I don’t agree with the assessment of Mishima as “mad.” That’s a word people throw around when speaking about him to separate his work from his suicide, as if his suicide was some sort of “late period” mental decline. It’s dismissive. His suicide was so premeditated and so calculated and so conceptually consistent with his work that I don’t think writing him off as a nut is fair or accurate.
However, I really did enjoy this eloquent and insightful little snippet from the blog “Mediocracy Now.”
Law of the jungle. And like the earthquake, it has its cycles. One can’t hide from the brutality of nature. Mishima preferred to go to meet it, and in the most brutal way possible. His pathology was partly a revulsion at his own cowardice. In school, for instance, I was always scared but masked my fear by doing things that other boys were afraid to do. There is no counselor for that pathology. And it’s the hero’s starting point.
