STORIES: Yukio Mishima

Mishima is the perfect example of someone who cannot be pigeonholed, who is non-aligned, who escapes every category, and for that reason he is a hero of mine and a “living” example of freedom. Mishima was a writer, a poet, a bodybuilder, an actor, a martial artist, a nationalist (today we would say a sovereigntist), a model, a militarist (he founded his own private militia, complete with uniforms), and sexually bisexual.

Mishima was the shining symbol of resistance to globalisation and to Western cultural hegemony over Japan. An elitist anti-communist, opposed to the politics of mere subsistence/survival, he sensed, and tried to counter by every means possible, the trend that since the last century has led to what is today an ethical and cultural levelling downwards of a corrupt global culture that devours itself.

Mishima was the authentic “Last Samurai”. He proclaimed more than once his personal commitment to following Bushido (the Samurai code), and when he understood he had been defeated in his vain attempt to safeguard the authentic Japanese spirit, he committed Seppuku, ritual suicide, assisted by the close circle of his followers. His suicide too, like everything in Mishima’s life, was an aesthetic and spiritual act as well as a physical one. Like all of us human beings, Mishima was not perfect, but heroically he never ceased to strive towards an ideal of beauty involving mind, body and spirit. Never more than today have we needed examples like his.

M.M.

STORIES is a column dedicated to great stories from the past that can inspire your present.