On holiday with Yukio Mishima, shortly before he killed himself.
Yukio Mishima’s own version of a painting of Saint Sebastian. Mishima himself is the model.
Yukio Mishima committed seppuku this day in 1970.
I had my first experience with Mishima recently when I read The Sound of Waves. It was a calm and gentle book about young love on a quiet Japanese fishing island. It is hard for me to mesh the two images of Mishima in my head - the author of that wonderful, subdued book, and the militant, bodybuilding nationalist shown above.
Original NYT article about the suicide here.
Nov. 25, 1970 crazed japanese writer Yukio Mishima - often considered a leading candidate for the Nobel and the most popular Japanese writer abroad - together with three friends stormed the Tokyo headquarters of the Eastern Command of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces. Inside, they barricaded the office and tied the commandant to his chair. With a prepared manifesto and banner listing their demands, Mishima stepped onto the balcony to address the soldiers gathered below. His speech was intended to inspire a coup d’etat restoring the powers of the emperor. He succeeded only in irritating them, however, and was mocked and jeered. He finished his planned speech after a few minutes, returned to the commandant’s office and committed seppuku - ritual self-disembowelment…
(via papertissue)
