ABSTRACT
Mishima also authored film scripts and acted in films. He posed for photo shoots (some nude and decidedly erotic), including the series “Death of a Man” shot shortly before his actual suicide, in which Mishima not only posed as Saint Sebastian, but also with a sword in his abdomen, the photographer as Mishima’s second, sword raised.8 As a young man, Mishima resolutely rejected most things indexical of “traditional Japan.”9 Paradoxically, in the 1960s as Japan put the period of self-reflection and criticism over the Second World War behind and progressed toward a fully material, consumerist and Americanized society divested of imperial divinity and militarism, Mishima became affiliated with a neo-fascist, new right-wing movement calling for the resurrection and re-deification of the (de-reified, de-deified, humanized, war criminal) emperor. His “Theory on the defense of culture” (“Bunka bdei ron,” 1968), which proclaimed the emperor to be the source of Japanese culture, was met with left-wing accusations pronouncing Mishima a fascist.10 Mishima formed his own private “army” (The Shield Society or Tate no kai) in 1968, ostensibly as a remedy for Japanese de-militarization (symbolized by the effete self-defense corps).11 Subsequently, Mishima’s final public performance consisted of a pathetic attempt at a coup d’état, which he and his followers knew was doomed, but afforded him a platform for a final speech and his suicide by ritual disembowelment (seppuku).
