Before Yukio Mishima committed ritual suicide on 25 November 1970 he delivered a speech from a balcony in the garrison in central Tokyo, which he had occupied along with four members of his private militia, calling for a military coup and the restoration of imperial power. Mishima had timed his suicide to coincide with the official opening of the Japanese Diet (legislature), which would be attended by the prime minister and the emperor himself, with the aim of challenging Japan’s semi-pacifist postwar constitution. Following his speech Mishima returned to the commandant’s office and carried out seppuku, the suicide by disembowelment that had been practised by samurai in former times. When the stomach had been sliced open with a short sword, the rite would be finished by an aide who would behead the warrior. After three unsuccessful attempts, Mishima’s head was severed by a member of his militia. His long-planned exit from the modern world was complete.
His suicide at the age of 45 became the most widely known episode in Mishima’s life. Often forgotten is the fact that the soldiers who assembled below the balcony to hear his final speech responded by laughing and jeering at him. The prolific author of around 40 novels, dozens of plays and many volumes of short stories, books of essays, film scripts and a libretto, may not have been surprised by this reaction. In all his work, he projected an image of himself as standing in opposition to the age in which he lived. He looked back with nostalgia to a Japan shaped by heroic and chivalric values. His dramatic suicide was interpreted – as he meant it to be – as an act of defiance directed against the modern country that Japan had become.
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