yukoku

Mishima’ s version of “ Patriotism” or “Yukoko, A Rite of Love and Death” was a silent film, set to Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde.”

Aaron Embry of the group Amnion has recently re-scored the film with his own composition, and made it available for download here, free of charge.

I really enjoyed the haunting main theme. I downloaded it and listened to it in my truck on the way to work this morning and it worked in the rain, though while the old lp effect makes sense with the film, it might be reduced in the mix a bit for use as a stand alone track–it can be kinda distracting.  And one thought-and this is just my own thought–I had was that it might be nice to have some sort of metallic sound over Mishima’s the officer’s suicide.

In the story that the film is based on, Mishima wrote this:

“Was this seppuku?–he was thinking. It was a sensation of utter chaos, as if the sky had fallen on his head and the world was reeling drunkenly. His will power and courage, which had seemed so robust before he made the  incision, had now dwindled to something like a single hairlike thread of steel, and he was assailed by the uneasy feeling that he must advance along this thread, clinging to it with desperation.”

It would be interesting to hear some musical evocation of that thread, which I mentally picture as being something like a silver wire…Sun & Steel reference I suppose…

All in all it is an excellent effort and I always like to see creative work inspired by Mishima.