The Death of Yukio Mishima, or A Landscape with Survivor's Guilt
At the beginning of Tsuneari Fukuda's "What is Humanity?", he talks about the pride of being a literary critic. According to him, a person who is neither a novelist nor a scholar becomes a literary critic. In this book, Tsuneari Fukuda considers the suicide of Ryunosuke Akutagawa as a natural event. I do not think that such a mixture of an author's presence, activities, and works is literary criticism, but I do think that Ryunosuke Akutagawa, while thoroughly resisting the naturalistic conventional "novel," answered "Mr. Shiga" when asked who his favorite author was, and foresaw that a novel like Kikuchi Kan's would "remain" somewhere in the future. I think it is meaningful to write that Akutagawa Ryunosuke's suicide was natural if we consider this as the presence and activity of a writer.
The theory that art cannot be perfected in a single generation is also true, I think. Nowadays, novelists are almost all individuals, but I would not strongly disagree if someone argues that Haruki Murakami, for example, must wait for Mieko Kawakami to complete his work. I had not read any books by this author, except for "The Mimizuku Flies Away into the Twilight," so I had only a somewhat discriminatory impression of her as a "beautiful writer. I got a very good impression. In "Of course, the head is huge. The whole world will fit in it", Mieko Kawakami says that she does not understand what Yukio Mishima is saying or what he has done, but she also seems to see a division between body and soul.
In response to Yukio Mishima's death, Shintaro Ishihara said, "The head and body that had been forcibly attached together have finally separated," which I think is neither mean nor inappropriate. Yukio Mishima also admitted that the completion of art must wait for old age, while action is incompatible with it, saying, "It's okay to cut your body at the age of 20. Although these two separate things may come together in the end, he professed to do both separately, literature as literature and action as action, and to work hard at both. He said, "I don't care if I cut my body at the age of 20," but he also knew that "my head is big, and the world will come in.
I said, "Your head is bigger than Japan. Don't get caught up. No matter how much you think you are doing for Japan, it will only lead to you falling out of favor.
Soseki's advice did not reach Yukio Mishima, who said of his friend who could not study in the novel, "Reading Soseki is all you can do".
By the way, why does it seem that Yukio Mishima's death was a death for melancholy and a death under the influence of Survivor's Guilt? After "Yukoku" Yukio Mishima began to cosplay as a kind of jumble of writer's presence, activity, and work. He once appeared on TV in a Japanese army costume before wearing the "Tate no Kai uniform". Before and after "The Voice of the Dead soldiers" he implied to those around him that he was possessed by Asaichi Isobe of the 26 Incident, and made an effort to be regarded as a super-nationalist. On the other hand, he leaked that "I'll show the right-wingers what I'm made of," so it is certain that he is a conservative but not a right-winger.
However, when I think again about whether Yukio Mishima's death was really under the influence of the Survivor's Guild or whether it was a political death, it is not so clear. Of course, we cannot deny that Yukio Mishima's death had political implications. After Mishima's death, the All-Communist Party put up a sign saying, "We mourn the death of Mr. Mishima," and the right wing reflected on whether the sign was genuine. The student movement became militant and progressed into an internal struggle. Meanwhile, the police elaborated their riot police. It is rumored that the Emperor's "Showa Emperor Jitsuroku" omits the words exchanged with Yukio Mishima at the autumn garden party on November 11, 1966, as well as the words uttered by the Showa Emperor in response to Mishima's suicide. At least the latter is certain to have been there. I think the Emperor Showa would have been most reluctant to see the raw head that Yukio Mishima had made = "hot rice ball".
That's why, until a week before his death, Yukio Mishima said that he would not watch "Listen to the voice of a wanderer" and that such a thing was a lie, but on the day of his death, he wrapped a "Seven Lives for the Nation" headband around his forehead. It seems natural to assume that this was not a political death, and that it was a case of "playing favorites for the sake of Japan. However, if we follow the story, we cannot deny the fact that this is a "truth out of a lie". As Yasuhiro Nakasone pointed out, the death of a desperation bee is like the realization of "The Raging Horse", but it is also the realization of Kenzaburo Oe's "The Death of a Political Boy," in which the emperor commits suicide.
However, long before the completion of "Sea of Fertility" and a year before his death, Yukio Mishima attempted suicide at the Imperial Hotel, and long before that, he had been telling his friends that he wanted to die and to cut his own throat, while Morita Masakatsu had been urging him, "Mister Mishima , when will us harakiri ? At the same time, he was thinking about the future when he would grow old and play waka poetry. However, in light of these facts, it is certain that (1) death due to mental breakdown and (2) death that is not voluntary or involuntary cannot be denied.
The death of the body is simple: "The head and body, which had been forcibly attached to each other, have finally separated," and so the body dies. But the head is big. You can see the whole world. Yukio Mishima's head is huge. This cannot be simplified. The death of Yukio Mishima is more unnatural than the death of Osamu Dazai, which can be seen when we mix up his presence, activities, and works. When we try to squeeze it into the landscape of Survivor's Guilt, a number of small contradictions emerge. The landscape of Survivor's Guild is not possible without ignoring the contradictions, as is said about "Shinpū Renshōshi" in "The Raging Horse".
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
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