Latest / Ridiculous History / The Yukio Mishima Story, Part Two: Mishima's End

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The Yukio Mishima Story, Part Two: Mishima's End · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: Quick disclaimer before we enter part two of our exploration
0:04
Speaker 1: of the bizarre final years of Mishima. This episode contains,
0:11
Speaker 1: at times, uh no, how would we say it, pretty
0:15
Speaker 1: graphic depictions of some some adult mature things. Yeah, I
0:21
Speaker 1: would say that, and also discussions of suicide of the
0:24
Speaker 1: ritualistic variety. And so if you were to ask me,
0:29
Speaker 1: if you were to say, Ben, is this appropriate for
0:32
Speaker 1: all listeners, then I would say it's something to have
0:36
Speaker 1: a headsop about. But we hope you enjoyed part one
0:39
Speaker 1: of this series as much as we did, so we
0:43
Speaker 1: wanted to give you a quick disclaimer. Uh, this may
0:47
Speaker 1: not be one for everybody, but it is certainly a
0:51
Speaker 1: story worth being told, and we want to thank again
0:54
Speaker 1: our excellent research associate Zach Williams. It is first ever
1:00
Speaker 1: on air appearance. Technically is second. I would say, that's right.
1:04
Speaker 1: Let's get right to it. Ridiculous History is a production
1:08
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Welcome back to the show, Ridiculous Historians.
1:36
Speaker 1: Thank you, as always so much for tuning in. Well,
1:39
Speaker 1: let's give it up for our own iconic last super producer,
1:42
Speaker 1: Mr Max Williams. Here's an iconic class. They called me,
1:51
Speaker 1: Ben Null. This is part two of a two part
1:54
Speaker 1: series that we've both been uh incredibly excited about. I
2:00
Speaker 1: guess we should tell people before you listen to part two,
2:04
Speaker 1: check out our episode that came out this previous Tuesday.
2:08
Speaker 1: There's gonna be a lot of context you'll need. And
2:11
Speaker 1: uh and I think it's a it's a deep diving,
2:14
Speaker 1: wide ranging conversation, thanks in no small part to our
2:17
Speaker 1: returning special guests, Research Associate doctor Zach. One night over
2:22
Speaker 1: sleep down, a doctor appeared. But this was no normal doctor.
2:27
Speaker 1: Who's there? It's Zach Zach who the doctor named Zach
2:37
Speaker 1: and he's here to fill your scraps justic knowledge. Pett
2:42
Speaker 1: is cat me teaching history books a stop. Uh, let's
2:50
Speaker 1: go with other things. Yeah, that'll work, Zack. That's right.
3:00
Speaker 1: The nickname stuck. What can you do surgery? He refused
3:06
Speaker 1: my title. Yeah, I mean not actual brain surgery, but
3:09
Speaker 1: you know, brain adjacent surgery. Guess what conversation really is,
3:13
Speaker 1: isn't it diminishing returns? Well, you know, I find that
3:16
Speaker 1: the returns to be absolutely sufficient. Uh if if if
3:20
Speaker 1: part one of this series is any indication, And just
3:23
Speaker 1: just to give people a little bit of a backtrack,
3:25
Speaker 1: you know, even if it's been a couple of days.
3:26
Speaker 1: As you've listened, we're talking about the bizarre life and
3:29
Speaker 1: times and final years of Yukio Mishima, icon of clastic writer, poet, musician, bodybuilder, uh,
3:38
Speaker 1: Samurai enthusiasts who also kind of you know, came honestly
3:42
Speaker 1: by that in his upbringing, which was in more of
3:44
Speaker 1: the kind of not feudal Japan, but sort of the
3:47
Speaker 1: tradition of that kind of world and that archetype. Right. Yeah,
3:52
Speaker 1: I mean, like like we said, he's his face, he's
3:54
Speaker 1: descended from vassals like samurai families and things like that.
3:57
Speaker 1: Definitely has historical so stations, cultural cultural associations, and certainly
4:02
Speaker 1: was associated with those things after his life by much
4:06
Speaker 1: of the Western publishing world. But a very modern figure
4:09
Speaker 1: for Japan, like very post war kind of like this
4:13
Speaker 1: new futuristic Japan, and he sort of was simultaneously embraced
4:18
Speaker 1: by Western audiences and sort of like like the brass
4:22
Speaker 1: in Japan didn't quite know what to make of him,
4:24
Speaker 1: you know. Um, And he really was this sort of
4:26
Speaker 1: like writer as celebrity kind of figure, which is not
4:30
Speaker 1: something we see nearly as much today. Um, maybe the
4:34
Speaker 1: artist as celebrity like uh, Damien Hurst for example, or
4:38
Speaker 1: Andy Warhol. But you don't really think of like these
4:41
Speaker 1: big celebrity writers that have that same kind of you know,
4:45
Speaker 1: cult of personality. But this guy was that thing well J. K. Rowley, Uh,
4:50
Speaker 1: Stephen King arguably, but not I I see what you're saying. Well,
4:54
Speaker 1: not perhaps to that degree. Still, Uh in the rallying case,
4:57
Speaker 1: especially lots of controversy, right and uh when a political
5:02
Speaker 1: direction that maybe she had no business or expertise to
5:05
Speaker 1: go down. Yeah, So this is this is the thing
5:10
Speaker 1: where where last we left Mishima world famous right in
5:16
Speaker 1: a always the bridesmaid sort of situation, with the Nobel
5:19
Speaker 1: Prize for literature intensely considered uh throughout uh the sixties,
5:25
Speaker 1: I believe, and he has no compunction about airing his
5:32
Speaker 1: opinions past the world of fiction, past the world of literature.
5:37
Speaker 1: He starts talking a lot about nationalism, and the man
5:40
Speaker 1: very much has a microphone. He is very much in
5:43
Speaker 1: the zeitgeist, right, and so people are hearing his opinions,
5:48
Speaker 1: his perspective. And one thing that surprised me about this
5:52
Speaker 1: was at this time, while outsiders may associate him increasingly
5:58
Speaker 1: with what we would call right wing political ideology. I
6:02
Speaker 1: was not aware that the people who are actually the
6:06
Speaker 1: movers and shakers of right wing Japanese politics, we're talking
6:10
Speaker 1: very far right. I did not know that they didn't
6:13
Speaker 1: all dig him. Uh. And it's the primary sticking point
6:18
Speaker 1: I believe, is that he says Emperor Hirohito, who we
6:23
Speaker 1: mentioned in Part one, should have admitted fault at the
6:27
Speaker 1: very least for the atrocities committed by the Japanese imperial
6:32
Speaker 1: forces in World War two? Was that really such a
6:35
Speaker 1: sticking point for them's act? It wasn't just that he
6:39
Speaker 1: was also sort of he was also very critical of
6:42
Speaker 1: the emperor simultaneously sort of like in favor of the
6:47
Speaker 1: emperor's cultural purpose and station in society, very critical of
6:52
Speaker 1: the fact that the emperor abdicated the throne at the
6:55
Speaker 1: end of the war and renounced his status as a
6:57
Speaker 1: sort of like spiritual being. And then, in addition to that,
7:01
Speaker 1: as you pointed out, the sort of denial of wartime atrocities,
7:04
Speaker 1: which are numerous in Japan um as they they were
7:08
Speaker 1: everywhere else in the Access Powers. And you know, to
7:11
Speaker 1: a certain degree as well, I don't want to say lesser,
7:13
Speaker 1: but you know, we weren't necessarily doing the things that
7:16
Speaker 1: some of these regiments were doing, but we had, um,
7:18
Speaker 1: you know, we had camps for Japanese citizens and amrits
7:21
Speaker 1: things of that nature. But in the case of Japan,
7:25
Speaker 1: these are things that the right wing still refuses to
7:27
Speaker 1: kind of countenance, like even sort of acknowledging sort of
7:30
Speaker 1: like experimentation, and then of course comfort women and things
7:33
Speaker 1: like that. UM. Most recently, former Prime Minister Shenzhabe was
7:36
Speaker 1: assassinated in one of his because of his involvement in
7:39
Speaker 1: the Nationalists right wing, and also because of his relatives
7:42
Speaker 1: involvement in the Japanese military during the war and their
7:45
Speaker 1: direct kind of responsibility and implication in those things. UM
7:48
Speaker 1: still maintained that Japan did nothing wrong, which was something
7:52
Speaker 1: that really did stick in Mishama's craw. He was very
7:54
Speaker 1: nihilistic individual, but I think he also had a sense
7:57
Speaker 1: of conscience and for his own sort of political aims
8:00
Speaker 1: and ideas. He didn't think that the sort of noble character,
8:04
Speaker 1: the essence of what he thought was the Japanese character,
8:07
Speaker 1: could be retained unless those accounts were settled in some
8:10
Speaker 1: way quite publicly. Even UM, you do not get to
8:13
Speaker 1: have the sort of moral kind of high road if
8:16
Speaker 1: you've committed acts like this seems to be the kind
8:18
Speaker 1: of way he he saw things. The nationalism is what
8:21
Speaker 1: like a backlash against like overly um kind of globalist
8:28
Speaker 1: thinking like after World War two and and and you know,
8:31
Speaker 1: the idea of kind of like let's play nice with
8:33
Speaker 1: the rest of the world. Like where where does this
8:35
Speaker 1: nationalist It's interesting cause it's tempered nationalism right because it
8:39
Speaker 1: is saying, admit fault. But then let's go back in
8:41
Speaker 1: our bubble. Is that am i? Am I getting that right?
8:44
Speaker 1: That is, that is basically it. And the thing that's
8:46
Speaker 1: worth noting is that UM Japan had experienced something akin
8:50
Speaker 1: to the Martial plan in Europe, right wherein like after
8:53
Speaker 1: the war, we're rebuilding Europe in our own image. We
8:56
Speaker 1: basically did the same thing, I would say, to an
8:58
Speaker 1: even more intense degree. In Japan. There is no standing army.
9:02
Speaker 1: For instance, there's only the Special Defense Forces, and that's
9:05
Speaker 1: by chartered constitution of the occupation government. We held and
9:09
Speaker 1: still hold a great deal of property, including military bases
9:13
Speaker 1: in Okinawa for instance. That's that Special Defense Force still
9:16
Speaker 1: holds to this day. And of course, like the globalism,
9:20
Speaker 1: the materialism, the kind of transacting this culture into capitalism,
9:24
Speaker 1: which of course resulted in rapid growth and cultural change
9:28
Speaker 1: over the course of the twentieth century, resulting eventually in
9:31
Speaker 1: a crash that decimated Japan's economy throughout the nineties. All
9:35
Speaker 1: of these things, Misha massaw is a kind of a
9:38
Speaker 1: tempering of like the Japanese essence, the Japanese character, a
9:42
Speaker 1: loss of who they were as people in the sort
9:44
Speaker 1: of traditional sense. And one of the things that's interesting
9:48
Speaker 1: about his views on these sorts of things is that
9:50
Speaker 1: he was always very very clear that like, these are
9:53
Speaker 1: not political sort of sentiments or feelings, which is a
9:57
Speaker 1: thing that is very common among the right wing to
9:59
Speaker 1: do politics and to say this isn't political. We're returning
10:02
Speaker 1: to a natural order, which is that reactionary nostalgia that
10:07
Speaker 1: I've sort of maybe made reference to last episode, which
10:09
Speaker 1: seems to me to be the substance of where Mishima
10:12
Speaker 1: was coming from at this point of his life. And
10:14
Speaker 1: we can talk a bit more about reactionary nostalgia as
10:16
Speaker 1: a kind of right wing concern and phenomenon, but I'm
10:19
Speaker 1: sure we have other more pressing matters to get to
10:21
Speaker 1: with regards to where our man is at in the
10:23
Speaker 1: late sixties on into nineteen seventy there's something really really
10:28
Speaker 1: fascinating here too. We established pretty well in Part one
10:31
Speaker 1: that Mishma is looking for recognition and fame, maybe even
10:37
Speaker 1: a little notoriety beyond the confines of Japanese culture. But
10:43
Speaker 1: Japan has historically been somewhat closed society to outsiders. Even today,
10:49
Speaker 1: the population is quite homogeneous and comparison to many other
10:52
Speaker 1: countries its size, so it's an interesting wrinkle to me
10:57
Speaker 1: that while wanting to be a public figure on the
11:01
Speaker 1: global stage, Mishima also increasingly did not want the global
11:08
Speaker 1: stage visiting and perhaps, in his opinion, diluting the cultural
11:12
Speaker 1: framework and fabric of Japan. And this is when he
11:16
Speaker 1: starts getting really involved with military forces. You mentioned the
11:23
Speaker 1: self Defense Force, which is still, as you said, a
11:26
Speaker 1: thing in Japan, although sometimes, depending on China's activities in
11:31
Speaker 1: the region, you will hear politicians, domestic politicians arguing for
11:36
Speaker 1: more militarization. Tell us a little bit about how Mishima
11:44
Speaker 1: came up with the idea of making his own army
11:47
Speaker 1: or militia. We could say, well, I think part of
11:49
Speaker 1: it comes from an early effort in Um and it's
11:53
Speaker 1: sort of like early years of kind of becoming a
11:55
Speaker 1: political figure at the very least an object of political curiosity.
12:00
Speaker 1: He drafted a sort of proposal to have ten thousand
12:04
Speaker 1: civilians conscripted into the self defense special Defense Forces, and
12:09
Speaker 1: basically the idea was to sort of not only shore
12:11
Speaker 1: up defense but also bring back that kind of militaristic,
12:15
Speaker 1: non imperialistic but sort of like in defense of the
12:19
Speaker 1: nation's style of thinking. The defense forces not enough. We
12:23
Speaker 1: need to foster a feeling of nationalism and defending the
12:28
Speaker 1: character of this place within our citizen red thing that
12:31
Speaker 1: has fallen by the wayside as we become more capitalist,
12:34
Speaker 1: more materialistic, more global in our perspectives and in our
12:38
Speaker 1: spending habits and things like that, allowing other people to
12:40
Speaker 1: come in with their corporations and their militaries and things
12:43
Speaker 1: of that nature. So naturally this was not necessarily that
12:48
Speaker 1: popular a sentiment, And this is a kind of recurring
12:51
Speaker 1: motif in Mishama's political activity. The sort of referendum that
12:55
Speaker 1: he was trying to write up failed and then in
12:58
Speaker 1: the absence of success in that regard, decided, I'll start
13:02
Speaker 1: my own militia instead for the defense of the nation
13:07
Speaker 1: and sort of like the resumption of what we we
13:11
Speaker 1: are as people. It's that kind of first step towards
13:14
Speaker 1: getting back to that glorious past that he became so
13:17
Speaker 1: obsessed with. I mean, this is this thing, this uh
13:24
Speaker 1: idea of a code, right, the honorable behavior that clearly
13:29
Speaker 1: comes from this idea of Samurai lineage that clearly is
13:34
Speaker 1: part of his logic and sane one must admit the
13:38
Speaker 1: sentence of the past. Uh. And this this concept of
13:42
Speaker 1: ethical traditions as we see in the Shield society is um.
13:49
Speaker 1: He's he's started, I would say even more than a militia.
13:52
Speaker 1: It's aiming for this movement, right, because he also, you know,
13:56
Speaker 1: he does a little bit of a Tyler Perry thing
13:58
Speaker 1: and does all the stuff he may the uniforms. I
14:01
Speaker 1: believe he writes a song for the for this society,
14:04
Speaker 1: which I have not heard, but I hope it slaps uh.
14:08
Speaker 1: And and he uh, he is still writing the entire
14:14
Speaker 1: time that he's doing this, right, He's like an every
14:17
Speaker 1: night kind of night owl character. Is this the period
14:21
Speaker 1: of his life that produces the sea of fertility? It
14:30
Speaker 1: absolutely is, And it's sort of like the The Indicator,
14:33
Speaker 1: I think most it's one of those things that so
14:36
Speaker 1: very obviously aligns with his political ideas and what he
14:41
Speaker 1: thought how he thought Japan was in crisis at the time.
14:45
Speaker 1: It's a it's a series of four novels, all of
14:47
Speaker 1: them are interlocking. It follows the same narrative protagonist as
14:51
Speaker 1: he lives through from nineteen twelve through nineteen seventy five,
14:56
Speaker 1: and naturally, that's a very very very meticulously select did
15:00
Speaker 1: period because this is the period of modernization, Postmaji restoration,
15:04
Speaker 1: this is the period of the war and imperial expansion
15:07
Speaker 1: and things of that nature. And ultimately what he ends
15:11
Speaker 1: up finding is that what the book ends up rehearsing
15:14
Speaker 1: is this constant, kind of again backward looking, kind of
15:18
Speaker 1: like reverent nostalgia for this path that is dying, and
15:23
Speaker 1: this figure from the narrator's life who dies as a
15:26
Speaker 1: very young man, and then subsequently throughout the rest of
15:29
Speaker 1: the books is reincarnated in new forms as a kind
15:32
Speaker 1: of place holder for this old this old life, this
15:35
Speaker 1: old time that cannot by any means survive as Japan
15:40
Speaker 1: modernizes and continues to modernize. The figure that is reincarnated
15:44
Speaker 1: in these novels is always ostensibly doomed to die young,
15:48
Speaker 1: which is also very thematically tied to where this all
15:51
Speaker 1: goes at the end um this obsession with aging, this
15:55
Speaker 1: obsession with losing things, whether that's the body or even consciousness.
16:01
Speaker 1: Even for as much of a nihilist as Mishima was,
16:04
Speaker 1: he seemed to be absolutely concerned with sort of being
16:08
Speaker 1: around in some way of a sort of that kind
16:11
Speaker 1: of reproduction of life that goes on into perpetuity, that
16:15
Speaker 1: preserves the way things were, so people have something to
16:19
Speaker 1: sort of put a hand on and and and know
16:20
Speaker 1: where we came from. It's one of those things that's
16:23
Speaker 1: utterly understandable. I think, like we think of things in
16:26
Speaker 1: terms of legacy and stuff like that, and and sort
16:29
Speaker 1: of making sure that we remember things. And one of
16:32
Speaker 1: the things I think that Mishima does get correct. And
16:35
Speaker 1: I'm coming at this from a left wing perspective, to
16:37
Speaker 1: be fully to full disclosure, to be fully transparent. Um.
16:41
Speaker 1: As the market and globalism is sort of like expanded
16:44
Speaker 1: over the course of the last fifty years, especially, time
16:47
Speaker 1: seems to have gone through changes that reflect that UH,
16:52
Speaker 1: and people are increasingly remembering less and less and less
16:56
Speaker 1: so for instance. You know, it's interesting when he says
16:59
Speaker 1: we need to acknowledge the atrocities we committed during World
17:01
Speaker 1: War Two because it's absolutely important to our ethics and
17:04
Speaker 1: our character that we have a conscience and that we
17:07
Speaker 1: take account of these things. The same could be said
17:09
Speaker 1: of America's past and present. The same could be said
17:13
Speaker 1: of England, Germany, especially Italy, all of this thing. Anybody
17:16
Speaker 1: who has had any nation that has an idea or
17:20
Speaker 1: concept of national characters um seems to be in like
17:24
Speaker 1: lockstep with this constant movement forward. At the expense of,
17:27
Speaker 1: you know, accounting for where this all comes from, I'll
17:30
Speaker 1: sell you Germany seems to do quite a good job
17:32
Speaker 1: at it. I mean they even have. Like I've mentioned
17:35
Speaker 1: this before because I'm a big fan of overly long
17:37
Speaker 1: the descriptive single German words. But there's a there's a
17:40
Speaker 1: word describing collective guilts over the atrocities of the Holocausts,
17:44
Speaker 1: Bavanian Heights, Bivalti gum And I was in berlin Um
17:48
Speaker 1: for for a trip um last earlier this year, and
17:51
Speaker 1: a lot of the museums that are named after Nazi
17:56
Speaker 1: you know, officials or or sympathizers at the very least
17:59
Speaker 1: like the Bodha Museum, they had a whole wing devoted
18:02
Speaker 1: to reconciling that legacy and sort of course correcting, um,
18:07
Speaker 1: you know, the legacy of of what the museum stood
18:09
Speaker 1: for now and all of that pertains kind of to
18:12
Speaker 1: that collective national kind of identity. So that really is
18:16
Speaker 1: it's difficult to do. It requires buy in on a
18:19
Speaker 1: very large scale to do it correctly. Um, And I think,
18:23
Speaker 1: you know, I think that's something that they're very much
18:25
Speaker 1: fascinates me as well. Yeah, it's still a struggle. You know.
18:28
Speaker 1: You look at the sort of debate surrounding CRT and
18:31
Speaker 1: things of that nature in the past two years that
18:33
Speaker 1: have been very public and vocal, and there really does
18:36
Speaker 1: seem to be and again it's that reactionary nostalgia, right,
18:39
Speaker 1: that feeling that the natural order of things was this
18:42
Speaker 1: and there was nothing wrong about it actually, and what
18:45
Speaker 1: you do to sort of prop that up is to
18:47
Speaker 1: deny that things happen, or to sort of like make
18:50
Speaker 1: them less of a sort of anvil in the public consciousness,
18:55
Speaker 1: you know, right, And for anybody listening along at home,
18:58
Speaker 1: CRT is shorthand for critical race theory, which is not
19:03
Speaker 1: really what it's being advertised as in oppositional media. The
19:08
Speaker 1: folks who are against it are playing kind of fast
19:10
Speaker 1: and loose with the reality of that that kind of study.
19:14
Speaker 1: But what it's meant to be is just acknowledging reality,
19:16
Speaker 1: and it's just being now used instead of a weapon
19:18
Speaker 1: to say, oh no, no, no, you're trying to shove
19:20
Speaker 1: all this you know, left wing ideology down the thirds
19:23
Speaker 1: of our children. And what it really kind of means is,
19:25
Speaker 1: let's just be a little more even handed with our
19:27
Speaker 1: description of of of history. It's also college levels, it's
19:32
Speaker 1: not anyway, that's that's the primary um. That's the primary cynical,
19:37
Speaker 1: misleading statement that I'm talking about. But to to your
19:41
Speaker 1: you guys, excellent points about the idea of moving on
19:44
Speaker 1: or acknowledging the past. Folks, wherever you live, whatever your
19:48
Speaker 1: quarner or neck of the global woods, maybe you'll see
19:51
Speaker 1: the individual mileage may vary on a state actor level.
19:56
Speaker 1: When I've been in Belgium before, by the way, like
20:00
Speaker 1: not too far away from Germany, of course, there's not
20:02
Speaker 1: a lot of talk about the atrocities in the Congo.
20:05
Speaker 1: I've spent some time in Japan. There's you know, super
20:09
Speaker 1: not a lot of talk about stuff that went down
20:13
Speaker 1: in mainland China in World War Two or in Korea.
20:16
Speaker 1: And so we see that again when I say we
20:19
Speaker 1: are the stories are we tell ourselves, I'm not just
20:21
Speaker 1: talking about the micro cosmic individual level. I'm talking about
20:24
Speaker 1: the macro cosmic state level or nation level. And this
20:29
Speaker 1: is something that Mishima is tapping into. One of the
20:34
Speaker 1: strangest things that happens with the Shield Society is Mishima
20:39
Speaker 1: does this one a d the U tease so beautifully Zach.
20:43
Speaker 1: In part one of our series, he says, you know,
20:49
Speaker 1: I gotta keep my I gotta you know, like offspring,
20:52
Speaker 1: I gotta keep them separated, right, my literary life and identity,
20:55
Speaker 1: my nationalistic military stuff, at least when applied to the
21:00
Speaker 1: Shield Society. I was interested to find that he did
21:03
Speaker 1: not think literary youth who would have been just like
21:06
Speaker 1: him when he was younger, right, very similar. He didn't
21:09
Speaker 1: think they were suited for the Shield Society. So there's
21:12
Speaker 1: one exception, and it's him. I found that very interesting. Well, again,
21:17
Speaker 1: it's that that contradiction that that insecurity, that tension between
21:22
Speaker 1: being a man of action and being a man of letters,
21:24
Speaker 1: There's a quote from his book Kyoko's House, which is
21:28
Speaker 1: featured prominently in the film Mishima Life and Four Chapters,
21:32
Speaker 1: this notion there's an actor there who who It's almost
21:35
Speaker 1: like a refrain in the story. You know, stage blood
21:37
Speaker 1: is no longer enough, letters are no longer enough, thought
21:42
Speaker 1: is no longer enough. You have to act. And these
21:45
Speaker 1: were things that he wrote very openly about, this kind
21:47
Speaker 1: of sense that what we do sort of like engaging
21:51
Speaker 1: in philosophy letters. Even his contempt for what he termed ideology,
21:57
Speaker 1: which is I'm sorry, sort of interchangeable with politics. He
22:00
Speaker 1: can't escape it. Um. It is always kind of in
22:03
Speaker 1: service of this thing where it's like we can talk
22:05
Speaker 1: until the cows come home, but when things really come
22:08
Speaker 1: to a head, there has to be a man of
22:10
Speaker 1: action or a woman of action, a person of action,
22:13
Speaker 1: someone there to actually move the needle in some meaningful way.
22:18
Speaker 1: And he took a he took great pains near the
22:20
Speaker 1: end of his life to at least appear to be
22:22
Speaker 1: that person, surrounding himself with people that he deemed of
22:26
Speaker 1: that character, and his participation in debates within the academic
22:30
Speaker 1: circles of the time. We're strangely very fraught, but also
22:33
Speaker 1: at the same time begrudgingly respectful. Uh. The New Left
22:37
Speaker 1: was arising during this period, as was the New Right,
22:40
Speaker 1: in the wake of his work within his militia and
22:42
Speaker 1: things like that, and one of the things that each
22:45
Speaker 1: of them found was like this sort of simpatico kind
22:48
Speaker 1: of set of ideologies, this idea that Japan had been
22:52
Speaker 1: kind of set on a path by America specifically to
22:55
Speaker 1: sort of denounce itself, to denounce its history, and to
22:58
Speaker 1: become sort of like a pet project, for lack of
23:01
Speaker 1: a better phrase. And he really resented that, and the
23:05
Speaker 1: New Left also resented that. A great deal. Anti Americanism
23:09
Speaker 1: was a major component of both the far right and
23:13
Speaker 1: the far left of the period, and Mishama seemed to
23:15
Speaker 1: be this sort of intermediary figure. Like in the last
23:18
Speaker 1: years of his life, he openly debated people at universities,
23:21
Speaker 1: and you know, there's always like this sort of because
23:24
Speaker 1: this is a very violent time. Their students occupying Nehon
23:27
Speaker 1: University and University of Tokyo eight thousand riot cops, their
23:31
Speaker 1: struggle sessions within these New Left movements that resulted one
23:34
Speaker 1: to four people dying between the years of nineteen seventy one,
23:37
Speaker 1: two thousand three, Like, it's such a politically fraught time
23:41
Speaker 1: that we don't hear much about because our entire understanding
23:44
Speaker 1: of this place, and I think many places that we
23:46
Speaker 1: don't have a close relationship to are just unfortunately as
23:50
Speaker 1: it's kind of far away exotic colony wherein like they
23:53
Speaker 1: are all of these political affiliations, these political conflicts that
23:58
Speaker 1: are unfolding people you young people being killed by occupation
24:02
Speaker 1: forces secretly. Like, it's so fascinating to see how, especially
24:07
Speaker 1: around sixty eight, where all the other labor and leftist
24:09
Speaker 1: movements are arising worldwide and protest of like the emerging
24:12
Speaker 1: new neoliberal order. You see all of these things happening,
24:16
Speaker 1: and it is happening everywhere, and to have that so
24:18
Speaker 1: diminished in our discussion of history is just fascinating to
24:21
Speaker 1: me and dangerously convenient people. Yeah, and that's why I
24:27
Speaker 1: think that's a danger. You know, we have to remember
24:29
Speaker 1: history is a conversation, right, and it's uh, Faulkner was
24:34
Speaker 1: right when he said the past isn't past, you know,
24:37
Speaker 1: it affects us today. So let's dive into this period
24:41
Speaker 1: we're talking about, let's say nineteen sixty nine through the seventies.
24:46
Speaker 1: We know that per your research, you site a wonderful
24:50
Speaker 1: article in the Paris Review. We know that around nineteen
24:54
Speaker 1: sixty nine is when Mishima starts seriously plau to take
25:01
Speaker 1: his own life, starts really thinking about this. Uh. This
25:04
Speaker 1: is also the time he has a big show for
25:07
Speaker 1: the first anniversary of the Shield Society. I thought there
25:10
Speaker 1: was a very neat, almost Capote esque note to this.
25:16
Speaker 1: He invites a hundred guests, some from all over the world,
25:19
Speaker 1: many from Japan, and if he didn't make it, he
25:22
Speaker 1: never talks to you again. That's it. You have this,
25:26
Speaker 1: This disrespect shall not stand. Uh where when we talk
25:32
Speaker 1: about him sort of planning to take his own life,
25:37
Speaker 1: becoming increasingly militaristic, and when he's uh he resigns from
25:42
Speaker 1: the Symposium on Culture and stuff, he's really doubling down
25:46
Speaker 1: on this more militaristic aspect. How connected is the Japanese
25:50
Speaker 1: public with this? If if you ballparked it, like, if
25:53
Speaker 1: you're a person in Japan here in the late nineties,
25:56
Speaker 1: sixties or at least seventies, is there a common opinion
26:00
Speaker 1: about Mishima or is it more again just sort of
26:05
Speaker 1: you see what you want to see in a public figure.
26:08
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of that comes down to again,
26:10
Speaker 1: that cult of personality, that ostentatiousness. I mean it, he
26:15
Speaker 1: remains a kind of not necessarily marginal culturally, but certainly
26:19
Speaker 1: somebody who's increasing kind of participation of these things is
26:22
Speaker 1: is seen as kind of ridiculous, absurd um. And one
26:28
Speaker 1: of the things that's important to remember again is that
26:31
Speaker 1: like the right wing did not like him, the left
26:33
Speaker 1: wing had a grudging respect for him, but found him
26:36
Speaker 1: to be quote an anachronistic guerrilla and um, I'm serious.
26:41
Speaker 1: And it was often met with threats of violence on
26:44
Speaker 1: both sides. And it seems to me like it's it's
26:47
Speaker 1: it's so difficult to pen these things down because we
26:50
Speaker 1: don't know the man. We can't know the man. There
26:52
Speaker 1: seems to be something of like the death drive at
26:55
Speaker 1: the center of all of this stuff, which is a
26:57
Speaker 1: point that I think we can get to later on.
26:59
Speaker 1: I don't think necessarily cared at the end of his
27:01
Speaker 1: life how he was received so much so that like
27:04
Speaker 1: as much as he wanted to be seen at nothing
27:08
Speaker 1: if nothing else, is a man of action and all
27:10
Speaker 1: that entails. And you get to the point where he's
27:14
Speaker 1: doing these controversial things as an openly gay man who
27:17
Speaker 1: surrounds himself with with college age men, and because of
27:21
Speaker 1: his status as a literary figure, there's things were sort
27:23
Speaker 1: of controversial and met with like a very skeptical eye.
27:26
Speaker 1: Although it is plausible that he saw that as a
27:30
Speaker 1: modern continuation of samurai tradition. Absolutely, and that's sort of
27:35
Speaker 1: something we've lost in this discussion and their themes in
27:38
Speaker 1: the book, In many of the books where you know,
27:41
Speaker 1: the sort of love between an older boy and a
27:43
Speaker 1: younger boy is is kind of a recurring motif and
27:46
Speaker 1: in fact, like um, one of the things that comes
27:49
Speaker 1: out at the conversation surrounding his death is how like
27:51
Speaker 1: common a phenomenon this was, even even in this sort
27:54
Speaker 1: of ty shoe or not even in the post Meji restoration,
27:58
Speaker 1: that's not something they would have embraced publicly. It was
28:00
Speaker 1: like absolutely, you know, an open secret maybe, but definitely
28:04
Speaker 1: not you know, something that would be you know touted
28:07
Speaker 1: or like you know, even like emphasized in historical accounts. Right, absolutely, yeah,
28:12
Speaker 1: I know that's spot on. So he does not become
28:15
Speaker 1: this this kind of like firebrand, this very public figure
28:20
Speaker 1: in the way that he probably wants. And you know
28:22
Speaker 1: that's indicative of the reception of the parade. It's indicative
28:25
Speaker 1: in the reception for his referendum for conscripting ten thousand
28:28
Speaker 1: civilians into the SDF, And it's also in the quizzical
28:32
Speaker 1: response given to this militia um, which is truly like
28:36
Speaker 1: a very absurd thing for a writer of novels to
28:39
Speaker 1: be doing in any historical context, much less than nineteen
28:44
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies. Right, it maybe makes more sense if
28:48
Speaker 1: you are a if if you flip the evolution, right,
28:52
Speaker 1: if you are a military individual of note, and then
28:56
Speaker 1: later you write novels that for some reason, is it
28:59
Speaker 1: transition that I think more people find understandable, Zach, I
29:06
Speaker 1: want us to go to I want us to go
29:09
Speaker 1: to November nineteen seventy. This is where Mishima gets heckled.
29:17
Speaker 1: They heckle the heck out of him. Uh, And can
29:22
Speaker 1: this speech that he gives that is I think it's
29:25
Speaker 1: supposed to be ten minutes. It's not about literary literary matters.
29:29
Speaker 1: It's not a it's not a performance of poetry or
29:35
Speaker 1: a meditation on the nature of the soul. He is
29:38
Speaker 1: at a balcony where he is giving a ten minute
29:44
Speaker 1: I think he means it as a persuasive argument about
29:48
Speaker 1: his political theories, and in terms of being well received
29:52
Speaker 1: on a scale of one to ten, this is like
29:54
Speaker 1: a negative two, negative three. So one of the things
29:58
Speaker 1: that that we kind of have in uh tiptoeing around
30:01
Speaker 1: here is that this was a this was a hostage
30:04
Speaker 1: situation and attempted Kudata on the morning of November he
30:16
Speaker 1: and several members of the Tatokai, the Shield Society. UM.
30:21
Speaker 1: What they end up doing is they storm, but they
30:25
Speaker 1: have an official meeting with the general, their general kanne
30:29
Speaker 1: Toshi Mashita. There's, of course, no expectation that anything is
30:33
Speaker 1: going to go wrong. This seems to be an utterly
30:36
Speaker 1: cordial event. And in fact, that morning Mishima had dropped
30:39
Speaker 1: off the final pages of the final novel of the
30:41
Speaker 1: Sea of Fertility, the Decay of the Angel that morning,
30:44
Speaker 1: which is in and of itself, is this highly symbolic
30:46
Speaker 1: performative gesture. UM. He was then taken hostage by the
30:51
Speaker 1: members of the Shield Society General Machida, that is, and
30:55
Speaker 1: then Mishima ascended the balcony and then gave this speech
31:00
Speaker 1: that basically was designed to incite all of the the
31:05
Speaker 1: sort of servicemen in the garrison to um denounce the
31:09
Speaker 1: occupation government, to denounce the charters that had sort of
31:13
Speaker 1: conscripted the Japanese military to this kind of defense exclusive status,
31:18
Speaker 1: um the sort of re elevation of the emperor to
31:21
Speaker 1: his status within society, because again, he didn't feel the
31:24
Speaker 1: emperor should have abdicated in the way that he did,
31:27
Speaker 1: felt that they should acknowledge war crimes, did not feel
31:29
Speaker 1: that the emperor should have walked away from his traditional
31:32
Speaker 1: place within Japanese society. And then after finishing this address,
31:39
Speaker 1: which he intended to make for half an hour, within minutes,
31:43
Speaker 1: this group of young servicemen, uh, seven minutes are just
31:47
Speaker 1: berating him with insults, madman, idiot Japan? Is it peace?
31:52
Speaker 1: Do you think he was? Was he expecting that or
31:55
Speaker 1: was this shocking to him to do a degree or
31:58
Speaker 1: was he just sort of like a little bit he
32:00
Speaker 1: losing it. This is up for contention and something that
32:03
Speaker 1: I think we'll get into it at the end of
32:04
Speaker 1: the episode. I personally don't believe that anybody who's serious
32:08
Speaker 1: about a project like this knows that this is doomed
32:12
Speaker 1: to fail. Right that taking six or so of your
32:16
Speaker 1: best chaps to the to the military base with swords
32:21
Speaker 1: and thinking that you're going to overthrow the government seems
32:24
Speaker 1: like an absolutely hubristic kind of thing, like total performative,
32:29
Speaker 1: absolutely performative. And so what ends up happening is that
32:33
Speaker 1: he's being jeered by all of these people. He then, yeah,
32:38
Speaker 1: it's it's really intense um and probably no doubt humiliating
32:42
Speaker 1: if he is capable of feeling humiliation on that level.
32:45
Speaker 1: We'll get to that stuff in a moment. But he
32:48
Speaker 1: immediately withdraws from the balcony, and this is a trigger
32:51
Speaker 1: warding for violence, takes the serum the ceremonial cross legged
32:56
Speaker 1: seat on the ground, jam's a dagger into his abdomen
33:00
Speaker 1: and then draws it across it. And then after that,
33:03
Speaker 1: the attendant that's selected for the final act of seppuku,
33:06
Speaker 1: which is kaishaku, which is the ritual beheading which puts
33:09
Speaker 1: the committer out of their misery. This young man named
33:14
Speaker 1: Marita Massa Katsu, somebody who has in the intervening years
33:19
Speaker 1: been speculated to have been Mishima's last lover, draws the katana,
33:24
Speaker 1: makes the swing and then fails to cleanly behead him.
33:28
Speaker 1: So this is already itself a tragedy that is very
33:32
Speaker 1: quickly becoming farce in a way that I don't think
33:34
Speaker 1: even Mishima would have appreciated as morbid as his sort
33:38
Speaker 1: of sense of humor and since of the world was.
33:41
Speaker 1: So what ended up happening was that somebody else stepped
33:45
Speaker 1: in a practice kindo expert, not an expert, but a
33:49
Speaker 1: kindo practitioner. Why didn't they let him do it in
33:51
Speaker 1: the first place, man, it seems like that with a
33:54
Speaker 1: prerequisite would at least be that you've like, trained with
33:56
Speaker 1: a sword to some degree. This kid seems to have
33:59
Speaker 1: just botched it. Well, that status of being Mishima's favorite
34:02
Speaker 1: probably has a lot to do with that makes sense.
34:04
Speaker 1: But he steps in, finishes the job, and then Morita
34:10
Speaker 1: himself commits seppuku on the grounds of having disgraced himself
34:14
Speaker 1: by not being able to commit the final act of
34:16
Speaker 1: the riches. That's meta right there. So basically what you
34:22
Speaker 1: have is this incredibly bloody, awful scene, something that is
34:26
Speaker 1: in fact stripped straight from the fiction of Mishima himself,
34:31
Speaker 1: This ritual suicide in the name of kind of restoring
34:34
Speaker 1: national character. The two heads of these men side by
34:37
Speaker 1: side on the carpet, just absolute carnage and then um
34:42
Speaker 1: obviously scandal, just something that had never happened in modern
34:48
Speaker 1: Japanese public life. And mind you, up to this point
34:51
Speaker 1: there had been political assassinations, especially within right wing circles.
34:55
Speaker 1: There were a number of incidents where right wingers would
34:57
Speaker 1: would come upon leftist authors or academics and openly murdered
35:01
Speaker 1: them in public. Um at some point they were like
35:03
Speaker 1: a sort of right wing elements that were flying planes
35:06
Speaker 1: into buildings and things of that nature. Like again, this
35:08
Speaker 1: is incredibly conflicted fraud politically time and it reaches this
35:13
Speaker 1: punctuation mark the death of the most popular Japanese author
35:17
Speaker 1: in the world in the most curious and absurd of circumstances.
35:21
Speaker 1: This anachronistic act that can't help but resemble pageantry more
35:27
Speaker 1: than anything that would be like a kind of expression
35:30
Speaker 1: of a real politic. And I think ultimately that's where
35:33
Speaker 1: we kind of end up going with all of this stuff,
35:35
Speaker 1: is like the sort of open questions, the ambiguity whether
35:37
Speaker 1: or not Mischimo is absolutely serious about this plot working,
35:41
Speaker 1: or whether if not this was all just a pretense
35:43
Speaker 1: for something else. Yeah, it's a good question, Zac, because
35:48
Speaker 1: also you know, to the point about pageantry, the suicide
35:52
Speaker 1: is planned or at lea see times it seems to
35:57
Speaker 1: coincide with the opening of the Appendese Diet, which is
36:01
Speaker 1: the Japanese legislature. He also has very specific wishes about
36:08
Speaker 1: how his Buddhist name is rendered postmortem. Uh. He needs
36:12
Speaker 1: to be dressed in his Shield Society uniform. He bluntly says,
36:18
Speaker 1: I die not as a literary man, but entirely as
36:22
Speaker 1: a military man. And when we when we get to
36:25
Speaker 1: these these questions, and you phrase it so beautifully, man,
36:29
Speaker 1: the puzzling ambiguous questions. I think this is one of
36:34
Speaker 1: the most fascinating parts of the story for you and
36:40
Speaker 1: for me as well. Honestly, do you think this is
36:45
Speaker 1: in Mishima's mind which we can't totally read. Do you
36:48
Speaker 1: think he sees this, as you say, a punctuation mark.
36:53
Speaker 1: Do you think this is meant to impart some sort
36:55
Speaker 1: of lesson or statement to the people of Japan at large?
37:00
Speaker 1: I think, and again, this is all just speculation and interpretation,
37:03
Speaker 1: which is about as valuable as um probably a pocket
37:06
Speaker 1: full of lint in many cases. But The thing about
37:11
Speaker 1: this is is that I've already brought up this sort
37:13
Speaker 1: of doomed to failedness of this enterprise, the kind of
37:15
Speaker 1: absurd um hubris that goes into committing attempting to commit
37:20
Speaker 1: kudata with a group of like several student aged men
37:25
Speaker 1: armed exclusively with bladed weapons. To me, I think what
37:29
Speaker 1: this is trying to impart, which is something that even
37:31
Speaker 1: in his sort of like the notes that he left
37:33
Speaker 1: to his wife surrounding this plot, which is very strongly
37:36
Speaker 1: suggested this was the plan, so he told his wife
37:40
Speaker 1: and this is a quote. Even if I'm not immediately understood,
37:43
Speaker 1: it's okay because I'll be understood by the Japan of
37:45
Speaker 1: fifty or a hundred years time. Which is such a
37:48
Speaker 1: tragic kind of um thing to say, because I don't
37:51
Speaker 1: think that's the case at all. I think it's happened,
37:54
Speaker 1: it's not going to happen. The ambiguity of the thing,
37:56
Speaker 1: the sort of performative absurdity of the thing, it kind
37:59
Speaker 1: of preclude any real interpretation of understanding of what all
38:03
Speaker 1: of this actually was. And the thing that the film
38:06
Speaker 1: seems to try to sort of impart on all of this,
38:08
Speaker 1: and the film mishim in Life of Four Chapters. And
38:11
Speaker 1: you know the photographs that he had taken of himself
38:14
Speaker 1: in the throes of many different suicides in the final
38:17
Speaker 1: days of his life. Photographs that he himself meticulously composed
38:21
Speaker 1: but had shot by somebody else. His his sort of
38:24
Speaker 1: ideas about James Dean and like sort of dying beautifully
38:27
Speaker 1: at in the young age. Like it very much seems
38:30
Speaker 1: that Mishima could not be a man of action and
38:34
Speaker 1: understood this inherently. M hm. His body at that point
38:39
Speaker 1: was already in decline. He he was conscripted into the
38:42
Speaker 1: military during the war in the final years of it.
38:45
Speaker 1: He did not make it into service. And the film
38:48
Speaker 1: Mishima in Life of Four Chapters implies that he in
38:52
Speaker 1: fact played up his his his asthma symptoms so as
38:56
Speaker 1: to avoid service. And the thing is too that that's
38:59
Speaker 1: where all of the body billing comes from, this trying
39:01
Speaker 1: to sort of like make himself this like stone cut figure,
39:05
Speaker 1: this man of action. There's another lovely scene in the
39:08
Speaker 1: film where he's at a dance hall where young men
39:10
Speaker 1: are dancing with one another and he has a partner
39:13
Speaker 1: and the partner places his hand on his shoulders and
39:15
Speaker 1: mind you, this is Mishima in top physical form and says,
39:19
Speaker 1: your shoulders are kind of flabby, and Mishima is absolutely
39:23
Speaker 1: inconsolable about this, and just like leaves without saying anything,
39:27
Speaker 1: and like in tears, like invisible tears, leaves the dance hall,
39:31
Speaker 1: and then later in the night goes to a pay
39:33
Speaker 1: phone outside of this young man's apartment and calls him
39:37
Speaker 1: and essentially says, you're young and beautiful and I am
39:39
Speaker 1: old and dying, so please be tender in the future
39:43
Speaker 1: with anybody you meet. And it's this incredibly lovely scene
39:47
Speaker 1: that I think also gives away a lot of this
39:49
Speaker 1: guy's personality and sort of the anxieties surrounding the simple
39:54
Speaker 1: fact that, you know, his literary career, while still fruitful,
39:58
Speaker 1: was sort of on the wye. He wasn't taken seriously
40:01
Speaker 1: as an actor. Um, he wasn't taken seriously as a
40:04
Speaker 1: political ideal logue somebody whose influence and body were declining,
40:09
Speaker 1: at least to him at a rate that was just
40:13
Speaker 1: he couldn't abide it. Well, it's a hard thing to
40:15
Speaker 1: wrap your head around in general. I mean, you know,
40:18
Speaker 1: just the idea of you know, being replaced or you know,
40:21
Speaker 1: getting older and feeling you know, if you're if you're
40:24
Speaker 1: someone who seeks fame, and the way that this guy
40:26
Speaker 1: obviously did to kind of base your whole personality around
40:30
Speaker 1: you know, this character you've created yourself, and no longer
40:33
Speaker 1: does it kind of fly anymore, And then who are
40:35
Speaker 1: you at that point? Especially since you know, he was
40:38
Speaker 1: kind of considered soft and weak and the whole Grandmother's situation,
40:41
Speaker 1: and now he styled himself as this like macho kind
40:44
Speaker 1: of you know, warrior kind of figure, and then that's
40:47
Speaker 1: starting to waite too, So it really does seem like
40:51
Speaker 1: he was kind of on this doomsday course the whole time. Zach.
40:55
Speaker 1: You mentioned from the start that even in his writing
40:57
Speaker 1: he sort of fancied himself of this sort of tragic
41:01
Speaker 1: martyr type figure. Absolutely again that notion of stage blood
41:05
Speaker 1: not being enough, that noted, that notion of that tension
41:09
Speaker 1: between action and inaction, um, the life of the mind
41:12
Speaker 1: versus the body, and quite frankly, and this is sort
41:16
Speaker 1: of like the point that I've been kind of gesturing
41:18
Speaker 1: towards throughout the whole thing. This is a type of
41:21
Speaker 1: neurosis that reactionary nostalgia tends to engender the crisis of
41:26
Speaker 1: the crisis of masculinity and modern times for instance, right,
41:29
Speaker 1: the men's right stuff, you know, these figures that style
41:32
Speaker 1: themselves is like these sort of these you know these men, right, uh,
41:37
Speaker 1: these moral compasses exactly, and you know, obviously like here
41:41
Speaker 1: it's a the inflection point is like Western philosophy, antiquity, etcetera.
41:47
Speaker 1: There's so many similarities between me that and Mishuma's attitude
41:50
Speaker 1: surrounding the aesthetics and the sort of ethics of Japan
41:52
Speaker 1: and how those two are tied. And I think one
41:54
Speaker 1: of the things that these people usually run into, and
41:57
Speaker 1: I think should run into, is that aesthetic can be
42:01
Speaker 1: politically inflected. It is not politics. Culture will generally tend
42:05
Speaker 1: conservative regardless, because that's the nature of consensus, for better
42:10
Speaker 1: or worse. And what we end up with is a
42:11
Speaker 1: situation where you have a group of dispossessed people who,
42:14
Speaker 1: rather than locating where their dispossession comes from, they reached
42:18
Speaker 1: back into a past that in many cases they did
42:20
Speaker 1: not even live. They have no relationship to an aesthetics
42:23
Speaker 1: and philosophy political systems, and they think, well, that was
42:28
Speaker 1: obviously something that is upheld as brilliant something that is
42:31
Speaker 1: upheld as good and just you know, like we can
42:33
Speaker 1: talk as much about the ancient Greeks as we want,
42:36
Speaker 1: but the number of things that we would find a
42:38
Speaker 1: morally pernicious about those systems really do leave a bad
42:42
Speaker 1: taste in the mouth if you take any of this
42:43
Speaker 1: stuff seriously beyond the aesthetic component. And Mishima seems to
42:47
Speaker 1: me was a philosophically inclined person. If you read his writings,
42:52
Speaker 1: he's not a slouch in this regard. He may have
42:54
Speaker 1: had open contempt for the life of the mind and
42:56
Speaker 1: intellectuals and things of that nature, but that's because he
42:59
Speaker 1: was one of them. Yeah, And that double standard that
43:02
Speaker 1: he imposed on himself, like I said, it cleaves you
43:04
Speaker 1: in half and you don't really have much of a
43:07
Speaker 1: place to go. Yeah, because I think that's I think
43:11
Speaker 1: that's tremendously a stupe zack. And when we look at
43:16
Speaker 1: Mishima's legacy today, you know, um, I actually first learned
43:22
Speaker 1: of Mishama not in college, but on my first trip
43:25
Speaker 1: to the Agoya because some writer friends they're wanted to
43:29
Speaker 1: talk about Mishima with me. And it after you hear
43:33
Speaker 1: this story, folks, if you've never heard of this author.
43:36
Speaker 1: It may sound surprising that this person is still so
43:40
Speaker 1: highly lauded in the literary world and so widely read
43:44
Speaker 1: in Japan and abroad, but he really is that talented.
43:50
Speaker 1: You can be a talented person and still have torturous
43:54
Speaker 1: things in your psychology, in your being with which you
43:58
Speaker 1: wrestle throughout your life. UM. I feel that it is
44:02
Speaker 1: incredibly important anytime we discussed the topic that touches on
44:07
Speaker 1: the nature of self harm, it is incredibly important for
44:10
Speaker 1: us to say that if you are a loved one
44:13
Speaker 1: are dealing with challenging issues, do not hesitate to reach out.
44:18
Speaker 1: There are tons of worthwhile free resources available to you.
44:23
Speaker 1: Twenty four hours a day, seven days a week here
44:26
Speaker 1: in the US. You can reach out to self harm
44:31
Speaker 1: suicide crisis lifelines. UH. There is the old ten digit
44:36
Speaker 1: one one eight zero zero to seven three talk. That's
44:40
Speaker 1: one eight zero zero two seven three eight to five
44:44
Speaker 1: five and thank goodness, as of this summer, you can
44:48
Speaker 1: also simply dial nine eight eight UH speak with someone.
44:53
Speaker 1: Your health and well being is more than worth it.
44:56
Speaker 1: And that's just that's our disclaimer. We want to bookend
44:59
Speaker 1: this series with but UH, honestly, you know this makes
45:03
Speaker 1: you want to go back and reread more. Mishima Zach,
45:06
Speaker 1: I don't know about the everybody else. Also the friend
45:09
Speaker 1: that the mutual friend of ours, Zack and Ben. You
45:12
Speaker 1: you've met him as well. Peyton Fisher, friend of the podcast,
45:14
Speaker 1: loaned me this DVD when we were in high school
45:17
Speaker 1: together and I totally slept on it. I never watched it,
45:20
Speaker 1: and I returned it to him and I I copped
45:22
Speaker 1: to that recently and he was just kind of a gas.
45:25
Speaker 1: So I really do need to get this film, which is,
45:28
Speaker 1: by the way, directed by Paul Strader, who wrote UH
45:31
Speaker 1: Taxi Driver was a very important UM collaborator with UH.
45:35
Speaker 1: Francis Ford Coppola as well UM scored by the incredible
45:39
Speaker 1: Philip Glass. I believe George Lucas and Coppola had or
45:43
Speaker 1: was it Scorsese had production credits in this. I think
45:46
Speaker 1: all three had production credits. There was a there was
45:49
Speaker 1: a concerted effort on both Lucas and Coppola specifically as
45:53
Speaker 1: well throughout the eighties to bring Japanese or Japanese sort
45:55
Speaker 1: of deemed films to the United States. Kagemusha was executive
45:58
Speaker 1: produced by Lucas and co Blue as well, and with this,
46:03
Speaker 1: I believe we we have to say thank you again,
46:06
Speaker 1: doctor Zach. One night over sick down, a doctor appeared.
46:11
Speaker 1: But this was no normal doctor. Who's there? It's Zack
46:17
Speaker 1: Zach who the doctor named Zach and he's here to
46:25
Speaker 1: bill your scraps just for Colledge pett is cat teaching
46:31
Speaker 1: history books at stop. Let's go with other things. Yeah,
46:40
Speaker 1: that'll work, Zack. We're trying that nickname on. We're gonna
46:48
Speaker 1: take it around the street, take it, drive it down
46:49
Speaker 1: the block, and see how it feels. Thank you again
46:52
Speaker 1: so much. And as we said in part one, I
46:55
Speaker 1: think you mentioned the snool. Uh. Very excited to have
46:59
Speaker 1: you on the team. Uh. You bring such a fresh perspective.
47:04
Speaker 1: Love the stories that you are finding. And I hope
47:08
Speaker 1: you had a good time. We pulled you in for
47:10
Speaker 1: your first We pulled you into deep water for your
47:13
Speaker 1: first odd air appearance. Doc Zach. Are are you how
47:16
Speaker 1: you feeling about coming back on in the future. No, absolutely,
47:20
Speaker 1: probably for some lighter subject matter, I hope, but UH
47:24
Speaker 1: do for sure. But I mean, it really is like
47:26
Speaker 1: it's hard to just explain why this guy was so
47:29
Speaker 1: important And just a couple of sentences which I think
47:31
Speaker 1: maybe why I did sleep on that film because I
47:33
Speaker 1: couldn't easily wrap my head around it. And I think
47:36
Speaker 1: my younger stelf was maybe a little, uh, a little
47:38
Speaker 1: less willing to take the plunge, you know, but it
47:41
Speaker 1: really is. You know, you've got so much stuff out there.
47:43
Speaker 1: This guy's work is available, the film that we're talking about,
47:47
Speaker 1: But just what a guy that kind of controlled the
47:51
Speaker 1: narrative of his life. It's such an interesting way because
47:53
Speaker 1: I am still kind of the mind that this ending
47:56
Speaker 1: was orchestrated, you know, to a degree, like he walked
47:59
Speaker 1: in there and no going full well what was going
48:01
Speaker 1: to happen? And to his credit, you know, it's still
48:05
Speaker 1: the object of speculation. We're still reading him. We're still
48:08
Speaker 1: watching Schrader's film, which I can't stress enough is is
48:11
Speaker 1: gorgeous both formally narratively thematically um My in my mind,
48:16
Speaker 1: Schrader's best film. Um certainly worth a watch on the
48:19
Speaker 1: Criterion channel if you have that um and read the
48:22
Speaker 1: sound or read the sound the waves if you want
48:24
Speaker 1: something a bit more traditional and less queasy, But if
48:26
Speaker 1: you really want to dive deep with Mishima, highly suggest
48:29
Speaker 1: the Temple of the Golden Pavilion, which is one of
48:31
Speaker 1: the most stark depictions of mental disturbance, um neurosis and
48:37
Speaker 1: sort of spiritual awakening that I have ever read. Well
48:41
Speaker 1: written books are not always happy books, folks, So let
48:45
Speaker 1: the let the reader be aware. But do do also
48:50
Speaker 1: check out Maschuma's work if you haven't yet. In the meantime,
48:54
Speaker 1: we'd also love to hear from you, fellow Ridiculous Historians,
48:57
Speaker 1: who were some other authors that you feel have a
49:01
Speaker 1: body of, you know, canonical literature as well as a
49:07
Speaker 1: personal life outside of literature that many people may not
49:11
Speaker 1: be aware of. We'd love to hear your suggestions. You
49:13
Speaker 1: can find us on Facebook where we're Ridiculous Historians. We're
49:17
Speaker 1: still working on the vision board from our very first episodes.
49:22
Speaker 1: I don't think we got the passwords in the MySpace yet.
49:24
Speaker 1: No no, no, no, it's okay, it's okay, we were
49:27
Speaker 1: working on it. We'll get right back to you on that.
49:28
Speaker 1: Huge thanks to Zach Williams of course, Alex Williams, uh,
49:32
Speaker 1: Max Williams, all the Williams, the Williams Is, the Williams Williams.
49:37
Speaker 1: Yeah sure, um, thanks Chris for us. Jodis here in Spirit, Eves,
49:41
Speaker 1: Jeff co Jonathan Strickland, all the hits. Thanks to you, Ben,
49:45
Speaker 1: This is a great, great conversation. Thanks to you knowl.
49:48
Speaker 1: We'll see you next time. Books. For more podcasts, form
49:58
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
50:00
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.