Back Yukio Mishima ACE Yukio Mishima Afrikaans Yukio Mishima AN يوكيو ميشيما Arabic يوكيو ميشيما ARZ Yukio Mishima AST Yukio Mişima Azerbaijani یوکیو میشیما AZB Yukio Mishima BCL Юкіа Місіма Byelorussian

Yukio Mishima

The native form of this personal name is Mishima Yukio. This article uses Western name order when mentioning individuals.

Yukio Mishima
三島由紀夫
Mishima in 1955
Born
Kimitake Hiraoka

(1925-01-14)14 January 1925
Nagazumi-cho 2-banchi, Yotsuya-ku, Tokyo City, Tokyo Prefecture, Empire of Japan[1]
Died25 November 1970(1970-11-25) (aged 45)
Cause of deathSuicide by seppuku
Resting placeTama Cemetery, Tokyo
EducationUniversity of Tokyo (LLB)
Occupations
  • Writer
  • playwright
  • actor
  • model
  • theatre and film director
  • civil servant
  • political activist
Employers
OrganizationTatenokai ("Shield Society")
Writing career
LanguageJapanese
PeriodContemporary (20th century)
Genres
Literary movement
Years active1938–1970
Notable works
Japanese name
Kanji三島 由紀夫
Transcriptions
RomanizationMishima Yukio
Japanese name
Kanji平岡 公威
Transcriptions
RomanizationHiraoka Kimitake
Signature

Yukio Mishima[a] (三島 由紀夫, Mishima Yukio), born Kimitake Hiraoka (平岡 公威, Hiraoka Kimitake, 14 January 1925 – 25 November 1970), was a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor, model, Shintoist, ultranationalist,[6][7][8][9] and the leader of an attempted coup d'état that culminated in his seppuku (ritual suicide).

Mishima is considered one of the most important postwar stylists of the Japanese language. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times in the 1960s—including in 1968, when the award went to his countryman and benefactor Yasunari Kawabata.[10] Mishima's works include the novels Confessions of a Mask and The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, and the autobiographical essay Sun and Steel. Mishima's work is characterized by "its luxurious vocabulary and decadent metaphors, its fusion of traditional Japanese and modern Western literary styles, and its obsessive assertions of the unity of beauty, eroticism and death",[11] according to the author Andrew Rankin.

Mishima's political activities made him a controversial figure; he remains so in Japan to the present day.[12][13][14][15] From his mid-30s onwards, Mishima's far-right ideology and reactionary beliefs became increasingly evident.[15][16][17] He extolled the traditional culture and spirit of Japan, and opposed what he saw as Western-style materialism, along with Japan's postwar democracy (戦後民主主義, sengo minshushugi), globalism, and communism, worrying that by embracing these ideas the Japanese people would lose their "national essence" (kokutai) and distinctive cultural heritage to become a "rootless" people.[18][19][20]

In 1968 Mishima formed the Tatenokai ("Shield Society"), a private militia, for the purpose of protecting the dignity of the emperor as a symbol of national identity.[21][22][23][24] On 25 November 1970 Mishima and four members of his militia entered a military base in central Tokyo, took its commandant hostage, and unsuccessfully tried to inspire the Japan Self-Defense Forces to rise up and overthrow Article 9 of the 1947 Constitution to restore autonomous national defense[25][26][27][19] and the divinity of the emperor,[27][19] after which he died by seppuku.[26][27]

  1. ^ Matsumoto 1990, p. 12
  2. ^ "Mishima". Collins English Dictionary. HarperCollins. Archived from the original on 1 June 2019. Retrieved 1 June 2019.
  3. ^ "Mishima, Yukio". Lexico Dictionaries. Archived from the original on 28 September 2020. Retrieved 8 January 2020. (US) and "Mishima, Yukio". Oxford Dictionaries UK English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 1 June 2019.
  4. ^ "Mishima". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.). HarperCollins. Retrieved 1 June 2019.
  5. ^ "Mishima". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 1 June 2019.
  6. ^ Fairbrother, Zac. "Violence, Masculinity, and Fascism in 1960s Japan". University of Sheffield. Retrieved 6 November 2024.
  7. ^ "A New Japanese Nationalism". The New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2024.
  8. ^ "ND on Film: Patriotism". 6 February 2014. Retrieved 7 November 2024.
  9. ^ Nathan, John (23 May 2019). "'Night and Blood and Death'". The New York Review of Books. 66 (9). Retrieved 7 November 2024.
  10. ^ McCarthy, Paul (5 May 2013). "Revealing the many masks of Mishima" (mostly paywalled). The Japan Times. Retrieved 8 January 2020.
  11. ^ Rankin, Andrew (2018). Mishima, Aesthetic Terrorist: An Intellectual Portrait. University of Hawaii Press. p. 119.
  12. ^ Belsky, Beryl (18 October 2012). "Yukio Mishima: The Turbulent Life Of A Conflicted Martyr". Culture Trip.
  13. ^ "Yukio Mishima – 'The Lost Samurai'". Japan Today. 12 January 2014.
  14. ^ Flanagan, Damian (21 November 2015). "Yukio Mishima's enduring, unexpected influence". The Japan Times.
  15. ^ a b Shabecoff, Philip (2 August 1970). "Everyone in Japan Has Heard of Him". The New York Times.
  16. ^ Cite error: The named reference Jacobin was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  17. ^ Commentary on Mishima's ideology:
  18. ^ Ando 1998, pp. 338–339
  19. ^ a b c Muramatsu 1990, pp. 474–480, 503, 508
  20. ^ Toda 1978, pp. 91–105, 169–172
  21. ^ O-Encyclo 1976, pp. 246–247
  22. ^ Suzuki 2005, pp. 72–80
  23. ^ Ando 1998, pp. 259–261
  24. ^ Encyclo 2000, pp. 210–211, 519–520, 523–524
  25. ^ Cite error: The named reference geki was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  26. ^ a b Encyclo 2000, pp. 604–606
  27. ^ a b c Yamamoto 2001, pp. 32–43


Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).

Rich TVX News Network Site

Rich TVX News Network Info

© MMXXIII Rich X Search. We shall prevail. All rights reserved. Rich X Search