Learning from Mishima, about Imperial Japan

My favourite writers remain Japanese; Yasanari Kawabata, Yukio Mishima, and the, of course, greatest living English writer, Kazuo Ishiguro.

Yukio Mishima is a profoundly good writer and I expect the only reason he wasn't awarded the Nobel Prize was due to his passion, arrogance, and warrior blood zeal for the Japanese Empire. He took his own life in accordance with Shinto-Samurai traditions due to Japan's loss in WW2 and can be seen, in esoteric form, as what Jung noted as an 'archetype'...a 'representer' of an entire culture embodied in a human individual.

His writings are breathtakingly beautiful, deep, mostly dark, and certainly have a strong feature of violence from a position of utter certainty and righteousness. He was a disturbed man, and also, most likely, a very disturbing man to have around and get to know, especially if one was a woman; in the similar way that Patrick White, the Australian novelist, was brilliant and yet had a very vicious and spiteful destructive view of many friends and of most women, except Kate Fitzpatrick, the very accomplished Australian actor.

I still appreciate Mishima's writings; I appreciate his contribution to us all being able to have some small insight into the traditions he loved and lived by, whilst knowing him to be a deeply flawed and disturbed human. He was a man of his times, for sure, and his love for the Empire was without end and involved a total 'eternal' loyalty.

I kind of see him as the type of man who, no matter what country he is born into, will have a profound impact, and not necessarily a good impact.

The 'goodness' was in his ability to so clearly demonstrate and make real abiding literature of what the Japanese Empire actually was, and what it stood for, proudly, which was not its people but rather its Emperor God. In this way, his life was a total success as would have been the lives of military Generals in the Crusades, etc...but he wasn't a military leader, he was a writer. His legacy are profoundly beautiful works of art that jar against our current consciousness and consciences in many ways for many good reasons.

I think his disturbed and passionate nature truly reflects Imperial Japan, as it was, as a fearful shocking vicious enemy to pretty well everyone else...but by understanding his view, then one can begin to see why Japan is not very good at being sorry at all, especially now when they feel under real threat of not existing as a nation anymore. What is the noble thing for Japan to do now? The blade of Mishima's sword remains ready, and sharper from turning it upon himself.