amid the temple buildings that emerged sparkling white out of the surrounding darkness – amid all this, I was intoxicated by the pellucid beauty of Uiko’s treachery.

After the banquet (1960, 1963)

Personally, I am not particularly fond of purely political novels. However, in After The Banquet Mishima has found a delicate balance between ideas, social realism, culture and sex relations.

The story centers around a woman, Kazu, who gives up her entrepreneurial career in order to focus on the marriage with an aristocratic retired politician. The story portraits a truly strong and good yet far from flawless woman, in the interval between tradition and modernity, and how she realizes that she must make personal sacrifices in order to serve her husband.

Apart from the middle-aged Kazu, it portrays a truly masculine man who lacks any sign of degenerate dandyism so common among those in power:

Only Yuken Noguchi seemed different and stood out from the others. His manly face had a straightforward ruggedness it would never lose, and, unlike the others, his attire was utterly devoid of affection or dandyism. Thick, strikingly long eyebrows jutted above his sharp, clear eyes. His features taken individually were impressive, but they warred with another, and his lean build accentuated the disharmony.

The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea (1963, 1965)

The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea is one of Mishima’s true masterpieces, as it constitutes a plot which mixes traditional masculine ideals with thrilling narration.

A group of 13-year-old boys, of which one is the protagonist Noburu, are fascinated by a sailor who wishes to settle down with Noburu’s mother after spending manifold rough days and nights on the sea. However, when they realize that the world of adults if full of whims, petty romanticism and hypocrisy they conspire against the fallen role model.

Their fanatic worldview gives a hint of Mishima’s own traditional elitism. One of the most intriguing passages is when Noburu kills a kitten as a rites of passage:

Noburu had withstood the ordeal from beginning to end. Now his half-dazed brain envisioned the warmth of the scattered viscera and the pools of blood in the gutted belly finding wholeness and perfection in the rapture of the dead kitten’s large languid soul. The liver, limp beside the corpse, became a soft peninsula, the squashed heart a little sun, the reeled-out bowels a white atoll, and the blood in the belly the tepid waters of a tropical sea. Death had transfigured the kitten into a perfect, autonomous world.

Albeit it is a bit extreme and far-fetched there are some red pills in there, as many boys are disappointed by weak males who fail to hold on to ideals which they earlier in life held so dear.

If one is interested in maritime settings and wishes for something more philosophical than let’s say Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man And The Sea, I would highly recommend August Strindberg’s On The Seaboard (1890, 1913), as it is a perfect complement to Mishima’s work.

Sun and Steel (1968, 1970)

Natural bodybuilding was a serious interest for Mishima, and as I have stressed in several articles it is for me too. Therefore it is a blessing to read about this phenomenon from a philosophical perspective. Mishima was not big but he lifted consistently and wrote about it with great enthusiasm in the essay Sun and Steel.

Here is a great quote:

The nature of the steel is odd. I found that as I increased the weight little by little, it was like a pair of scales: the bulk of muscles placed, as it were, on the other pan increased proportionately, as though the steel had a duty to remain a strict balance between the two. Little by little, moreover, the properties of my muscles came increasingly to resemble those of the steel. The slow development, I found, was remarkably similar to the process of education, which remodels the brains intellectually by feeding it with progressively more difficult matter. And since there was always the vision of a classical ideal of the body to serve as a model and an ultimate goal, the process closely resembled the classical ideal of education.

Conclusion

Yukio Mishima is indeed one of the most fascinating authors in post-war times, and has managed to create a synthesis between traditional and some of the best modern Japanese and Western ideas. Stylistically his prose is often extraordinary and finds itself a position between laconic realism adorned with dazzling metaphorical language. ROK readers are thus advised to neglect the keyboard or smartphone for a moment and take part of some of his literary work.

Read More: The Important Works Of French Author Michel Houellebecq

133 thoughts on “5 Major Works Of Japanese Writer Yukio Mishima”

  1. OT, but this truly irks me. I really need to vent in a safe space, so here I am.
    I was watching “Mad Max: Fury Road” the other night. Man, the women in that film could do everything better than men. Especially when it came to the physical stuff. I have no doubt that this is true, because Hollywood and the MSM have told me so repeatedly – and they wouldn’t lie.
    But what really concerns me is the fact that the people who keep the times for swimming world records are lying about the actual records themselves. Something must be done. It’s the goddamned white patriarchy, is what it is. No justice, no peace. (Etc.)
    Here are but a few examples:
    Women’s world record for 400-yard freestyle: Katie Ledecky, USA, 3:56.46
    Men’s world record for 400-yard freestyle: Paul Biedermann, Germany, 3:40.07
    Women’s world record for 800-yard freestyle: Katie Ledecky, USA, 8:04.79
    Men’s world record for 800-yard freestyle: Zhang Lin, China, 7:32.12
    Women’s world record for 1500-yard freestyle: Katie Ledecky, USA, 15:25.48
    Men’s world record for 1500-yard freestyle: Sun Yang, China, 14:31.02
    The last one is the real kicker – no way a man swam the 1500-yard freestyle nearly a minute faster than the Super Woman who holds the world record in the event. (Like, OMG! How dumb do they think we are, right?)
    Also, it’s obvious that in terms of the men’s swimming world records, all of the actual claims are false, because as everyone knows, black men are better at every type of athletic endeavor than any other race of men on the planet – and not a single black man, according to the record books, holds a single world record!
    As an obvious example of what I mean here, a star black athlete could doubtless swim the 400-yard freestyle in under 60 seconds, while he impregnated six beautiful, empowered, white bitches along the way, stopping to beat up 17 white rapists who were trying to fuck said bitches against their will, and simultaneously closing a billion-dollar business deal over his “sail foam” just for the fuck of it – and all while yawning in abject boredom.
    Oh hells yes. It’s like that. Uh-huh. And I ain’t lyin’…

    1. One of the worst things about Mad Max was that it wasn’t even about Mad Max.

      1. I know exactly what you mean there. That was one of the worst films I have ever seen in my life (meaning the 30-45 minutes or so that I forced myself to watch).
        If you want a real scream, check out the reviews for last year’s Best Picture winner, “Moonlight”, at IMDB.
        Click the filtering prompt on the down-arrow that reads “Hated It”. The first 25 pages of reviews blast the holy hell out of the film. The last six pages or so, are filled with glowing tributes (all by paid posters, no doubt, who received shekels for their reviews).
        http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4975722/reviews

        1. The reviews are like this, over and over:
          “What the heck did I just watch.”
          “No way this is the best picture. Hollywood is insane.”
          “Boring. Lousy acting. Ridiculous.”

        2. Moonlight is indeed shit, but it is virtue signalling shit so that equals Academy awards.
          As for Mad Max Fury Road, what the movie really does is push the pussy pass like crazy. I mean, look closely; the movie shows that Theron’s character is fucking incompetent at all times. Her plan to escape? Shitty as it fails in less than ten fucking minutes. Driving? She sucks at it. Fighting? She can’t. In fact, having a prostetic arm means she fucked up and lost a limb at some point in the past, she’s incompetent.
          And this goes for other females, too. The old woman who brainwashed the hot girls with commie propaganda? Killed in seconds after her treachery is discovered.
          The pregnant, brainwahsed girl who thought escaping the safety strong men provided was cool? Run over.
          And what happens when the women get to rule Immortan Joe’s city? The first thing the dumb women do is fucking waste their water supply.
          The biggest problem is the pussy pass. Cancer boy dies for a woman who friendzoned him. And Furiosa only managed to “succeed” because Max carried her the whole fucking time.
          I remember watching it with some friends and they said at the end, “dumb bitches are running out of water in a week”.

        3. Theron’s character put a beat-down on Mad Max near the beginning of the film. At least for the majority of the fight. I thought it was ridiculous Mad Max eventually got her under control, because everybody knows women can knock the shit out of men, but…

        4. Moonlight, abridged: Story of a gay black kid who grows up in anti-gay tough Florida and becomes ultra gay with another gay black man and they get to be gay forever after.
          At least that’s what I think the Oscars said the movie was about.

        5. I give you that. Though I always chose to believe Max was just annoyed at her fighting “skills” and not taking her seriously.
          It helps me keep my cool.

        6. Heh. I know what you mean. And man, she almost whipped his ass with one arm! Women truly are superior.

        7. I’m glad I wasnt the only one who noticed that. In fact, at no time in the entire movie did a woman competenatly do anything. The only saving grace for Furiousa was when she managed to finish off Imortan Joe (although max, even then, did most of the work)
          I think most redpilled viewers are so irritated with the kick ‘ass chic’ depsictions in the movie, they completely miss that every woman in the movie is anything but. I garuentee that was by design. George Miller wrote and directed that movie. If he truly wanted the women to be shining examples of feminism it would have been rammed home with nearly every scene. Instead we gota man, Max, chained and muzzled, saving a bunch of incompetant whores.
          Everyone misses the fact that if they never ran across Max they would have all been dead and captured before the end of the 1st act.

        8. She did no such thing. You forget that he had a car door AND a unconcious man chained to him. And still overpowered her and three women and got her gun, and stole the truck.
          It was literally like watching a one armed 120lbs bitch fight a grown assed, peak fitness man with a murderous vandetta.
          The most she did was annoy him. Did I mention he was dragging a car door and a unconcious man around the whole time? Yeah that happened. To say she kicked Max’s ass is to have allowed a perfectly appropriate hatred for ‘super chics’ to cloud your perspective entirely.
          Frankly the movie wasa perfect example of when shit hits the fan, your vagina won’t save you realness. Hell Max only helped because he was duped into thinking he’d get enough fuel (and a vehicle) if he got them to the rendezvous .

        9. “You see it your way, and I see it mine…and we both see it slippin’ away.” – Gandhi

      2. Good practical effects, mediocre story. And that doesn’t even take into account the SJWism.

      3. The fact that they didn’t bring back Mel Gibson was a real turn off for me. Some roles just cannot be played by other actors than the originals.
        Although if the movie really was as bad as you guys say, it’s probably best that he didn’t participate.

    2. If only chicks had a sense of humor, I would go post this at buzzfeed or xojane or whatever they read.

    3. the best women athletes routinely perform at roughly 10% worse times than the best men in feats of endurance like running or swimming. For raw strength it’s even substantially more than that. Those timetables you listed very closely correlate to that discrepancy.

      1. Oh sure they do. I believe what they tell me on TV and I will now put my hands over my ears and sing in a loud voice if you continue to tell me differently…”La-la-la-la-la-la,” etc.

        1. It’s why (beyond China and Russia) only feminist countries “kill it” at the Olympics. They are the only one’s that really give a shit about women’s sports and so they all bring home the women’s gold medals (the inferior gold).

        2. Obama’s best example of “diversity is our strength” is mentioning the Olympics. Meaningless hunks of metal for inferior women, while diversity-free countries like Taiwan/Japan have bugger all crime, terrorism, SJW crap etc. What a P.C. moron

    4. Here’s that Mad Max vs. Furiosa fight scene. The subtext is, “Furiosa is every bit as tough and powerful as Max, even though she only has one fully functional arm.” What a crock of shit.

      1. That bit where she fists mad max with her one fully functional arm. That was empowering

        1. Yes. She undoubtedly lost it fending off a rape. Didn’t watch much of the film, but that would figure.

        2. I spent weeks slugging it out with progs on the imdb fury road board. I won. It all got deleted

        3. thanks. I was heavily outnumbered. There was one other stalwart. It was like the last of the 300 against the Persian army

      2. Look, like the movie or hate it, but in no way did she kick his ass, or even give him a run for his money. It took 5 women and his being chained to a unconscious man and a car door for them to merely slow him down. He still overpowered all of them AND stole their truck…in less than 2 minutes no less.
        I’m now 100% certain George Miller was trolling SWJs and did it so well he unwittingly caught redpillers up in the haze.

    5. “Women’s world record for 400-yard freestyle: Katie Ledecky, USA, 3:56.46
      Men’s world record for 400-yard freestyle: Paul Biedermann, Germany, 3:40.07
      Women’s world record for 800-yard freestyle: Katie Ledecky, USA, 8:04.79
      Men’s world record for 800-yard freestyle: Zhang Lin, China, 7:32.12
      Women’s world record for 1500-yard freestyle: Katie Ledecky, USA, 15:25.48
      Men’s world record for 1500-yard freestyle: Sun Yang, China, 14:31.02”
      That just proves that women still aren’t free. I know why the caged bird swims ….slow

    6. “As an obvious example of what I mean here, a star black athlete could
      doubtless swim the 400-yard freestyle in under 60 seconds, while he
      impregnated six beautiful, empowered, white bitches along the way,
      stopping to beat up 17 white rapist…”
      Sounds like an episode of “Law and Order”.
      And the black super hero can be Tyrone the Super Fed from “Criminal Minds”.

  2. It is my policy never to espouse or have anything to do with anyone who commits suicide.

      1. Well worth reading but a good study of Judaism is necessary to really understand him.

        1. Well if you read him raw well you really do not understand what he is saying but once you see he is speaking from the Jewish frame of things you can understand him and the whole New Testament extremely well. Indeed I found much of the New Testament when I read it well it went in one ear and went out the other but once I read To Be A Jew well I understood everything extremely well after that.

        2. There’s always a conversation happening both above and below the surface. No doubt the good lord wasn’t speaking in a vacuum. I shall have to try your method of exegesis

  3. With due respect to his writing talent and right-wing politics, as far as I know he was, well, there is no other way around it: gay…

    1. He was heterosexual or bisexual. His widow rejected the homo accusations.

      1. Be that as it may, the Japaneese concept of sexuality is different from the White, Christian approach.
        It was not my aim to slander him.
        May he rest in peace.

        1. I really don’t remember much about the book of his I read – confessions of a mask – but I do remember the impression it left on me. I suppose its possible he was only writing about a homosexual hero rather than reflecting his own dilemmas but there is something very personal about it. I can’t really argue the nature of his narcissism without reacquainting myself with the book but there is something massively self-absorbed about the whole thing: every word seemed to be about himself (or at least that’s what I assumed at the time). I’m not sure whether the rest of his work is like that
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_a_Mask

        2. August Strindberg, the greatest writer from Sweden, has written and compiled several works that I don’t like. On the other hand his best 5-6 works are stunning. It is as simple as that. One does not like everything. I don’t like homo stuff at all and think it is disgusting when it moves from the platonic realm to the bed chamber. I would never recommend that kind of works here.
          In Sun and steel there is a little bit of that self-absorbed tendency but it is also general things about bodybuilding and body/mind that many of us who both lift and read can relate to.

        3. It’s been a long time since I read ‘Mask’ so maybe I will give him another try. Re. the homo themes, it’s true they don’t progress beyond that as far as I’m remember. Re. Strinberg, the most I’ve read is some of Miss Julie, which was certainly an interesting read as far as I got

        4. I think you would like The sound of waves.
          Fröken Julie is not one of my favorites. I prefer On the seaboard, Tschandala, and Inferno.

        5. thanks for the recommendations. I will check them out when I get a chance

        6. I worked with a massive narcissist. He used to juggle anywhere from 10-20 women at a time. Beat anything I’d ever seen.

  4. A farmer buys a new young rooster.
    As soon as he brings him home, the rooster runs out and screws all 150 of the farmers hens.
    The farmer is impressed.
    At lunch time, the young rooster screws all 150 hens again.
    The farmer is impressed and a little concerned.
    The next morning, the farmer looks out into the yard and sees the rooster screwing; not only the hens but the cows, pigs, turkeys and even the ducks.
    Later he noticed the rooster laying flat on his back, eyes closed, limp as a noodle with buzzards circling overhead.
    The farmer runs over, stands over the rooster and says, “ha! That’s what you get, ya horney little bastard!”
    The rooster opens one eye, points to the circling buzzards in the sky and says, “shhhhhhhh, they’re about to land.”

    1. A newly purchased cocky young rooster appeared in the farmyard. After looking about for a bit, he spots the old rooster he was brought in to replace, and approaches the old scarred rooster.
      “It’s over old man” says the young rooster. “We can do this the hard way, me killing you, or take an easy route: you leave the hens to me and I’ll let you cluck around like a hen too, and you can live out your days in easy retirement. What will it be?”
      The old rooster pondered a bit and then spoke “Well I don’t think you want to risk losing an eye in a fight, so early in life. Half the hens will escape your view and you’ll only have half the sex most of the time. So how about another test of ability: we should have a race. I will race you from here to the big stump out in front of the house and back and the winner takes over the hens. What do you think of that?”
      The young rooster thought about it, and looked the old cock up and down. He certainly did not look like he could win a race let alone a fight.
      “OK pops. You’re on!”
      At the moment the old rooster takes off, leaving the young rooster a bit flabbergasted at this trickery, but only for a split second.
      Out in front of the house and nearing the stump, the young rooster was just about on the tail of the old cock as they rounded the stump. But with an abrupt blast of smoke and feathers, the young rooster vanished.
      The old cock sped on, back towards the farmyard and the hens with a big grin.
      The old farmer, who was on the front porch and saw the spectacle, sat back in his rocking chair, trusty shotgun across his lap, grimacing at the mess by the stump.
      “Damn” he said. “That’s the third time this month they done sold me a gay rooster”.

  5. This man was both gay AND committed suicide, two of the most unmasculine things a man can do. Not to mention suicide being the ultimate denial of self-respect. Not interested in this Nippon Nitwit.

    1. He was a strict disciple of Bushido. He also had his head chopped off by his comrades. Suppose he really wanted to be an old school samurai.

        1. Sepukku (suicide) was performed by cutting your own stomach open and emptying your bowels (literally) before someone else sliced your head off. All this to save your honor after failure in battle. Doesn’t sound very gay to me.
          And the Nippon Nitwits were so feminine that the US had to throw 2 nuclear bombs on them to finish them off because they were too chicken shit to even enter mainland Japan after what the Japanese soldiers had done to them on the Pacific islands. + flying your plane into a floating fortress isn’t exactly something a fag would do.
          Estrogen Land? Have you seen the society you currently live in?
          Get off the porn and sports and read some history buddy.

        2. Asians do eat a lot of soy, but do not piss them off as they are some of the most rabid and tenacious motherfvckers I’ve known.
          They will annihilate you and the rest of your clan when given the chance, I mean one only has to look at the history of the Mongols and the Japanese Occupation during WW2 to get a sense of what kind of men these guys are.

        3. I dont get this notion that all asian men are these badass kung fu warriors who can win any fight.
          I mean look at Bruce Lee, yeah hes got definition, but hes only like 130 pounds. You know what happens to a 130 pound guy in a fight? Ill explain it to you in this visual exercise.
          Look at these pictures. The one on the left is the average Asian man’s wrist, now compare it to John Goodman’s neck
          https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e66b5ec01f69aed3b2e3f14e8f29d1c713e2eb31a788590af59e05b1a3043f05.jpg
          When you calculate the physics of it, the only possible outcome in a fight is that a John Goodman can beat three Bruce Lees in a fight. He can just kick em across a room like soccerballs.
          Overall, I’ve come to the conclusion that Asians are not as rabid and tenacious as some would believe.

        4. Physics aside, will and determination usually determines who kills who. Yes a 250 lbs man is logically bigger but without the same mentality and determination, he would be defeated like anyone else. Asians have tenacity in spades. They are too vicious and barbaric when left unchecked.
          In the wild, we have always come out on top against predators 10x bigger than us because we usually are pretty determined not to go hungry.

        5. Holy shit. Sam Hyde, is that you???
          That was the same argument Sam Hyde made in “An Inconvenient Anime.”

          MDE Presents: World Peace was genius.

        6. Something has clearly happened to Asian men over time. this guy Yukio Mishima looks pretty damn fierce (his eyes, etc). Compare that to the effete, androgynous, cosplaying / crossplaying weebo married to his body pillow today? Yikes!

        7. Yes. Americans think the Muslims on 9/11 were fanatical. They were only 19. I think there were like 4 or 5 thousand kamikaze pilots. And how many more died in banzai charges?
          Those men perhaps knew what Japan’s future would look like if Japan was defeated: turned by the West into a depraved yet sexless society with only old people and no one having children.
          Check out this clip from I think a Korean drama:

        8. It’s a cultural shift towards pacifism. When Japan was a 3rd world shithole in the olden days, they were on survival mode 24/7 hence manhood was necessary. What you’re looking at right now is an entire nation devoid of manhood. The Japanese are notorious for their brutality, the Gurkhas were on par with them.
          India, China, Japan, Mongolia, Arabia have been involved in many wars in and out of their countries and I reckon that at some point they have gotten tired of it. These cultures have been in tack for thousands of years and at some point will die off along with their manhood.
          They are merely showcasing the symptoms of a dying civilization.
          Realization-Adventure-Boon-Benevolence-Struggle-Death
          Rinse and Repeat.

        9. Seems like the Japanese men knew what they were fighting for: to take land from Manchuria etc so they could expand … sort of like you know … how the Americans did with the American Indians.

        10. No, but I mean changes have occurred in terms of physiognomy: when you see photos of Asian men (say Japanese troops from the Russo Japanese War or WW2, they look fierce and masculine: their faces, their eyes, etc). What is causing the physical changes? Dietary? Environmental? Dysgenic breeding?

        11. Asian have eaten soy for centuries and it’s only recently that these men have become effeminate. It really has something do with their societies basking in opulence and ultimately forgetting the struggle of the past generation. Simply put there’s no appreciation for the work that was done in the past, regardless of how terrible it is.
          These Asians you see today are so cuddled by well off older Asians that they really have no concept of how their parents or grandparents inherited their wealth.
          They have also milked their civilization.

    1. “go kill yourself”. That’s what bloodlust SJWs say on Youtube when they disagree with you.

  6. The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea will forever conjure images of Kris Kristofferson dramatically pretending to screw some 70’s actress in Playboy. In my adolescent brain those scenes were the whole point of that movie. I remember wondering if sex really hurt that badly.

      1. Ya man, women’s hirsute arrays used to rather frighten me at 12. I remember the first time I saw a centerfold the reaction…wtf is that!

        1. yup – even the first magazine bj was a little shocking – “dude you’re gonna LOSE that thing like that!!!”

  7. I read his confessions of a mask in my teens. Pretty pretty gay. I don’t mean lets meet up in the woods gay, but if he were alive today Mishima would probably be making samurai poses on a pride parade float, only to lose it half way through when things got too faggoty, at which point he would be a very dangerous guy to be around.
    Brilliant and talented no doubt, but seriously deranged and completely narcissistic. And pretty pretty gay.
    Next week on ROK: will it be Armistead Maupin or Alan Hollinghurst?

    1. This text is about his five best works which have nothing to do with homo themes whatosever. Focus on that rather than the homo aspect in Confessions of a mask. No one knows if he even was bisexual.
      He was a brilliant writer, practiced kendo and lifted a lot – that is more than most men do. To be a narcissist is great by the way. It helps to get laid (with girls) and accomplish things.

      1. “It helps to get laid (with girls)….”
        It shouldn’t really be necessary to add that qualifier though……
        I guess it’s a question of first impressions and all that…..I have no doubt he was majorly talented, but I came away pretty much gasping for air. Not sure that had anything to do with the homo themes, or even the narcissism per se, but it did seem very self-absorbed writing. You’re right though, a single work doesn’t necessarily make the man.

      2. Only a narcissist thinks being a narcissist is great. Not so much the people around him who’s lives get destroyed.

        1. I have written about personality, including narcissism, in this article http://www.returnofkings.com/113481/how-to-optimize-your-personality and I do not encourage extreme narcissism and NPD. But this thread is the not place to go into deeper discussion on that topic. A few more points, though:
          1. I don’t think Mishima had NPD, like I don’t think that all Japanese who slaughered Filipinos or Chinese people were psychopaths. This has more about to do with ideological beliefs and/or culture.
          2. There are great many people who want to put down narcissists (those who have moderate to high narcissism but not extreme forms or NPD) as a consequence of resentment. “Like, you are such a terrible person who have sex with 50 women within a year.” when they haven’t accomplished shit themselves. Come to think of this quote by Nietzsche:
          “The problem with the other origin of the “good,” of the good man, as the person of ressentiment has thought it out for himself, demands some conclusion. It is not surprising that the lambs should bear a grudge against the great birds of prey, but that is no reason for blaming the great birds of prey for taking the little lambs. And when the lambs say among themselves, “These birds of prey are evil, and he who least resembles a bird of prey, who is rather its opposite, a lamb,—should he not be good?” then there is nothing to carp with in this ideal’s establishment, though the birds of prey may regard it a little mockingly, and maybe say to themselves, “We bear no grudge against them, these good lambs, we even love them: nothing is tastier than a tender lamb.”
          3. You can discuss Mishima’s ideology (or sexuality) as much as you want, but this is mainly about good and relevant literature. I have not said that it was the right to thing to do to try to impose a dying ideology and leave his family behind.

    2. Formative female influence in his life probably had something to do with that …
      “Mishima’s early childhood was dominated by the presence of his grandmother, Natsuko, who took the boy, separating him from his immediate family for several years. Natsuko was the granddaughter of Matsudaira Yoritaka, the daimyō of Shishido in Hitachi Province, and had been raised in the household of Prince Arisugawa Taruhito; she maintained considerable aristocratic pretensions even after marrying Mishima’s grandfather, a bureaucrat who had made his fortune in the newly opened colonial frontier in the north and who eventually became Governor-General of Karafuto Prefecture on Sakhalin Island….. Natsuko did not allow Mishima to venture into the sunlight, to engage in any kind of sport or to play with other boys; he spent much of his time alone or with female cousins and their dolls.”
      “Mishima returned to his immediate family when he was 12. His father, a man with a taste for military discipline, employed parenting tactics such as holding the young boy up to the side of a speeding train. He also raided Mishima’s room for evidence of an “effeminate” interest in literature and often ripped apart the boy’s manuscripts.”
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukio_Mishima

      1. crikey, what a childhood. I imagine Nan’s input alone would have been enough to send him the gay way, but along comes his dad to add every other complex. I imagine the latter sensed the feminisation that occurred under his grandma’s tutelage and was trying to undo the damage in a way only a fucked up japanese could do

  8. I never really read japanese novels or authors.
    Only novel i’ve read concerning Japan was Shogun byJ Clavell when i was 13 and its one my favorite to this day. Opening pages sees a bunch of english sailors, sentenced for piracy, thrown into boiling water by samourai.
    You then get Ninja assassins, epic samurai battles, sepukku and guts, mad jesuit priests… That book is so pumped up with testostorone and adrenaline that your dick even grows by 3 inches by the time your finished. Every kid should read that book, great stuff, great memories.

    1. Yes, it is about William Adams, the British explorer who went to Japan. A great source of inspiration, that’s why I took it as a pen name.

  9. Isn’t he the guy Paul Schrader, of Taxi Driver and Cat People fame, made a movie about, who tried to take over Japan with a private army, then committed suicide when he failed? Never did see it.

    1. That’s the one. He was always writing about that hara kiri stuff, then he finally ended his own life that way, along with several followers. I suppose that one can say that he practiced what he preached.
      I don’t like this bit, in the above extract, about cruelty and killing a kitten. Only psychos are cruel to animals. I like animals much better than people.

      1. Me neither, although I care less about animals than humans, in general. But it is not about being a pyscho or not. It is rather about group psychology, circumstances and/or culture. The Japanese did a lot of “psycho stuff” between 1870-1945 but most of them were of course not psychos. Now we think that they are so civilized (although with some weird and feminine stuff).
        Are all who are in MS-13 psychos? Or is it the circumstances, the group psychology and sub-culture that they are being a part of that make them do all those crazy things?

  10. Thank you!! I often find myself thinking about the 2 Mishima’s books I’ve read so far… definetly of a lasting impression

  11. Interesting, I’ll try him out. I generally don’t like Japanese authors. I find them pompous, pretentious, and too often on the fag side. I’ll see if this one is different.

  12. These are all good but he is probably best known for his Sea of Fertility series, esp Spring Snow.

  13. Mishima certainly lived what he believed. He yearned for bushido and did not like the path Japan was on. He attempted a coup, failed and committed seppeku. I read his book, Sun and Steel while in high school and it blew my mind. I can’t for the life of me, remember how or why I choose to read it. Then a few years later I read about his death after the failed coup.

  14. “The sun commanded me to construct a new dwelling in which my mind would be secure-a dwelling of bronzed skin and powerful muscles”
    I’m a big Mishima fan, thank you for introducing the readers to him.

  15. I need to read some of his stuff. My spoken Japanese is pretty good, but I would have a hard time tackling the reading of that in Japanese. I lived in Japan for 8 years, but sadly, ignored their literary culture. Chased skirts, college degrees, business language, money. But I forgot culture.

  16. Despite these works, it should be noted that Mishima was a closeted homosexual, both before and after his marriage.

    1. Dude, no one knows if that is the case. He was married and had two children. Perhaps he was bisexual. Stop putting forward unconfirmed ideas as they are facts.
      Anyway, I have focused on the brilliant literature and bodybuilding. His political ideas, short stature and eventual homo inclinations are all secondar in this regard.

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