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The aging of society presents. This is a series of interviews with authorities on Asian affairs designed to strengthen our understanding of Asian people and ideas. Your host on this transcribed series is a noted author and award winning broadcaster Lee Graham. Here now is Mrs. Graham. Who mystified Sam of course that such a man would do what he did. His name is Yukio Mishima. And what he did You may not remember. And therefore and and the significance of what he did. You might not fully appreciate as I do not. Therefore we felt because this event carries so much importance in so many ways that we would call upon an American who knew me who was a friend of yours for over 16 years and who could perhaps interpret the significance of this for us. Our guess therefore is that man with a friend of mission author. But Donald King Professor King is in the department of East Asian languages and
cultures at Columbia University. He has written more than 20 books. His latest book is a translation of 20 plays of the No. They attack and he also has translated some of the works of Ukio into English. Professor King since you knew him well you might have understood what he did better than other people. But before we get to that gruesome as this event was would you please give us a brief and summary of what took place. Well as you've already said on November 25th in the morning about 11 o'clock Tokyo time which is about midnight New York Time Machine My together with four young men of his small private army as it was called The Shield society arrived at the headquarters of the Defense Force of Japan. And asked permission to see the
general that they had made an appointment. All five of them were wearing uniforms of the shield society and were wearing swords. At first it was objected that they were wearing swords and shouldn't be allowed into headquarters but argued that this was just a decoration a part of the uniform and had no other meaning. They went in. And after some conversation with the general who was a friend of me she my was they some of the members. I forced the general and his aides at sword point. To agree to allow me to address the headquarters forces some of the members of the self-defense forces were wounded fairly seriously even during this. Exchange of. Demands but finally Mishima was allowed to address the assembled soldiers. He
spoke for about 10 minutes only not even 10 minutes. There is a recording made of him speaking at this time. His voice alone the words he used were powerful. I sounded rather unlike himself. Obviously he was under great tension but more than that the shouts of the soldiers. Disagreeing with him violently opposing everything he said must surely have discouraged him. In his remarks he said that the Japanese self-defense force was itself a parody of an army because it could only operate under the conditions of a constitution which was strictly limited in its activities and even for bad to be an army. At the end he said is there no one who agrees with me. And there are many many shouts of disagreement I couldn't hear on the recording anyone who did agree he
said Very well then. And he called out a banzai for the Embra returned to the room of the commanding general stripped off the tunic he was wearing. And. With a cry yar. Thrust into his abdomen a sword and pulled it across. Then one of the members of his shield society the chief of the students called Mahdi perform the traditional rite of cutting off the head of the man who was committing separate graves this disempowerment is called The reason for doing this is that what the person might linger for hours in agony. Otherwise the time must have been under great nervous strain himself because it took I think four attempts before he finally cut off me she most had then himself.
Committed seppuku Now his head was cut off by one of his companions. The other three members of the shield society acting under strong instructions from there upon surrounded and they are now in prison awaiting trial. The news of course created an immense sensation in Japan it was it was in the newspapers enormously. And when I was in Japan early in January for about a week I can say that it was the virtually the only subject of conversation every other conversation that started on any other subject. Before long we turned to this great enigma of why Mishima should have committed this desperate and to some people meaningless act.
Yes the death has been called by people who perhaps do not understand fully what his thoughts and philosophy and goals were. A meaningless death. Do you see it that way is a meaningless death. No I'm sure it's not meaningless. It's extremely difficult for me to understand fully why he should have killed himself. I think it must've been difficult for me Shima himself to understand. I think the reason why I killed him stop with the dust doesn't serve as an answer is that he wanted to die. But beyond that he had to persuade himself that his death would not be a stupid or meaningless one. He could have jumped off a bridge and done something else like God or thrown himself in the path of an oncoming truck. But he was determined that his death. Have a significance. But if it serves some purpose not merely the negative one of terminating his life. And this it has had
perhaps not in the way he expected or desired but certainly it has had a most enormous impact on Japanese and has recently even are set in motion a great deal of self-reflection of the kind that certainly Mishima did have in mind but they're sticking to explain further I. I have read and this was an excellent article by the way in the Sunday Book Review which you wrote about mission which gave me the information I do have that Mishima was the leader of a 95 Mankato called the Society of the shield. Some people jokingly call it the world's smallest army. But the point of it was don't you think that. He was devoted to the so-called glorious past of Japan the Samurai the pursuit of the moment thought tradition. And he saw Japan reduced to a rather militarily impotent country in which is something he could not tolerate.
Was that his purpose in trying to leave this tiny rowboat and then taking his life as a symbol of his failure. Again there must have been so many different reasons for each. Various activities in which he engaged when he formed the shield society. It's quite possible that he had a very specific thing in mind that is it was widely anticipated that in June of 1970 the time when the security treaty with the United States would come up for a new world there would be widespread. Riots or revolts or even a revolution in Japan. This had been predicted for several years. I've heard rumors of it very often and there were even reports of plans for the detailed nature of them it created. It may be that Mishima then decided to form this organization truly as a shield for the Emperor. Having this
specific purpose in case there was a disturbance in June of 1970 it would have that function. Perhaps defending to the death the emperor against a mob of people who were determined to overthrow the government. However nothing happened in June of 1970 I was with me the day that the security treaty was automatically renewed instead of. Going through formal passage in the Japanese diet and he expressed with cynicism and somewhat with dismay his conviction that nothing would happen that it was now the police rather than the army that was responsible for the safety of Japan. I think that that might have been a function originally. But once this the crisis had passed then one had to look for another function for this society and it might have been that then he thought of it more in
terms of a organization which would provoke the Japanese into remembering their old ideals. It has been widely reported in the Japanese press and then from them in the American press that a coup d'etat was planned. This of course it's absurd. You cannot have a coup d'etat staged by five men armed only with swords. I but to do what he did do could be done by an army of ninety five men that is to say to arouse particular among the Japanese young people a feeling that something very precious from their heritage had been lost. Well the Japan ground self-defense force which is what the Army in Japan is called Is that primarily a self-defense force. It must not do anything aggressive it's there just to defend the territory known as Japan.
Yes under the Constitution which was originally written largely under American inspiration the Japanese forever renounced war as an instrument of policy of state policy. And it was only with great difficulty that an army. I was formed at first called the Peace preservation Union now the self-defense force. The purpose of which is to defend your plan and it is prohibited from engaging in any aggressive activities in a matter of fact is activities up to now consist mainly of flood relief. Various other totally civilian. Good Deeds. There are well they keep in very high state of Military fitness. There were twenty six twenty six thousand men in the force. About that number I read that I should think there would be more than that. I'm a character of the exact figures but there are
training camps for them. They have assumed many of the duties which formally are the American occupying forces of Japan had as far as the defense of Japan is concerned. I bring that out Professor King because it is a relatively small number considering the population of Japan which is what about 100 million about 100 million yes. So twenty six or even fifty thousand let's say it's a small comparatively small number. I bring that up because many people outside of Japan have reacted to this incident have they not. I think it might bring about a revival of the samea rial the Japanese feudalistic good militaristic tradition which they feel has been smoldering. Just looking for an excuse to leap up. Do you subscribe to that. N-no I don't miss you my Himself was a great pains to differentiate the samurai tradition and militarism.
He believed that the samurai tradition was an absolutely integral part of Japanese culture. He desired himself to be considered as a samurai. But as for militarism certainly the kind of militarism that was prevalent in the 30s when the Japanese were used to aggressive wars in China and then later in Southeast Asia and so on. It was not anything that Mishi My himself approved it may be due it may seem that the two are very closely allied But in Michigan as mine the difference was that the summer tradition was a way of living in peace time was a way of living in the end times when there was no question of any kind of aggression. It was a denial of the hedonistic easygoing our sometimes grasping the commercial way of life from so many of the Japanese today.
It was an insistence on a regular us life a cultivation of physical fitness if you like. Insistence on simplicity as opposed to craving after. New luxuries. Well I think it would some you write mean exactly what we were originally meant a person who serves our person a service or a lord or a higher military man. The samurai tradition is one of service. Essentially the word still had has that meaning and it has related mean. Believed in this as an ideal and I think his organization was in his mind in an organization of Samurai men who were not devoted to self aggrandizement or desire to become the head of a company or chief of a bureau or
anything of that kind but to an abstract idea which might be. Summed up in his mind as a service to the Emperor. Would you say it sounds almost like the Japanese version of the Knights of the Roundtable chivalrous men devoted to service and purity of ideal and not for material gain. There certainly is. There are similarities in the ideas. But the danger of course. The night the round table a very long time ago the danger of such an organization. Samurai today is precisely the one that you suggested that it can easily grow into something quite ugly and far from the original ideals to grow it can turn into aggressiveness. Military. Military actions which are. By no means
admirable but the Samurai spirit so Amish Huma's belief and I think that of many other Japanese is an integral part of Japanese civilization. And to play it down as the wicked part of Japanese civilization as opposed to the good side smiling Kimo no clad Japanese still with a sense how hard this is to make a nonsense of Japanese civilization which has always included this strong masculine element. But if one were to look at this cycle analytically which is certainly not easy. One of the events in life which probably just did him was the fact that he was rejected for serve military service during World War 2 because he was physically not strong and that he made it a point to cultivate himself physically. It went about almost like a physical culture addict so that he would
be powerful and he was powerful Wasn't he by the time he took his life or certainly he was extremely well built very proud of it. I remember seeing him at all stages of his. So-called bodybuilding weightlifting various martial sports and so on but I'm afraid you made a mistake about his big disappointed when he was rejected from military service. As a matter probably this has been written but as a matter of fact it was by his intent and certainly that of his family that he not be accepted. He was born in Tokyo his family had resided in Tokyo probably for generations. But by technicality his home was somewhere in the Japanese countryside. So he went to this place somewhere and there are some rustic area of Hiroshima prefecture to take his physical exam. The idea of being in contrast to the farm boys with their
powerful constitutions he a city boy would really look sickly. And so. To his relief and relief for the family he failed a physical exam. I don't think there was any question of his overly well and I was a bit of an anchor. I got from a piece which was written by at Dow Houston under the auspices of the Elysee Palace and fun paper that this man wrote that received the prize. However he might have been wrong I would defer to you since you and I think were almost out of the side I think is correct. But quite apart from that he certainly was. Became aware of his his unimpressive physic and his frailness and his whether he liked it or not the fact that he was a member of the Japanese until Against year which has traditionally scorned any kind of emphasis on physical fitness and so on one occasionally sees Japanese
novelist. On the golf links and so on but that's about the extreme of their act. So he's good riddance resenting the lack of physical healings that did that and he was embarrassed by it but not really hated being associated with the other. Hagrid intellectuals the typical Japanese intellectual of 19 say 1953 and there is still quite a few of them around. Gaunt looking. Carrying a briefcase and a mop of dishevelled hair. Looking as if they're only Sarka their only hope of pleasure came from drinking in some little bar at night there was nothing How was I counterparts are all old when you look at your counterparts are all over New York City but mish you might put that was not the way for a novelist to be a novelist he he suddenly became convinced should be a happy man and should be a strong
man should be a man not absorbed with self pity or self-analysis and so on but a wise man a person who looked at the world who understood the world who could. Analyze it and also could in some way lead it and inspire it. And he felt that unless the novelist with some sense physically capable of leading. Simply our words would not be enough. I think this was part of his motivation in taking up the culture of physical strength. But there's a kink you know other reasons then should for his taking his life aside from the ones you have already discussed. One was the fact that he was basically that is I'm sorry psychologically demented at the time that there was a growing psychosis in him which culminated in this
self-destruction and the other is his king and his disappointment at being mentioned for the Nobel Prize for literature and yet not having received it you think either of those two things is a part of this. I don't I definitely do not think that he was insane or psychotic or anything of that kind. But I can't imagine that anybody who made the decision is he must have say in March to kill himself when he completed his novel which he extremely methodically calculated would be in November. Must have felt as November approached an increasing amount of tension this had been normal it would be it would be insane if he felt nothing at all knowing that. Now there's one month left now of the three weeks left and so on. There must have been a greater and greater tension within him as he realized the day was coming it was not quite the same as making up on one's mind to kill oneself and then doing it right then and there. This was
something that at built up over a long period of time and I'm sure that during the summer when I was conversing with him in the most cheerful possible way he knew all this time that he would be dead by the next summer he said so in the letter he wrote to me. So undoubtedly there was a great tension within him. But this is by no means the same as being insane. I would reject that most emphatically. His last letter to me which I was not dated beyond November the date must be written very shortly before he killed himself was not the letter. Of an insane man. What did he say about death in that letter. Well the letter as it was extremely kind was a letter describing how much our friendship had meant to him over the years. But he didn't explain very much saying I'm sure you understand without my explaining.
Well this is flattering of course a very deeply flattering in a way to be told this but at the same time disappointing. However if he had told me at that time what his reasons were I'm sure he would have said the same thing as he said publicly that it was his feeling of rage at the state of Japan today. I'm sure there were other reasons many other reasons too that. Lay beneath this that must have initially started him on this course. And as for your second question about the Nobel Prize certainly he was disappointed. There had been unofficial assurances from well-informed people in Stockholm and elsewhere that he was being very considerate. And I myself very foolishly. Now I think. I told a conversation I had with a Danish writer who knew some of the inside story of the awarding of the prize to kow about the Raben
mission my mission when he heard this. Perhaps a totally untrustworthy account said nothing at all but it must have come as a rather a shock. To be learned that he had been deprived of the prize for a perfectly stupid and fourth reason. Yes but I think I'm sorry to interrupt but our time is so short and this is the question perhaps which means the most to us in the West since it's becoming no doubt a great hero to Japanese people especially the youth of Japan. His viewpoint will no doubt affect them wisely and anti-foreign person. Will that carry over into their thinking. I hope not and I'm sure he himself was not. Not if one of his closest friends included foreign people the last two letters he wrote. As far as I know we're written to two foreign friends are his way of living was one which embraced the West. He knew Western literature loved
it his house was decorated totally in Western style. He ate western food he did everything in a western manner. But this was not. An affectation it was not a contradiction it was instead a combination as the combination of Chrysanthemum and the sword within him so the combination of east and west. I hope that his followers or those who is inspired by him will realize this. Thank you very much Dr King it is not so easy to discuss something like this and why I greatly appreciate it. I like you tell our audience that we have been discussing the matter any magic genius Yukio Mishima about 10 or 11 of his books have been translated into English and anyone who would like a list of these books we will make it available. You might want to know more about what this man thought through his writings and his friend who has been on our program is Professor Donald King and Dr. King is in the department of East Asian languages and cultures of
Columbia University and a translator of some of those works. Thank you and good bye. That concludes tonight's edition of the Asia Society presents with Lee Graham. This series comes to us through the cooperation of the Asia Society. If you would like to comment on tonight's program or would like further information about the society and how you can participate in its many interesting activities please write to Mrs. Graham. WNYC New York 1 triple 0 7 and make a note to join us again next week at this time for another edition of the Asia Society presents. Those is the national educational radio network.
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Series
Asia Society presents
Episode Number
72
Producing Organization
WNYC
Contributing Organization
University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/500-f18sgc9c
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Series Description
Asia Society presents is a series of programs from WNYC and The Asia Society. Through interviews with experts on Asian affairs, the series attempts to strengthen listeners understanding of Asian people and ideas. Episodes focus on specific countries and political, cultural, and historical topics.
Genres
Talk Show
Topics
Education
Global Affairs
Race and Ethnicity
Media type
Sound
Duration
00:28:57
Credits
Host: Graham, Leigh
Producing Organization: WNYC
AAPB Contributor Holdings
University of Maryland
Identifier: 69-6-72 (National Association of Educational Broadcasters)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Duration: 00:29:09
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Chicago: “Asia Society presents; 72,” University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 29, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-f18sgc9c.
MLA: “Asia Society presents; 72.” University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 29, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-f18sgc9c>.
APA: Asia Society presents; 72. Boston, MA: University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-f18sgc9c