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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
An exellent quote about Mishima from Donald Richie, onetime Mishima associate.
Mishima’s suicide-by-seppuku in 1970 “was indeed so romantic that its seriousness alone saves it from melodrama,” Richie reflects. “But, as Mishima might have asked, what is the matter with melodrama? It too is a form of drama, and drama is life. … Those crazy enough to say he was insane merely show us that their vocabulary cannot encompass such an extraordinary act.”
East Bay Express: Screening the Samurai
Well said.
A Times review of a new production of Mishima’s “Madame de Sade,” starring Judi Densch.
I was not aware until today that Mishima’s book Forbidden Colors was the subjectof the world’s first Butoh performance.
Here’s the recent Vancouver Sun article on Butoh that tipped me off:
CULTURAL OLYMPIAD: The discrete, ineffable appeal of Butoh
By Kevin Griffin
From Wikipedia:
Butoh appeared first in Japan after the second world war and the student riots there. The roles of authority were being challenged and subverted at this point. It also appeared as a reaction against the contemporary dance scene in Japan, which Hijikata felt was based on imitating the West and Noh and was too superficial.
The first butoh piece was Kinjiki (Forbidden Colours), by Tatsumi Hijikata, which premiered at a dance festival in 1959. Based on the novel of the same name by Yukio Mishima, the piece explored the taboo of homosexuality and paedophilia and ended with a live chicken being held between the legs of Yoshito Ohno (Kazuo Ohno’s son) and Hijikata chasing Yoshito off the stage in darkness. Primarily as a result of the misconception that the chicken had died due to strangulation, this piece outraged the audience, and resulted in the banning of Hijikata from the festival where Kinjiki premiered and established him as an iconoclast.
In the very first “butoh” performances, the style was called “Dance Experience” (in English), but in the early Sixties, Hijikata used the term “Ankoku-Buyo” (dance of darkness) to describe his dance, and later changed the word “buyo,” filled with associations of Japanese classical dance to that of “butoh,” a long discarded word for dance that originally meant European ballroom dancing[1].
It would be interesting to see a Butoh based on, say, Sun and Steel. Or, perhaps even better, on the events of November 25, 1970.
More Butoh:
“We need to stop this accelleration, stop the speed.”
If you have access to JSTOR (I get free access through my local library), you may want to download and print this article concerning Mishima.
Irony and Purity: Mishima
Peter Abelsen
Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Jul., 1996), pp. 651-679
Published by: Cambridge University Press
An interesting article by Hiroaki Sato concerning Mishima and a lawsuit over a book which recounted stories about Mishima’s sexuality.
Suppressing more than free speech
By HIROAKI SATO
“Two years before he killed himself in an ultimate show of male bonding — the young man who beheaded him followed him in death — Mishima wrote an introduction to Tamotsu Yato’s collection of photographs celebrating Japan’s “naked festivals” (hadaka matsuri). Men taking part in them wear nothing but loincloths, most of the time.
In that essay, Mishima rued how culturally diffident the Japanese were when they opened their country to the West in the 19th century. They thought they were “backward” in comparison with Europeans and set out to suppress many of the things that were natural to their own culture. They were unaware that the seemingly “advanced” Westerners came with a lode of cultural hangups of their own.
Among the customs the Japanese tried to snuff out as “barbaric” amid the onslaught of Christian morality was the “naked festivals.” Another was the easy custom of men and women bathing together. One thing Mishima could have readily mentioned but didn’t, though he had made it palpably clear elsewhere, was male-male love.”
This is an especially interesting article on Japan’s enduring uyoku–(right-wing) political activists. Mishima is mentioned prominently.
Riding with the rightists.
Japan Times (Tokyo, Japan) Date: 22-OCT-06
Eric Prideaux
Accessed for free via http://www.accessmylibrary.com/
They are the (generally) black trucks that are the intimidating signature of Japan’s uyoku (rightwing) political activists — an element of society little understood by the average citizen, let alone foreign residents or visitors often moved to recoil in fear from the vehemence of the nationalistic passion they so stridently broadcast.
Today, many uyoku who call themselves minzoku-ha (ethnicity faction) regard themselves as patriots set on “restoring pride” in Japanese culture and history at a time when — as they see it — modern, Western-influenced values are eroding the time-honored fabric of Japanese society.
…“Priorities vary from group to group, but overall the uyoku focuses on protecting the Japanese political order, a social order based on the Emperor,” explained Mitsuhiro Kimura, leader of the Tokyo-based shin-uyoku (new right) organization Issuikai.
…Observers may wonder why any rightist need resort to coercion, considering former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s annual visits over five years to Yasukuni Shrine to pay his respects to Japan’s war dead (including Class-A war criminals) — a key demand of the right. Add to that an incoming administration, led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, that is committed to a staunchly conservative agenda, including a tough stance on North Korea and a commitment to bolstering patriotism in the nationwide school curriculum.
Yet, rather than sensing that their time has finally come, rightists seem to feel more embattled than ever. The reasons abound. In the area of gender relations, left and right have argued over the term “gender free,” implying a society free from sexual discrimination. To rightists of both sexes, these concepts represent a radical denial of natural differences between the sexes, and a rejection of family values at the heart of Japanese society.
Justin Raimondo recently wrote an excellent piece on Mishima for Takimag, an excellent web site for independent conservatives.
Mishima–Paleocon as Samurai
http://www.takimag.com/site/article/mishima_postpaleo_of_nippon/
h/t Mr. Blake
