You are currently browsing the archive for the Uncategorized category.
I’ve read this piece by Rollins a few times over the years, and it is relevant here for both the weightlifting angle and the Mishima quote. It’s inspired a lot of people. It’s Rollins’ own Sun and Steel.
Normally I wouldn’t post a complete essay a man wrote without his permission, but a quick search shows that this has been reprinted and reposted so many times that it seems as though it is OK. If Mr. Rollins objects, I’d be happy to take it down…I don’t think I want to fight him…
Complete essay after the jump:
Tags: Bodybuilding, henry rollins, iron and the soul, weightlifting, yukio mishima
The photographer who took the famous “Ordeal by Roses” shot of Mishima will be having an exhibition in June at the Foreign Correspondent’s Club of Japan.
Eikoh Hosoe
http://www.eikoh-hosoe.jp/index.html
and on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eikoh_Hosoe
Here’s an article about another exhibition that too place a few years ago.
Japan Times: EIKOH HOSOE
Photographer chronicles an alternate Japanese history
Tags: eikoh hosoe, ordeal by roses
In the Mishima story, “Patriotism,” the characters pay homage to what is translated as the “god shelf.”
“On the god shelf below the staircase, alongside the tablet from the Great Ise Shrine, were set photographs of their Imperial Majesties, and regularly every morning , before leaving for duty, the lieutenant would stand with his wife at this hallowed place and together they would bow their heads low. The offering water was renewed each morning, and the sacred sprig of sasaki was always green and fresh. Their lives were lived beneath the solemn protection of the gods and were filled with an intense happiness which set every fiber in their bodies trembling.”
- Yukio Mishima, Patriotism
The “God Shelf” is a kamidana.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamidana
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ise_Shrine
Some kamidana seem to be quite elaborate, while others are simple and have very clean lines.
There are some images of a very simple antique kamidana here, and an internet search will yield a wide variety of them.
http://www.budomall.com/index.php
Tags: emperor, god shelf, ise shrine, kami, kamidana, sacred mirror, shinto
“Purity, a concept that recalled flowers, the piquant mint taste of a mouthwash, a child clinging to its mother’s gentle breast, was something that joined all these directly to the concept of blood, the concept of swords cutting down through the shoulder to spray the air with blood. And to the concept of seppuku. The moment that a samurai “fell like the cherry blossoms, his blood-smeared corpse became at once like fragrant cherry blossoms. The concept of purity, then, could alter to the contrary with arbitrary swiftness. And so purity was the stuff of poetry.”
- Yukio Mishima, Runaway Horses
Tags: cherry blossom, kendo, league of the devine wind, purity, seppuku
I wasn’t aware that David Bowie was at one time a Yukio Mishima fan, but this blog cites the following quote from Thomas Newton Howard, accompanied by the image above.
THOMAS NEWTON SEABROOK: “Bowie now read and enthused – in typically vociferous fashion – about art, literature, and classical music; painting, previously an intermittent distraction, became a full-time hobby. Many of his own artworks – which included a giant expressionist portrait of the Japanese author and nihilist Yukio Mishima – hung from the walls of his Berlin apartment.”
