I happened across this excellent essay on revisiting and re-evaluating Mishima’s work.
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Photography show featuring one of Eikoh Hosoe’s famous images of Mishima.
The Provoke Era: Postwar Japanese Photography: Sandra Phillips and W.S. di Piero in Conversation
Tags: eikoh hosoe
Post about graphic design, a cover for an edition of Forbidden Colors and Tadanori Yokoo, poster artist who also did this poster of Yukio Mishima.
More on Tadanori Yokoo here.
h/t Troy Chambers
An interesting article from Japan Echo , specfically dealing with Mishima’s “Eirei no koe.”
Mishima insisted that nucleus of the integrated, organic culture that embraced the chrysanthemum and the sword was none other than “the emperor as culture.” He explains the concept as follows, using the archaic term miyabi (courtly elegance).
Miyabi was the cultural essence of the imperial court and the people’s longing for it, but during troubled times, miyabi could even take the form of terrorism. That is to say, the emperor as a cultural concept held out his hand not only to the forces of state power and order but also to the forces of chaos.
Tags: Crysanthemum and the Sword, Eirei no koe, emperor, Japan Echo, Miyabi, Ruth Benedict, Voices of the Heroic Dead
A smug, pro-post-modernist article that mentions Mishima dismissively (almost in a bitchy way, actually), yet more or less summarizes the fears Mishima expressed about the “spirit” (or psychology) of a castrated Japan a few decades ago. He warned that Japan would become known for “the chrysanthemum” or Ikebana and, well, other “cute” stuff.
The author should know that American young people have also accepted that “there are no absolute answers to anything.”
It’s called relativism. They teach it in universities and on MTV. It could also be called overactive empathy, emotionalism, indecisiveness and fear of taking a stand. If you don’t bother with drawing lines, you can busy yourself with buying Manga and playing video games and chatting on Facebook while Rome burns.
Tags: adbusters, chrysanthemum, Kenzaburo Oe, Ryu Murakami, Takashi Murakami, yukio mishima
http://news.3yen.com/2009-07-02/saint-mishima-now-on-sale/
I was pleased to find this image on http://news.3yen.com/. have never seen this version before. The post itself was in reference to an upcoming auction of some recently discovered Mishima items.
The photo is presumably by Kishin Shinoyama.
Tags: Kishin Shinoyama, saint sebastian
Two of my own Mishima-related pieces of artwork will be featured in this upcoming show in Philadelphia, PA.
Friday, August 7, 2009 Time: 7:00pm – 10:00pm
Jennifer Bates Gallery @ Germ Books
2005 Frankford Ave
Philadelphia, PA 19125… Read More
A thoughtful post on Seppuku at Fu Rin Ka Zan:
http://furinkazanblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/truthful-manifestations.html
Mishima’s photo was used to illustrate this thoughtful article about the right, and Mishima was mentioned as a non-anti-Semitic rightist:
“…this particular prejudice did not affect some of Bolton’s case studies, like Italian proto-fascist Filippo Marinetti, Irish poet W.B. Yeats and Japanese militarist Yukio Mishima, none of whom was particularly exercised over the role of Jews in the cultural decadence they attacked.”
Perhaps even more interesting and relevant to this site was a distinction made between a political right and an aesthetic right–of which one could theoretically be a member of either or both.
Also, “an aesthetic protest against the kind of world the Left built.”
UPDATE: I forgot to post the link.
http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/opening_the_conservative_mind/
Tags: conservative, fascist, right, takimag
From what I can gather these are photos of the uyoku trucks that travel around Japan broadcasting right-wing nationalist propaganda (or, “inspirational thoughts,” depending on what side of the dialectic you are on).
Some could also be bus ads for books, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
If you can read Japanese, please confirm, correct or expand on my assumptions.
(Those characters beside Mishima are fairly clear. I would love to know what they say.)
This Flickr user posted a set of the right-wing trucks (some with Mishima, some without) and gave a first-hand account of the experience.
Tags: bus, flickr, mishima, nationalist, right-wing, uyoku
