Ritual suicide and Yukio Mishima

The author Yukio Mishima, addressing the Japanese Self-Defence Force

"Well and good. But let me ask you this: what do you wish for more than anything else?"
This time Isao was silent. He had been keeping his eyes fixed upon the Lieutenant's, but now he turned them slightly away. His glance went from the damp wall to the tight-fast window of ground glass. That was as far as he could see. He knew that beyond the close-worked lattice of the window was a thick curtain of rain. Even if the window had been opened, there would have been nothing but rain in view. Still Isao seemed about to speak of something that was not close at hand but far off.
When he spoke, though his voice stammered slightly, his words were bold: "Before the sun... at the top of a cliff at sunrise, while paying reverence to the sun . . . while looking down upon the sparkling sea, beneath a tall, noble pine. . . to kill myself."

An excerpt from Runaway Horses (1969) by Yukio Mishima.

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Yukio Mishima is one of the greatest writers to exist. He was a Japanese author and playwright of the 20th century who wrote prolifically on beauty, death, and the decay of Japanese tradition by the West. In 1970, he and his nationalistic allies infiltrated a Self-Defence Force (Japan was not allowed an army post-WWII) base and held the Commandant hostage. He planned to deliver a thirty-minute rendition of his manifesto to the soldiers, hoping to inspire an uprising to reinstate the absolute power of the Emperor.

The speech was met with jeers and heckles. Mishima spoke for seven minutes before giving up. Acknowledging his failure, he returned from the balcony upon which he gave his speech into the Commandant’s office within. Unbuttoning his shirt as he came through the door, he readied himself. He knelt on the floor; his comrade stood above him with his sword hoisted to the sky. At midday on the 25th of November 1970, Yukio Mishima drove a blade into his left side and dragged it across his belly in the ritual suicide known as Seppuku. His companion brought the sword down and severed his head, completing the ritual.

Honour

Seppuku, the practice of ritual suicide in Japan, began late in the Heian period (794-1185CE) as a form of honourable death. At this stage, the samurai class as we know it was still undergoing formation into what we today understand it to be. In this early stage, the practice of martial suicide was to avoid dishonour by choosing to die at one’s own hands rather than become a captive of the enemy. In later years, as the military class took control from the aristocracy, the practice evolved into the ritual of Seppuku.

Here, the emphasis of the ritual suicide was preserving honour. It was a codified practice in the Samurai guidebook, bushidō. To kill oneself in such a way was to prove courage and duty. The method was chosen because of the pain it would inflict, thus proving a warrior’s dedication to their duty.

As the meanings of words evolve and change with the flow of time, so did the samurai. Centuries later, in the peaceful Edo period (1603-1868), the absence of any serious conflict converted the Samurai class into more of an administrative role. Culture in Japan flourished, and the arts, poetry, painting, and plays rose in prominence.

In this era, the purpose of Seppuku shifted. With its roots in the preservation of honour, the ritual death was used to punish samurai, whether it was self-inflicted or ordered by their masters. It was a way for the samurai to acknowledge responsibility, whether they had brought shame upon themselves, failed in their duties, or to prove their commitment by following their masters to death.

In 1868, the Edo period ended with the Meiji Restoration, as power shifted from the military government back to the Emperor, Meiji. This was a period of rapid modernisation as Japan sought to catch up with the rest of the world and become an international power. Western influence flooded into the country, and the Samurai class was abolished. The samurai class protested this with several short-lived rebellions, one of which was the Shinpūren rebellion. In Yukio Mishima’s novel Runaway Horses, this story is a catalyst that inspires the protagonist to become a terrorist against the modernising government. The Shinpūren, also known as the “League of the Divine Wind,” were a group of samurai that attacked a military base in October of 1876 as a direct protest against the ban on wearing swords, which is a symbol of their class and way of life. We’ve seen the motif of “divine wind” more recently in Japanese history. During World War Two. Kamikaze.

The men of the League led an assault on a military base with only their swords. They were initially successful, using the advantage of surprise while the soldiers were sleeping. The samurai were quickly routed, however. Many died and many were forced to retreat.

In Mishima’s book, after the samurai are routed, the next ten pages are dedicated to telling how the majority of the survivors commit seppuku. He deals with these deaths with great regard. The bravery and commitment by which these samurai kill themselves is a testament to their resolve to abide by their code. The seppuku protected the samurai from the dishonour of being taken prisoner by the Meiji government, showed their devotion to their tradition, but mostly was a form of symbolic protest. From the beginning, the League knew that their rebellion was nothing more than symbolic, and that death awaited them on the other side.

In the book, and in Mishima’s life, this honourable death is a primary motivator. In Mishima’s writing, and, as I will eventually illuminate, in his life, it appears that the idea of an honourable, beautiful death is not just the inevitable end but in fact the goal. More so than the restoration of Imperial Japan. More so than the samurai honour. In his writing, Mishima reveals that this death, more than anything else, is his one true wish. I believe that the writer let obsession overwhelm his passions and that his end came about not because he abided by samurai honour but because he was a tortured soul that couldn’t justify his existence. Yukio Mishima, before all else, was an artist. And in his complicated mind he, as far as I can reckon, let the art overwhelm him, so that every direction, North, South, East, and West, became one. Obsession. In this, I don’t believe that his death was honorable, nor do I believe it was anything more than symbolic.

Beauty

After his wife Hideko had set out food and drink, he exchanged a last cup of saké with her, wrote a death poem, and told her that she should not lose heart, since their only son, Tanao, was still alive. It was now the night of the second day after the uprising. Tsuruda also had two daughters, aged ten and fourteen. His wife wished to wake them so that they might say farewell to their father, but Tsuruda insisted on letting them sleep. And having unfastened his garments, he cut open his stomach then thrust his blade into his throat. With his own hand he drew it out again…
Around dawn, word was brought that Tanao, the only son, had also committed seppuku.

Runaway Horses.

The excerpt at the beginning of the essay showed the desires of the protagonist of the novel, Isao Iinuma. In this character Mishima has written his ideal youth. A youth that embodies all that the author retrospectively wished he could have been in his own life. Isao is confident, strong, charismatic, and boyish and immature. All qualities that contrast Mishima’s upbringing, as we will come to see.

The topic of death has always been coupled with beauty in the writing of Mishima. As a child, he became obsessed with a picture of St Sebastian. The nature of his fascination was aesthetic. He was imbued with the symbolism of suffering and death, as well as the aesthetic of the masculine body, bound and pierced. In fact, this image ignited the young boy’s passions, and it was to a print of Guido Reni’s painting that Mishima had his first orgasm, unaware of what exactly he was doing. This infatuation would follow the young author until the end.

Yukio Mishima modelling Guido Reni’s Saint Sebastian. 1968. Photographed by Kishin Shinoyama

After the League of the Divine Wind was routed, and in retreat they found their way to the coast, in view of the ocean. The men took in the view, and discussed what divine omens the water gave them. The scene is picturesque, and appears to be a moment of finality for the men. The end of the road, which was the end they had hoped for. “Nature had never been more beautiful than on this morning after defeat. All was clear and fresh and tranquil.”

The book’s retelling of the story of the League is one that celebrates meeting a heroic death, in which the heroes desire to die fighting for their rights rather than just fight for them. In the stories of post-rebellion Seppuku, it strikes the reader as though the end goal, all along, was for the warrior priests to find an excuse to kill themselves. After the ambush in the night, and after the Shinpūren have retreated, the elders deliberate what to do with the youngest members, for they were sixteen and up and the elders did not wish for them to die. Yet the teenagers breathe passion, and the fire within them will not permit exclusion from the divine right for which they fought. The divine right to die.

“What are the old fellows up to with their constant delays? Why do they not decide at once? Let us commit seppuku or let us attack again!”

Notice that suicide comes before the desire to attack. The elders, soon to die themselves, order that members younger than twenty will be escorted down from their mountain refuge to escape the region. Once the youngsters have returned to their village, news of their comrades’ suicides reaches them and strengthens their resolve.

That night they sat down facing each other on the bank of a clear stream behind the village and carried out their ritual suicides with extraordinary grace. People who lived nearby heard the echo of repeated clapping coming from the direction of the stream late in the night. Tears filled their eyes as they realized that it was someone clapping in reverence to the gods and the Emperor before committing seppuku.

Disregarding all attempts to dissuade him, he exchanged a farewell cup of saké with his father and mother and relatives and then returned alone to another room. There he cut open his stomach, and thrust his sword into his throat. The blade hit the bone and was slightly nicked. Saruwatari called for one of his family to bring him another sword, and this time, cleanly pierced by the blade, he fell forward.

It was the fifteenth day of the ninth month, a night on which the moon was full. Its bright beams seemed to scatter jewels through the dewy grass. The five men say upright upon the grass, and after each had recited a farewell poem, Oda, the youngest at twenty, cut open his stomach, after which each of the others in turn fell forward over his own sword.

Three of many. Runaway Horses.

Obsession

Yukio Mishima’s grandmother demanded that he, as a baby, live with her, separated from his parents and siblings. She was a sickly and jealous and possessive woman. Young Yukio, then Kimitake, was to care for her. He was not permitted to play outside, seldom allowed to dine with his parents, and forbidden from attending school excursions. Kimitake was to sleep in her room, play with dolls, and allowed only to play with his girl cousins. This tortured childhood forced the boy into himself. He was quiet and introspective, never complaining yet seldom showing emotion. He spent most of his time reading and writing and dreaming of the outside. In their scant time together, his father, who later proved to be aggressive and rather abusive, lamented the boy’s femininity, cursing that he had let his mother-in-law take his son. It was at this age Mishima began his obsession with suffering and death, starting with the painting of St Sebastian.

Young Kimitake fell victim to a year of illness, wherein he would vomit dark bile and fall into a short coma. This happened almost monthly, until he began school, gaining reprieve from his suffocating grandmother. The school he attended was the Peers School, previously exclusive to boys of the aristocracy, yet in the modernised Japan allowed commoners that could afford the tuition. Kimitake was bullied. He had never, and thus knew not how to be with boys. He was frail and meek, and they called him “asparagus child.”

In adulthood, Mishima was the epitome of manliness. He was a bodybuilder, descended from a samurai family. He practiced the sword, stoic deprivation, and publicly supported a nationalistic uprising. He acted in films, usually as the badass, the tough guy, ex-con and yakuza hoodlum. He wrote an extended essay, Sun and Steel, in which he laid plain his ethos of the mind and body. The sun represents the raw transformative power of nature, and the steel represents the weights in bodybuilding and the sword in martial arts. He decries the loss of traditional values and physical and mental discipline.

There is a great disparity in the character of the child and the adult. As a boy he was repressed and gentle, as a man he was militaristic and masculine. I am inclined to say that much of the adult persona was a manifestation of the ideal. The man was a façade, a protection to cover the weakling inside. John Nathan, scholar, translator of Mishima’s works into English, and writer of his biography, describes the experience of watching Mishima act in the film Tough Guy after his death, directly after reading his adolescent fiction. Nathan could not reconcile the image of the “tough guy” on screen with the fragile poet he intimately knew.

The lashes were too long; the eyes that narrowed and burned with anger were soft, vulnerable eyes; the snarling mouth was too full, too feminine, the lips too red against the paleness of the face. And the body Mishima hurled around like a sledgehammer was, just beneath the musculature, a frail, unhealthy body… It was uncomfortable to watch a man labouring to become something so antithetical to himself.

John Nathan in Mishima: a biography, 1975.

I mentioned in the beginning of the essay the tendency of artists to become obsessed. Their ideas intrude on reality, and reality reciprocates in kind, permitting the artist to exist as this ideal of themselves. The problem here is that the artist, if their ideal is constructed, not borne wholly from the individual but borne of the individual’s ideas, will not withstand. The truth will out and the façade will fail. The people that knew Mishima were not convinced of his persona. He played the role of a nationalist, a warrior, a dangerous individual, yet beneath the surface was the truth lying in wait.

Mishima joined the Self-Defence Force some years before his death. He had hoped that it would help him reconcile his existence with himself. He wrote of his inability to find a conclusion on this point. He thought service in the armed service would fulfil him, but his cup remained empty. Mishima knew what his recourse was to be. Death. The infatuation he had held since his childhood persisted. This obsession had been a motif throughout his literary work. In his adult years, he became obsessed with not just the mind, but the body, and his philosophy has integrated the physical realm. He was an aesthetician. Musculature and physical beauty but the outer layers of his philosophy. At the centre was the one thing that would convince Mishima that he was truly alive.

With his subordinates from his “Shield Society,” his nationalistic radicals from within the defence force, he staged the attempted coup. He attempted his speech and failed. Believing his duty fulfilled, he returned inside and cut his belly open. The world was shocked and confused by the act. The Japanese citizenry as confused as the West. Seppuku was no longer in vogue. The practice had been abolished a century prior. While the act fulfilled most of the criteria, echoing the honour and duty of the samurai class dating back almost 1000 years, Mishima and those who understood him knew the truth. His followers in the Shield Society, unfamiliar with his written work, believed their leader to be an icon of Japanese stoicism and samurai sensibility. The readers superficially familiar with his work understood it to be the unlimited act of manly sacrifice and adherence to his beliefs. Yet there was no honour in the act. The act, as I understand it, was selfish. As it always is. It is a case of an artist allowing their ideas to obfuscate the sensibilities of life. The act of death was self-gratifying, serving none but himself. This was an infatuation and a kink.

And what were the ramifications of this act? His legend would continue, a genesis in a supernova-like fashion. This was not the desire of Mishima. In part I’m sure that he desired the death to be symbolic, yet it was not in the manner which he had probably hoped. It was met more with confusion than with regard. And what is left? A wife without a husband, two kids without a father, and a world without an artist.

One can conceptualise the act as something heroic. No doubt it takes enormous bravery and commitment to follow through with such an act in accordance with one’s beliefs. Yet when I look at the aftermath, at the photograph of the office, in which Mishima’s head is lying on the floor of the messy office, I feel a great sadness. Men in suits and ties look on at the scene as though it is a museum exhibit. The floor is strewn with papers. A sword’s scabbard lays on the floor before two severed heads. Mishima’s disciple had followed him. This end is not the beautiful act which Mishima had envisioned in his many stories. It is wasted potential and a spit in the face of the gift of life. It is the symptom and bitter conclusion of an artist’s obsession.

Mishima today is regarded as one of the greats. And he is. His works provide what only the very best artists can provide: understanding of the human soul. He was an honest writer, and clear truth drips from the words on the pages of his books. In this medium, the introspection developed during his claustrophobic childhood gave him unique insight and the ability to write humans as only the best can. Yet in his personage there is inconsistency. Since the age of five Mishima has existed within himself, living within the refuge of his mind. He could project the ideal as much as he liked, yet his sensitive soul lurked beneath. He espoused ideas of masculinity, of heroism, and of the samurai ethic. However, I do not believe that his final act was in accordance with the ideal. That was just the justification he gave to the world. He became a bodybuilder, a tough guy, and a warrior all in an effort to self-actualise, to prove to others and himself that he did indeed exist in the physical world. It was not enough. His final act was the will of the self. The true self. I believe that it was a waste and a mistake, yet it was perhaps the most honest thing the writer ever did.

Autumn Wind

Ritual suicide and Yukio Mishima

Honour

Beauty

Obsession

Originality