Papers/Mags/Journals

Mishima belongs to the uniqueness of culture which can be found in the rich diversity of indigenous thought patterns. This richness can fuse with various concepts in order to counteract against the flows of modernity and a liberal monoculture which seeks to crush conservatism and self-identity. Murakami belongs to this “self-crushing world” along with the majority of authors. Therefore, while the crushing modernity of Murakami will keep on churning out similar types of writers, all with their own identities but trapped within modern convention; the Mishima’s of this world are hard to find and getting rarer.

More from Lee Jay Walker at Modern Tokyo Times:

Yukio Mishima and Haruki Murakami: Iranian Revolution, Nationalism and Liberal Monoculture

Imago Theatre’s ‘The Black Lizard’

 One highlight in particular is a noir-style city chase scene, which happens entirely on a screen with projections of the city (by Catherine Egan and Kyle Delmarter) and the artfully directed manipulations of silhouettes by the characters. Also of note is the equally complex mashup of sound effects and music by Kyle Delamarter and John Berendzen, which further flirts with the camp over stylizations of the production by, respectively, punctuating points of dialogue and action with lo-fi sound effects and also underlying the existential, kabuki “chamber” style soliloquies of the characters with fuzzy, Orientalized music. (Read more here.)

Die young, stay pretty.

The sound is a knowing John Zorn-style pastiche, and one of the biggest cues to how Mishima’s play is to be viewed: not as kabuki detective thriller, and certainly not as a philosophical meditation on beauty and control, but rather as a heavily ironized postmodern stew of the serious, the formal and the downright trashy. Rather than farce, it is a detached quotation of farce, a precise clockwork of profane surprise.  Read more here…

(I have no idea what that means, but I bought my tickets today.)

Despite the longevity of his fame after his death, the mainstream press have largely boycotted him because of his far-right views.

The conservative Sankei daily, one of the few media outlets covering the anniversary of Mishima’s suicide, reported on the publication of books commemorating him.

But at Tokyo’s Kudan Kaikan hall, a few blocks from the Yasukuni war shrine, which honours 2.5 million war dead including top war criminals, organisers said around 1,000 people gathered to honour Mishima at a special ceremony.

A huge portrait of Mishima hung above an altar next to a Japanese national flag at the event, as a Shinto priest read prayers.

A thoughtful article from Stanford University News, regarding a translation of “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski’s “Manifesto.”

Unabomber’s writings raise uneasy ethical questions for Stanford scholar
French Professor Jean-Marie Apostolidès finds link between blood and ink in Ted Kaczynski’s “Manifesto” – but should we listen to a killer?
BY CYNTHIA HAVEN
Stanford Report, February 1, 2010

‘Our words have no power’

“It’s the problem of scholars, even artists: Our words have no power. We think we are changing the world – particularly on the left,” he said, and paused. “You accept your symbolic castration – that your writing will take time to have a modest influence on your contemporaries.” In other words, he accepts the compromises necessary to live a normal life, with an income, collegial support, home and family.

Yet Kaczynski’s writings and life have intrigued Apostolidès by emphasizing “the relationship between writing and killing, ink and blood.”

“From a cynical perspective, I write books without killing anyone – my writing will have no impact. The only way I can be listened to is to associate my writing to something.” That is, “either your own blood or someone else’s.”

For instance, he cited Japanese writer Yukio Mishima, whose meticulously planned seppuku in 1970 triggered an avalanche of interest in his works.

Kaczynski is following in these footsteps, rejecting the petit bourgeois alternative that Apostolidès has knowingly embraced and instead “linking blood and ink.”