Yukio Mishima
Left-wing and right-wing principles are no longer an effective axis in our era. The Russian and Afghanistan conflicts are a good example of it. I think it is time to start a new beginning according to our values. Politicians have corrupted our cities, neighborhoods, villages, countries
thus, the groups or communities of citizens which always lived alone, isolated from globalisation. After a deep reasoning I cannot see the effectiveness of NATO, the European Commission or my local government. They are supposed to be there to defend our interests in the democratic world but they end up doing the opposite.
Do not worry, I have the solution that has always been there since 1968: Tatenokai.
Background: Tatenokai (???, ???) or Shield Society was a private militia in Japan dedicated to traditional Japanese values and veneration of the Emperor. It was founded and led by author Yukio Mishima. Along with outdoor activities, the members, who joined voluntarily, were subjected to rigorous physical training that included kendo and long-distance running. In an unusual move, the Tatenokai was granted the right to train with the nation's armed forces, the Japan Self-Defense Forces. The number of Tatenokai members later increased to 100. Some of the members had graduated from university and were employed, while some were already working adults when they enlisted.
"Where has the spirit of the samurai gone?" On 25 November 1970, Mishima and four members of the TatenokaiMasakatsu Morita, Masahiro Ogawa, Masayoshi Koga, and Hiroyasu Koga, used a pretext to visit the commandant Kanetoshi Mashita of Camp Ichigaya, a military base in central Tokyo and the headquarters of the Eastern Command of the Japan Self-Defense Forces. Inside, they barricaded the office and tied the commandant to his chair. Mishima wore a white hachimaki headband with a red hinomaru circle in the center bearing the kanji for "To be reborn seven times to serve the country" (????, Shichish? h?koku), which was a reference to the last words of Kusunoki Masasue, the younger brother of the 14th century imperial loyalist samurai Kusunoki Masashige as the two brothers died fighting to defend the Emperor.
In his final written appeal that Morita and Ogawa scattered copies of from the balcony, Mishima expressed his dissatisfaction with the half-baked nature of the JSDF:
Mishima then committed seppuku. This coup attempt is called The Mishima Incident (????, Mishima jiken) in Japan.
Conclusion: If we do not have public figures who would sacrifice themselves in order to defend our land, politics (both left and right) are not long relatable. Political figures were representatives of our traditions back then. But now they are kidnapped by money and sinful practices. They do not have honour nor ethics. It looks like they do not even assume responsibilities. They [politicians] do not care about us and our identity problem.
They are so coward that they would not be brave enough to sacrifice themselves to save the country.
Do not worry, I have the solution that has always been there since 1968: Tatenokai.
Background: Tatenokai (???, ???) or Shield Society was a private militia in Japan dedicated to traditional Japanese values and veneration of the Emperor. It was founded and led by author Yukio Mishima. Along with outdoor activities, the members, who joined voluntarily, were subjected to rigorous physical training that included kendo and long-distance running. In an unusual move, the Tatenokai was granted the right to train with the nation's armed forces, the Japan Self-Defense Forces. The number of Tatenokai members later increased to 100. Some of the members had graduated from university and were employed, while some were already working adults when they enlisted.
"Where has the spirit of the samurai gone?" On 25 November 1970, Mishima and four members of the TatenokaiMasakatsu Morita, Masahiro Ogawa, Masayoshi Koga, and Hiroyasu Koga, used a pretext to visit the commandant Kanetoshi Mashita of Camp Ichigaya, a military base in central Tokyo and the headquarters of the Eastern Command of the Japan Self-Defense Forces. Inside, they barricaded the office and tied the commandant to his chair. Mishima wore a white hachimaki headband with a red hinomaru circle in the center bearing the kanji for "To be reborn seven times to serve the country" (????, Shichish? h?koku), which was a reference to the last words of Kusunoki Masasue, the younger brother of the 14th century imperial loyalist samurai Kusunoki Masashige as the two brothers died fighting to defend the Emperor.
In his final written appeal that Morita and Ogawa scattered copies of from the balcony, Mishima expressed his dissatisfaction with the half-baked nature of the JSDF:
Yukio Mishima:It is self-evident that the United States would not be pleased with a true Japanese volunteer army protecting the land of Japan. Japan lost its spiritual tradition, and materialism infested instead. Japan is under the curse of a Green Snake now. The Green Snake bites the Japanese chest. There is no way to escape this curse.
Mishima then committed seppuku. This coup attempt is called The Mishima Incident (????, Mishima jiken) in Japan.
Conclusion: If we do not have public figures who would sacrifice themselves in order to defend our land, politics (both left and right) are not long relatable. Political figures were representatives of our traditions back then. But now they are kidnapped by money and sinful practices. They do not have honour nor ethics. It looks like they do not even assume responsibilities. They [politicians] do not care about us and our identity problem.
They are so coward that they would not be brave enough to sacrifice themselves to save the country.
Comments (44)
I think even this is merely a symptom and not the 'cause'. An individual is also mostly a product of the society they grow up in, more than the other way around at the very least. Or put in other words you tend to get these kinds of politicians because there is already something rotten in society.
What is missing after dissolution of traditional structures in the past centuries is an idea of 'societal good', or even 'ecological good' that transcends individuals. This idea of a hierarchy of values should be evident, we simply cannot survive as individuals, or at least not flourish, if society collapses or if the biosphere dies for instance... we depend on the functioning of larger structures.
A society needs to venerate something, put something at the center of it's valuations, that is larger than a mere sum of individuals to function properly. The problem is not one of individual character, i.e. that these people are not brave enough to sacrifice themselves, the problem is that the idea that one should sacrifice something for the greater good has become laughable in current societies.
:up: Mishima was two steps away from a reworked "fascism with Japanese characteristics". When popular resentment is not rooted in class politics, it always ends up tending toward this kind of reactionary nationalist identitarianism. If anything Mishima was a warning about what is happening exactly right now all across the world: a drastic pitch to the right as societies disoriented by the ruination of capitalism desperately search for something to give their lives meaning.
Fascism was an Italian movement for the population of Italy. Thus, an European revolution against socialism. But you have to keep in mind that Mishima was searching a way to escape from Weatern topics. I think Mishima was original in they way he has founded a group or militia. Please do not call him just "fascist" because he wanted to honour their Japanese heritage and traditions.
I do not even understand when you say fascism with "Japanese characteristics"... was Francisco Franco a fascist with "Spanish characteristics?"...
Isn't this a right path to choose to?
:100: :up:
It's an allusion to the idea of "capitalism with Chinese characteristics" that sometimes used in reference to China. And yes, Mishima was looking to escape from the upheavals of the West by means of a regression into the past. It so happens that the withdrawal into 'tradition' always takes place at the expense of living, breathing people. It is usually accompanied by mass death. It is no accident that Mishima's suicide was followed soon after by a military coup that unleashed some of the worst horrors the Earth has ever seen in the pacific theatre of WWII.
Quoting javi2541997
There is literally nothing worse. A regression to feudalism without even the minimally positive aspects of capitalism.
But I never spoke about feudalism either capitalism. I think it is a bad move to always mix social challenges with economy. For example: if I am a traditionalist it means that I want to reinforce my roots but it is not necessarily being connected to capitalism or "markets"
This is why Mishima was right. The nations ended up being kidnapped by markets and money.
Who cares about the GDP if I do not know what is the real value of being born in Spain, Japan, USA UK, etc...?
There is no real value in being born anywhere in particular. There is only the life you make with the people around you. "The economy" is just the ways in which we reproduce our societies across time. Being kidnapped by markets or money is no different than being kidnapped by tradition, which in some cases far worse because of the total caprice and arbitrariness of so-called 'traditions' - which are all invented and reinvented in real time anyway.
What I have tried to stand is that both values and traditions should not be along with politicians and markets because for me those are invaluables.
Quoting javi2541997
Quoting javi2541997
Ethics and traditions aren't the same things, though.
Shouldn't decision-makers do the right thing regardless of traditions, perhaps even in spite of traditions as the case may be...?
How can you make the right decisions if you do not respect your traditions and values firstly?
We end up in a constant contradiction here
Shouldn't be hard to exemplify; may not apply to all traditions of course, maybe someone has a tradition that just says "do the right thing"?
Ethics ? traditions.
If I remember correctly (so correct me if I'm wrong), Mishima did seppuku after the JSDF soldiers, that he thought he would inspired to join him, simply mocked and laughed at him. And what else was he than a eccentric lunatic? The real failure is to think that those JSDF soldiers weren't patriotic or didn't hold Japanese heritage in high value. Likely many of the officers and NCOs in the JSDF and earlier in the National Police Reserve were WW2 veterans, just like those in the new Bundeswehr in Germany. But it wasn't the Imperial Japan of before anymore.
Mishima actually hadn't served in the Imperial Armed Forces of Japan and hence didn't participate in WW2, an experience that usually would make people see the realities of those ideals Mishima so much upheld. Now the dismissal on medical grounds gave him an inferiority complex.
I guess this is where the divide in views springs from, for the moral constructivist, the traditions, the mores (customs) actually are the ethics and morals. In this view, if you dissolve these traditions for whatever reason, you have nothing left, or rather they get constructed in other unconscious and perhaps unfortunate ways, like say by corporate advertising. This is not to say that you can't critique traditions if you hold a constructivist view, but that the critique will necessarily be formulated from within the constructed system, immanent, and not by holding it up to some absolute moral standard that exist outside of time or context, transcendent (because that simply is nonsense in that view).
Ethics can obviously change, hence ethics ? traditions.
Mishima did not serve in the Japanese forces because he was young (around 19 and 20 years) and an intellectual ready to fulfil his life with literature. I guess his disappointment with modern Japanese society has a lot of points to consider of.
When Japan loses WWII starts a period of lack of confidence on "Japanese values" because they noticed that they weren't good enough to win the war. Since 1945, the new Japanese citizens started to be more Westerly. They use smoking instead kimono. The women are independent instead of being surrounded by Men. Samurai are no longer respectful and Japan became an economical potency without their roots and values.
In this precisely moment Mishima wonders if Japan would disappear if they give up their values and history because the modern society doesn't seem to look like the previous one of WWII. He did his best to re-establish the respect to the emperor and make Japan a country of samurai not entrepreneurs.
When he perceived that nobody didn't care that much as expected he ended his life with seppuku.
But it is important to highlight that for Mishima (and other Japanese artists) suicide is a beautiful ending. It is not perceived as bad as Westerns.
The Western materialistic sense of living neither!
But traditions do change, which is why ethics change.
I'm a bit confused because usually the argument against moral constructivism is something like
1. slavery used to be accepted by certain ancient traditions
2. slavery is obviously wrong
3. therefor tradition cannot be the thing that determines ethics and morals.
The argument against tradition as morality is typically one in which morality is seen out of it's historical context (slavery is morally bad regardless, always, everywhere), and therefor contrary to what you seem to be saying, 'unchangeble' or absolute.
I don't see ethics changing as a problem for moral contructivism.... it's rather a problem for moral realists, absolutists, universalists etc.
I'm not saying that. Both can change.
What I'm saying is that they aren't so interdependent as to say ethics = tradition. Ethics can change due to events, public and political debate about ethical issues and changes in the society. That doesn't mean that ethics are linked to traditions of the culture and society.
I'm not sure you're making a real distinction there, or what that distinction would be exactly? Isn't something that changes due to events, public and political debate, a kind of tradition, something that is socially constructed? Moral constructivism is not saying all tradition is ethics either, but that what is ethical or moral is determined by societal traditions... those traditions would be larger than merely ethics or morals strictu sensu, but do include them. So maybe we don't really disagree.
Would just take some examples to show.
Ethics are more bound to autonomous moral agents, doing right in whatever given situation regardless of traditions; traditions are more bound to culture, following whatever has been done before regardless of doing what's right.
Sure, they may overlap, yet they're not the same.
Yeah I think people, or maybe better western philosophy since Socrates, are confused about there being something right regardless of context. I don't think the idea makes much sense without God, which is why western philosophy has been struggling with moral foundations ever since.
You obviously have different ideas and opinions within traditions, but then you are not evaluating tradition to some outside fixed moral standard, but to just another strand within said tradition.
The idea of autonomous moral agents acting morally regardless of traditions is also a bit of a misguided idea I think. We don't pop into existence as blank adult moral agents, but are gradually educated in certain moral ideas given by our cultures and traditions. Moral intuitions are also formed by the traditions we grow up in, not some pristine moral judge we can rely on the find moral good and bad without context.
There is nothing outside. People seem to have trouble accepting that.
Yep, we should cultivate and nurture moral awareness ? autonomous moral agency. :up:
Old comment.
Morals aren't reducible to traditions, they're not identical (you can find counter-examples).
It's on us, always was; not just a walk in the park; in some given situation you might have to skip a tradition to do the right thing.
Pawing off morals to something else is problematic; actually it's almost like a kind of moral blindness.
(EDITED words and such)
You didn't really address the point I was making. We can use our judgement when deciding on how to act, we can be more aware or sensitive to moral issues, etc... this is all fine. I'm saying, when making these judgement, the values and ideas you use come from somewhere. It's not God, it's not pure reason and it's not intuition or some pristine awareness of right or wrong... it's traditions and culture in the broadest sense.
Why does this matter? Because if you let tradition or culture turn to shit, you will end up a lot of people using shit ideas when making these moral judgement. But it's all fine, let's just tell that gen Z kid who grew up on a diet of internet adds, instagram posts and Tiktok vids to cultivate and nurture some moral awareness on his own.
autonomous moral agents.
Surely we're influenced by culture, traditions, etc.
Yet, we can't derive what we ought to do from traditions.
Oh wait, you confirmed, sort of:
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
(EDITED)
Not in my view:
tradition = the transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation, or the fact of being passed on in this way.
=an inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior (such as a religious practice or a social custom)
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
The ethics that we share with our ancestors hundreds of years ago is surely what we would now call a tradition (cultural or religious etc). Yet we can notice that even in our (short?) lifetimes nuances have changed in what is ethical. And those changes we cannot say are from a tradition. So I don't think we have a real disagreement here.
I think they are ssu. This will no doubt be a contentious point, but I'd say the whole recent 'woke' flare is a direct continuation of the Christian tradition with its focus on suffering, victim-hood, the individual etc... Of course those taken in by these morals will claim to have some a-historical objective source for them, but that's par for the course... it's always more convincing to have morals spring from the fabric of reality itself than to acknowledge that they are something we create as we go.
It has been a while since the last time I read books of Mishima, but they are always in my mind.
Confessions of a Mask; The Temple of the Golden Pavilion; After the Banquet; The Age of Blue...
I feel a bit nostalgic. I remember Mishima was the main point of my first threads when I joined TPF years ago...
:fire:
:sparkle:
:broken:
Can you makes sense of this one for me?
Those quotes sound like Nietzsche.
The plot is about a young monk with suicidal and pessimistic temptations but with a clear vision of what is beautiful or sublime. He is named to learn Buddhist scriptures in a temple all coloured in gold and with a gorgeous garden. It is so beautiful that he even thought being there is the only reason for keeping living. Also, there are interesting debates in the book about what beauty or ugliness is; one character has a deformity, and he is called "flat feet," but he is very talented at flirting with girls, not like the monk, who opts to lose his virginity paying a prostitute; he finds sublimity in death rather than in pleasures, etc.
Nonetheless, one of his best friends at the temple kills himself without an apparent reason, and the protagonist starts in a madness looking for a good reason to end up with his life, not like his friend. Surprisingly, he came to the conclusion that beauty and death can be together, so he plans to burn the temple with himself inside. That's why the quote says: True beauty is something that attacks, overpowers, robs, and finally destroys.
When the temple is set on fire, he actually didn't feel bad. He came to this conclusion: Everything that is truly beautiful has an end because if it lasts forever we would have the risk of getting tired of contemplating that beauty...
This Yukio Mishima quote reminds me of
[quote=Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies][i]For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so,
because it serenely disdains to destroy us.
Every angel is terrible.[/i][/quote]
Yes, exactly. But rather than being lucky, it is a sense of redemption. HeMishimathought it was possible to build things with the art of destroying them. Consider this: thanks to setting the temple on fire, it became a legendary building in Japan.
Quoting Dawnstorm
Passion? Hmm... good. I think it is a correct adjective of what Mishima had in mind when he wrote his works. We have to understand that Mishima was very fond of Samurai culture and values, and the latter is intrinsically violent. One of Mishima's traumas was not having the chance to fight in WWII, because he thought it would be priceless to die defending the honour of his homeland. Since then, he always had a fetish for war and bellicose topics. Too much passion on him?
I believe he used language that was pure and sophisticated rather than violent. He published his final novel on the same day he committed suicide. Mishima was that type of genius...
In my view Mishima is a great example how patriotism and nationalism and the militarism involved with that isn't something that we Europeans have invented. These ideas are old and universal. And also when it's someone that isn't "us", like with Mishima, we don't have this instant recoil that we would have if Mishima would have been a German, an Englishman or an American. This tells something about us, not of the Japanese or their culture.
ssu, I don't follow you in that quote. What do you mean by "instant recoil" if Mishima would have been German instead of Japanese?
Japan has always been a warfare nation. Until 1861, when Japan started to get 'modernised,' thus having contact with Western nations, it was very common to have guerrillas and bloodbaths amongst samurai. Consider that one of the main points of Bushid? principles is to die with honour in the field rather than run away like rabbits. Mishima got disappointed with the Emperor and the current ministers of Japan in the post-WWII era because they decided to end everything, not only accepting the loss of the war but also how "backwards" the Japanese values were. Since then, Mishima, amongst others, started with a romanticism of old days, when they used katana instead of a pistol or they wore yukata instead of suits. Is that nationalism or a defence of your roots and values? Well, Mishima was in that dilemma the rest of his life.
Oh, and Japan is a very nationalistic country nowadays with its lobby running party called Nippon Kaigi.
Think about. What would we think about a writer that would be an ardent patriot like Mishima if he would be German? He would be the jingoist ultra-nationalist and people would just try to find hints of nazism, white supremacy and racism in his writings. How would a German who would favour Prussian militarism look like today?
Above all, remember how the Japanese soldiers of the new Self-Defence forces reacted to Mishima. They started to hiss and jeer.
In fact, I would argue that if there's a "culture war" between the right and the left in Europe and the US, so too is there a similar thing in Japan, but it's very Japanese. And the sad story of Yukio Mishima is part of that, just like the story of the last Hiroo Onoda, the last Japanese soldier to surrender in the Phillipines in 1974. Well, he too was disappointed about post-WW2 when he finally got back to Japan.
Hiro Onoda surrendering in 1974. He died at the age of 91 years in 2014.
I wonder what Mishima would have written about Onoda.
Yes, I agree. He would be heavily criticised, and his works would suffer a bit of censorship, or at least he would be sued and seated in a trial. Yet I think there are some differences between the Mishima we already know and the hypothetical German writer who would have looked like Mishima. The first always rooted for values that are very hard to be understood in the Western world, while the second spread a sense of supremacy around the world. Yes, I know Japan had imperialistic views towards Korea and China, but according to Mishima, that's just politics, and he wanted to focus on the spirit of the nation, and (again) Japan is intrinsically violent, although they promoted actions of peace since the 1945 debacle.
Quoting ssu
A very good point, ssu. Honestly, after reading biographies on Mishima's life, I think he had never expected such a reaction from the Self-Defence Forces. I also think that it was suspended by a thread: if he gained the respect of military forces, Mishima would have won hope in Japan otherwise. Otherwise, it would have a perfect cause for committing suicide since he would no longer believe in a modern Japanese society. Better or worse, it happened the latter...
But it doesn't matter if it's scenario A or B. He always had death in his mind, because it was the purest possible situation to him.
Quoting ssu
Yes, I read some articles on Onoda. Look how the people are laughing at him and his katana. Did the Japanese really deserve that disrespect? :roll:
Quoting ssu
Yeah! I wonder that too! I guess he would have written a novel like Runaway Horses but changing the plot and focusing on Mr. Onoda.
Damn! I have always missed that pure loyalist behaviour that the useless politicians of my country don't have...
Hence we are far more open to hear what truly a Japanese writer writes and we don't immediately go for the character assassination. We tolerate views that we would immediately not even to bother to listen, if it would be our society. What comes to my mind is the stereotypical cultural studies student, who is fascinated about cultures and traditions of all people except his or her own.
Quoting javi2541997
And that is a far more nuanced view, which makes it interesting.
Quoting javi2541997
He didn't understand that the Japan Self-Defence Forces was a totally different animal than the Imperial Army or Navy of the past. These institutions had been disbanded and the first implementation of the SCAP was to form a the National Police Reserve in 1950, and the JSDF was formed as late as 1954. And this is actually very crucial to understand post-WW2 armed forces of Germany and Japan. There was a dramatic ideological change from as both Germany and Japan cut their ties to the past military culture and started with citizen-soldiers and with influence of American military training. (In fact the WW2 era Wehrmacht continued in the East German Volksarmee as there was no emphasis on changing the old culture in the DDR as there was no denazification effort as Communist East Germany assumed it had no ties to the Wehrmacht.)
For example in Finland there was no disbanding of the armed forces or serious organizational changes, the armed forces that now joined NATO is the same army as fought in WW2 alongside the Third Reich (and later against it) just as the modern US army does trace back to the military of WW2 era.
Hence this made the Japanese soldiers to be trained and tought quite differently than from the discipline of the Imperial Army or Navy. And especially since Yukio hadn't himself served, I assume his idea of the men making up the military was more of a polished and shining propaganda view of what the actual military is like. And the followers in his own private army were something totally else than the cooks and clerks of the JSDF listening to his speech.
Usually being in a army shatters ones high views as the normalcy of the members and the bureaucratic of the institution hits home.
Quoting javi2541997
They are not at all laughing at him, but smiling and in the following video you can see people clapping their hands. And I suspect that the Japanese male next to him is likely a veteran officer of Onoda that was there to convince him that the war is over. Also note the American officer and Phillipine Army general. Here is actual video of the surrender. He is treated with quite the respect with a lot of Phillipine Army officers around him, not at all as some lunatic.
Quoting javi2541997
Weren't you Spanish? I think that you will find it in your history too.
I understand you now. Yes, the hypocrisy we are used to hearing from some university faculties.
Quoting ssu
Ah! Sorry, my bad. The picture tricked me because I interpreted they were laughing at him...
Quoting ssu
But Mishima didn't serve because the bureaucracy didn't allow him to. He did the checking in a random army post in a small town in central Japan, and they rejected him because he wasn't strong enough and he was ill. Furthermore, it seems that his father set up everything with the aim of avoiding his son being selected to the Imperial Army. They were a rich family, and his father recommended him to study and obtain better positions in society. But that trauma of being rejected to fight for your country was in Mishima's mind the rest of his life. He wished to be a kamikaze, but his destiny resulted in him being one of the best writers in the Japanese language ever.
Quoting ssu
No way! Not even close to the average Japanese politician.
Those values that I referred to previously are very important today. Remember Naoto Kan? The Prime Minister incumbent when the Fukushima disaster happened? Well, he resigned because he admitted that he and his cabinet didn't manage the crisis well. It is impossible to see that here...