Yukio Mishima – A Damn Interesting Story March 23, 2008

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.

Shinsengumi March 21, 2008

Here’s what I did for Spring Break: I completely vegetated, rising only from the sofa to go to the bathroom, fetch a bag of Jelly Bellies, or go to bed. Not that this was completely unconstructive; my boyfriend and I finished a DVD series that we’d been watching for awhile – the NHK taiga drama “Shinsengumi!,” which originally aired in Japan in 2004. So, I can actually say that I learned something about Japanese history while being a couch potato. However, we did have to do some research to discriminate between fact and fiction in this series.

The Shinsengumi originally began as a sort of self-proclaimed militia to protect the Shogun and the Shogunate after dissent about Japan’s future spread with the arrival of Commodore Perry’s Black Ships. Eventually they received the official backing of the Aizu clan, and then of the Shogun himself. Whether you view them as heroes who sacrificed their lives to protect the Shogun, or as a band of thugs who killed anyone they wanted in the name of their own personal vision, they continue to be a romantic though controversial aspect of Japan’s history. There are several movies about the Shinsengumi. Among the more well-known are “Shinsengumi” starring Toshiro Mifune in the role of Kondo Isami, the group’s leader, and “Taboo,” starring Beat Takeshi. Apparently there are a number of anime about them, too. This, plus the fact that the NHK drama was incredibly popular, and the intrinsically fascinating nature of the Shinsengumi story, accounts for the incredible presence of the Shinsengumi on the web.

One of the things that makes the Shinsengumi story so interesting is that there are factual bits and pieces about some of its members. For example, apparently Kondo Isami had a big mouth and would entertain people by inserting his entire hand in it. Hijikata, the second-in-command, was a handsome fellow who received a lot of attention from the ladies.

Kondo Isami Hijikata Toshizo

The stars of “Shinsengumi!,” the NHK series, are largely teen idols in Japan. They are very good actors, but it’s somewhat disquieting after having watched the series and identified with them as the historical figures, to see what they “normally” look like. Case in point:

Shingo Katori as Kondo Isami Shingo Katori, pop idol

Yipes! Boy, how a shaved pate can change a person’s looks. At any rate, although Shingo Katori was very good in this role, he was a very different Kondo than, say, Toshiro Mifune. It’s interesting to watch the different versions of the Shinsengumi story to see how the character portrayals differ, and how the storyline, though based on a few basic facts, differs in its elaboration.

“Shinsengumi!” has a fanlisting, complete with rules which may or may not include committing seppuku should one leave the group. Good sites about the actual Shinsengumi are linked below.

The Shinsengumi on Wikipedia

This site about the history of and people in the Shinsengumi

Shinsengumi no Makoto