Prolific writer, who is considered by many critics as the most important Japanese novelist of the 20th century. Mishima's works include 40 novels, poetry, essays, and modern Kabuki and Noh dramas. He was three times nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature. Among his masterpieces is The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (1956). The tetralogy The Sea of Fertility (1965-70) is regarded by many as Mishima's most lasting achievement. As a writer Mishima drew inspiration from pre-modern literature, both Japanese and Western.
"How oddly situated a man is apt to find himself at the age of thirty-eight! His youth belongs to the distant past. Yet the period of memory beginning with the end of youth and extending to the present has left him not a single vivid impression. And therefore he persists in feeling that nothing more than a fragile barrier separates him from his youth. He is forever hearing with the utmost clarity the sounds of this neighboring domain, but there is no way to penetrate the barrier." (from Runaway Horses, 1969)
Kimitaka Hiraoka was born in Tokyo, the son of a government official. Later he changed his name into Yukio Mishima so that his anti-literary father wouldn't know he wrote. The name Yukio can loosely be translated as "Man who chronicals reason." Mishima was raised mainly by his paternal grandmother, who hardly allowed the boy out of her sight. During World War II Mishima was excused military service, but he served in a factory. This plagued Mishima throughout his life - he had survived shamefully when so many others had been killed.
After the war Mishima studied law at Tokyo University. He worked as a civil servant in the finance ministry for a year before devoting himself entirely to writing. In 1946 Mishima met Kawabata Yasunari, who recommended Mishima's stories to important magazines. His first major work was Confessions of a Mask, which appeared in 1949. It dealt with his discovery of his own homosexuality. The narrator concluded, that he would have to wear a mask of 'normality' before other people to protect himself from social scorn.
The largely autobiographical work reflected Mishima's masochistic fantasies. His preoccupation with the body, its beauty and degeneration, marked several of his later novels. Mishima wished to create for himself a perfect body that age could not make ugly. He started body building in 1955 and he also became an expert in the martial arts of karate and kendo. Perhaps preparing for his death, Mishima liked to pose in photographs as a drowned shipwrecked sailor, St. Sebastian shot death with arrows, or a samurai committing ritual suicide. .
''Let us remember that the central reality must be sought in the writer's work: it is what the writer chose to write, or was compelled to write, that finally matters. And certainly Mishima's carefully premeditated death is part of his work.'' (Mishima: A Vision of the Void by Marguerite Yourcenar, 1985)
AI NO KAWAKI (1950, Thirst for Love) was written under the influence of the French writer François Mauriac. It was a story about a woman who has become the mistress of her late husband's father. KINKAKUJI (1956, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion) was based on an actual event of 1950. It depicted the burning of the celebrated temple of Kyoto by a young Buddhist monk, who is angered at his own physical ugliness, and prevents the famous temple from falling into foreign hands during the American occupation. "My solitude grew more and more obese, like a pig." (from Temple of the Golden Pavilion)
The Sound of Waves (1954) has been filmed several times. The story is set in a remote fishing village, and tells of a young fisherman, Shinji, who meets on the beach a beautiful pearl diver, Hatsue, the daughter of Miyata, the most powerful man in the village. Hatsue is loved by another young man, Yasuo. Miyata forbids Hatsue to continue seeing Shinji, but when Shinji shows his courage during a storm, he finally gives him and his daughter his blessing. The first film version from 1954, directed by Senkichi Taniguchi, was shot on location in the Shima Peninsula in Mie Prefecture, home of Japan's famous women pearl divers.
Mishima's reputation in Japan started to decline in the 1960s although in other countries his works were highly acclaimed. Silk and Insight (1964) dealt again lost ideals, but this time the story was set in the world of silk textile manufacturing. It was based on a real strike that took place in 1954. The central characters are an old-fashioned factory owner, Komazawa, and a manipulating political operator, Okano.
Mishima was deeply attracted to the patriotism of imperial Japan, and samurai spirit of Japan's past. However, at the same time he dressed in Western clothes and lived in a Western-style house. In 1968 he founded the Shield Society, a private army of some100 youths dedicated to a revival of Bushido, the samurai knightly code of honour. In 1970 he seized control in military headquarters in Tokyo, trying to rouse the nation to pre-war nationalist heroic ideals. After failure Mishima committed seppuku (ritual disembowelment) with his sword on November 25, 1970. Before he died he shouted, ''Long live the Emperor.'' On the day of his death Mishima delivered to his publishers the final pages of The Sea of Fertility, the authors account of the Japanese experience in the 20th century. The first part of the four-volume novel, Spring Snow (1968), is set in the closed circles of Tokyo's Imperial Court in 1912. It was followed by Runaway Horses (1969), The Temple of Dawn (1970) and Five Signs of a God's Decay (1971). Each of the novels depict a different reincarnation of the same being: first as a young aristocrat, then as a political fanatic in the 1930s, as a Thai princess before and after World War II, and as an evil young orphan in the 1960s.
"Just let matters slide. How much better to accept each sweet drop of the honey that was Time, than to stoop to the vulgarity latent in every decision. However grave the matter at hand might be, if one neglected it for long enough, the act of neglect itself would begin to affect the situation, and someone else would emerge as an ally. Such was Count Ayakura's version of political theory." (From Spring Snow, 1968)
In his plays Mishima showed interest in the traditional Japanese theater and Western themes. Among his dramas, written for the Western style theatre, are Rokumeikan (1956), which deals with a ball given for the Emperor's birthday, Tenth Day Chrysanthemum (1961), Madame de Sade (1965), an effort to see Marquis de Sade through women's eyes, The Fall of the House Suzaku (1967), and My Friend Hitler (1969). Mishima wrote several Kabuki pieces. His last work, The Moon Like a Drawn Bow, was performed in 1969 at the National Theatre. The play ended with scene of a seppuku. Mishima was considered to be in his time the only living author talented enough to write Kabuki plays in traditional style
Ik noem een Tony van Heemschut,een Loeki Knol,een Brammetje Biesterveld en natuurlijk een Japie Stobbe !