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After sending off the novel, Mishima joined four young students who belonged to the ultranationalistic paramilitary Shield Society that he had formed two years ago. For the first time in weeks, the sky over Tokyo was free of smog. When Mishima and his companions reached Ichigaya Hill in western Tokyo, the headquarters of Japan's Eastern Ground Self-Defense Forces, sunshine bathed the midday. Mishima had arrived on the threshold of his life's climactic act. It was the sort of act, Japanese Literary Critic Kenkichi Yamamoto wrote later, that "reached its apex in one pyrotechnic explosion beyond...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Japan: The Last Samurai | 12/7/1970 | See Source »

Sacred and Inviolable. In his personal life and his earlier writings, Mishima had openly expressed his despair over the materialistic decadence that he saw in the Westernization of his country. Largely at fault, he felt, was the U.S.-imposed constitution, which "forever renounces war as a sovereign right of the nation." Mishima wanted the prewar constitution restored so that the Emperor would once again be "sacred and inviolable" and so that Japan could regain the honor it had lost in its defeat. To that end, he created his private army, which numbered fewer than 100 young men, trained regularly...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Japan: The Last Samurai | 12/7/1970 | See Source »

...General Mashita looked on in helpless horror, Mishima stripped to the waist and knelt on the floor, only inches away. "Don't be a fool, stop it!" the general cried. Mishima paid no heed. He followed to the letter the seppuku, the traditional samurai form of suicide sometimes called harakiri. Probing the left side of his abdomen, he put the ceremonial dagger in place, then thrust it deep into his flesh. Standing behind him, Masakatsu Morita, 25, one of his most devoted followers, raised his sword and with one stroke sent Mishima's severed head rolling...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Japan: The Last Samurai | 12/7/1970 | See Source »

Ultimate Dream. Evidently Mishima hoped-vainly-that his seppuku might arouse the 125,000 Japanese who belong to the 400 or so right-wing organizations in the country. When a similar revolt was staged in February 1936 by a group of young soldiers who tried to overthrow the government, it foreshadowed the disastrous Tojo regime of four years later. Mishima had written a short story, Patriotism, about that revolt, and in 1965 he made it into a movie. He himself acted the lead role of a young army lieutenant who commits hara-kiri with his wife after a night...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Japan: The Last Samurai | 12/7/1970 | See Source »

...worthy of destruction. After publishing his first book at 19-a pretty, sensitive collection of short stories called A Forest in Flower-he finished his studies at Tokyo University and took a job in the Finance Ministry. In 1948 he quit the ministry, changed his name to Yukio Mishima, and published Confessions of a Mask. A fierce portrait of homosexuality-a subject with which Mishima had a lifelong fascination and, some say, involvement-Mask brought him fame. His best-known work, Temple of the Golden Pavilion, brought him a small fortune as well. From that point on, even...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Japan: The Last Samurai | 12/7/1970 | See Source »

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