“Is there a parallel between a dying Christianity in the West and the death of Japan’s prewar and wartime faith? When nations lose their sense of mission, their mandate of heaven, the faith that brought them into this world as unique countries and cultures, is that when they die? Is that when civilizations perish? So it would seem.”
- Pat Buchanan, in The Death of the West, commenting on Japan’s aging population and echoing Mishima’s sentiments about the abandonment of Japan’s unique spirit and culture in favor of modern Western ideals and materialism.
