The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima

by Henry Scott Stokes

Book Overview

This incisive biography begins withthe spectacularly tragic last day of the militant Japanese novelist, perhaps best known for his monumental four-book masterpiece The Sea of Fertility. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374186200
• ISBN13: 9780374186203
• Release Date: January 1974
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 344 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Fascinating and Powerfully Contradictory Person

This book left me with the impression that I would very much have liked to have a cup of tea and an afternoon conversation with a man who seems to all external indications to have been mad. I was struck by Yukio Mishima's text Sound of Waves because a the eldest boy of a poor widow gets the rich man's daughter. This seems to me to imply Mishima was questioning the traditional near-cast system that Japanese families lived in and wedded among. A poor boy and rich girl sounds more like a Western fairytale than a Japanese story. Moreover, the reason the poor boy gets the rich girl is doubly shocking. The father of the girl and an owner of a fleet of fishing vessels assigns his captain to "test" his daughter's suitors. He settles on the poor boy as the best suitor because he shows extraordinary dedication, loyalty and bravery in a storm; in short, he is selected for his unique personal characteristics. Again, this seemed very Western and democratic to me. So it is that Mishima lived an inherently contradictory life and I can't help but wonder if he wasn't a victim of modernity. Anthony Giddens in The Consequences of Modernity notes that life in the modern era is like driving a high speed car on a sheet of ice -- we are moving quickly, but we don't know to where. Could it have been that Mishima suddenly panicked and felt that the direction of Japan was going toward certain self-destruction and for this reason, he was trying to save his country when he took over the military headquarters? He certainly seemed to want to save Japan, but from what is not quite clear. He remains an enigmatic man, and I wish he had lived on to engage in the dialog of modernity. We will never really know, but based on his novels, I think he could see many of the contractions we live with and he may have been able to recommend alternative solutions we haven't yet considered.

A Standard Biography

The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima is, simply put, a definitive biography. Henry Scott Stokes knew the author about as well as anyone could. He accompanied Mishima and the members of the Shield Society to cover exercises the military group (formed by Mishima) carried out at Mt. Fuji in 1969 and knew him from 1966 until his suicide by hara-kiri in November 1970. Mr. Stokes includes a lot of detail concerning this training exercise, during which he met Mishima's disciple Morita, who committed hara-kiri with him just over a year later. Mr. Stokes, being a noted journalist, provides an excellent approach to Mishima's life. At the outset, the sensational death of the artist is related in detail. I liked this approach because Mishima's life and work has been overshadowed by his death, so taking us through the ordeal allows us to concentrate on his life and learn soothing about what made him seek the death he did. Also valuable is Mr. Stokes' residence in Japan, which gives him invaluable knowledge on Japanese society, giving us a background for many of Mishima's attitudes. The major literary works are explained in excellent detail with what Mr. Stokes considers minor works (such as "The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea") being only briefly mentioned. This fits well with the aim of the book: to provide an in-depth look at the forces that influenced Mishima. The Sea of Fertility cycle receives a great deal of attention. The book also has a chapter that discusses Mishima's reputation since his death. In this section Mr. Stokes draws some interesting conclusions about the relationship between Mishima and Morita. I have also read John Nathan's biography of Yukio Mishima, which presents an excellent portrait of the writer, particularly in describing his literary career. However, I find it is Mr. Stokes' book that provides a more in-depth portrait of Mishima. I would still recommend Mr. Nathan's book as a highly readable biography. Mr. Stokes' book is very well written with great attention to detail and should not be missed by anyone seriously interested in who Yukio Mishima was and what drove him. There is a useful glossary and a chronology of Mishima's life, and is illustrated with photographs and drawings.

A Westerner's understanding of Japanese militance

I was a boy when the report came through on NBC Nightly News that Yukio Mishima had committed sepukku after a failed attempt to take control of Japan. They briefly described the mode of death, & how his second-in-command had also died.This event was far outside the understanding of anyone in rural Minnesota, so my questions hung in the air. The best I could do was a short report & some big photos in LIFE. I found that Mishima had been considered a young literary lion, bringing Japan to a fascinating new fiction that impossibly synthesised classical writing with modern style.The whole thing didn't make sense. It was like hearing that Jack Kerouac had also been a Brown Shirt -- nobody could reconcile for me Mishima the uniformed revolutionary with Mishima the sensitive author.This book has helped bring me to a new conclusion: reconciliation is impossible. The author was a friend of Mishima, & possibly the only Westerner allowed into the funeral; he goes into great depth as only a friend (though somewhat baffled himself) could to show the paradoxes embodied, sometimes quite intentionally, within Mishima.I appreciate that the story has been brought full circle, at least for me.

Pretty good, I'd say.

The major point of discussion for reviewers of this book and of John Nathan's biography of Mishima seems to be "Which one is better?" Personally, I'd say neither. For those who were somewhat dissatisfied with the way Nathan glossed over certain things (like, oh, The Sea of Fertility), Scott-Stokes' book has a greater volume of information and a more consistent analysis of Mishima's literature. For instance, I don't recall Nathan having even mentioned Ba-ra-kei (which I intend to procure sometime in the future, now that I know of its existence) in passing; Scott-Stokes, on the other hand, includes it in the appropriate section of Mishima's life (there are four: Literature, Drama, Body and Action). Scott-Stokes also has the better analysis of Mishima's plays, with more quotes and a lengthier discussion.However, as a whole I think I liked Nathan's work more. I really did not get why Scott-Stokes included the "dramatization" of the Mishima Incident (as the first scene, no less); it's bewilderingly out of place, though I admit that it does provide a good hook to lead into the rest of the book with. But that's emblematic of a larger problem; Scott-Stokes gives himself much greater license than Nathan did to theorize about Mishima's motivations and inner thoughts, and like all canonical examples of dubious reportage, his theories cite anonymous sources. Nor did I particularly appreciate his cavalier dismissal of a rather large part of Mishima's literature as subpar - in fact, unlike Nathan, he really doesn't even come across as an avid reader of Mishima, which would be fine if not for the fact that he decided to be the man's biographer.If you're interested in Mishima, you're inevitably going to read this, but I recommend reading Nathan's biography first. This will arm you with a good bit of knowledge in advance, and will help you navigate through Scott-Stokes' "original" structure (his book starts with the last day of Mishima's life, then covers his childhood and then branches out into four directions). Scott-Stokes' book, then, will serve as a complement, filling in certain gaps.

Fascinating Man - Fascinating Life

Henry Scott Stokes truly captures the essence of Yukio Mishima's personality and vitality in "The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima." The fact that the author was a friend and wrote of Mishima's life so soon after his death in 1970 gives a profound resonance to the book. Stokes captures Mishima in a way the Paul Schrader's film "Mishima: A Life in Four Acts" (produced by Lucas and Spielberg no less) could not. "Life and Death" likewise eclipses Peter Wolfe's vapid Yukio Mishma biography from 1989. "The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima" is the finest English language biography of one of the most misunderstood and enigmatic figures of literature on the world stage.