![]() In his suicide letter, Mishima wrote: “Human life is limited, but I want to live forever.” He wanted to live and die as a man of ideas and a man of action. Mishima delivered his last manuscript to an hour before his death. In accordance with his aesthetic vision of reality, he preferred the dramatic and heroic death of a beautiful and powerful body to the slow death of an ageing and sick body. His quest for purity could only be glorified through the act of seppuku. For him, the synthesis between the Japanese philosophy of Bushido (the way of the warrior) and the Greek idealisation of physical beauty was only possible in the heroic act of death. For admirers, his suicide can be considered as the culmination of his life project, the unification of action and art.įrom a man of letters, Mishima became a man of sword, blurring the line between the writer and the samurai. The acute awareness of his body allowed him to find a harmonious balance between the power of creativity and physical strength. Mishima had been planning his suicide for years - he had trained his body with intensive physical exercises, including military training with the Tatenokai. ![]() ![]() Mishima’s creation of the Tatenokai or the Shield Society in 1966, in order to defend the Emperor of Japan against attacks from the left, was more a romantic quest for an exemplary death than a political and military adventure. ![]()
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May 2023
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