Yukio Mishima (1925–70): His Love of Idiosyncracy and of ‘Failed Groupism’, in Parallel with His Romantic Escape into the Freedom of the Sea, Observed in his Work The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (Kinkakuji)

Abstract

The general reactions of the Japanese to Mishima’s work as a novelist have not been favourable, particularly in the colourful context of his stunning suicide by disembowelment in the office of the head of the Self-Defence Forces in Ichigaya, Tokyo on 25 November 1970. He died at the age of 45, after making a verbal protest on the balcony of the Self-Defence offices against the weakening of Japanese patriotism and its central focus in the authority of the Emperor. But no Japanese seriously believed in the genuine authenticity of his propagandist performance, clad as he was in the uniform of his own private army of about twenty handsome young men called Tate no kai (‘Group of Shields’), with their headbands in which the symbol of the rising sun (from the Japanese flag) had been bleached out.