I tell my anthropology classes this story when we talk about death rituals, and it never fails to elicit gasps of horror and subsequent jaunts to the library after class to look at pictures of Mishima’s decapitated head on the internet.
Yukio Mishima, born in 1925, was a renowned Japanese novelist. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature three times in his abbreviated life. His novels include Forbidden Colors, The Sound of the Waves, and The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. He was also an actor and a playwright. A stylized version of his life story was told in the 1985 film “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters.”
In his thirties Mishima’s ideals became increasingly extremist, both personally and politically. He became a sort of right-wing imperialist, and was strongly committed to the bushido code. He began to weight train and became skilled in kendo. In 1968 he formed a militia called the Tatenokai, or “Shield Society,” whose self-proclaimed duty was to protect the emperor. Then in 1970, after having apparently planned the event for at least a year, Mishima and four members of the Tatnokai marched into the Japanese Self-Defense Forces Eastern Command headquarters and took the commandant hostage. Mishima attempted to incite the soldiers to a coup d’etat, to restore political power to the emperor.
Mishima attempting to incite a coup d’etat
After being jeered by the soldiers, Mishima readied himself for seppuku, or ritual suicide. However, some believe that the attempted rebellion was only a pretext for his longstanding plan to commit seppuku, as he left his affairs in order when he died.
There were two forms of seppuku in feudal Japan. One was voluntary, practiced in order to save face and restore honor to oneself and family, and the other was as punishment for an affront to one’s lord. The latter was banned in 1873, but incidents of voluntary seppuku have occurred sporadically. Elements of the ritual included the writing of a death poem, donning of white death garments, and purification of the tanto, or short sword, used to disembowel oneself. One had a “second,” a swordsman who stood behind the subject with a long sword, who would behead him upon disembowelment in order to shorten his agony.
Mishima’s second was a member of the Tatenokai named Masakatsu Morita. Apparently, Morita was not a skilled swordsman. After Mishima disembowled himself, Morita made three attempts at the beheading but was unsuccessful each time. Finally another member of the Tatenokai, Hiroyasu Koga, stepped in to complete the task. Morita was so mortified that he too attempted seppuku, but was unsuccessful and gave the word for Koga to behead him as well.
Koga was imprisoned for seven years for assisting in seppuku. After completing his sentence, he became a Shinto priest at a shrine on the island of Shikoku.
