Customer Reviews

The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

Earlier this year, I came across works of Mishima in the used book section of my local book store. When I read that Mishima had committed seppuku and had an "army of young men," I became intrigued about him. I purchased this book and the biography written by John Nathan. I found both books informative and while both covered essentially the same ground, each had items missing in the other. I do not consider one superior to the other, although Scott-Stokes' opening chapter, which details the day of Mishima's death, is riveting stuff. Scott-Stokes, as a journalist, is better at representing Mishima's life in the context of the Japan he lived in, while Nathan, a teacher/writer, is better at interpreting the author's works. Neither can fully explain why Mishima did what he did at the end of his life, but each does his best to give insight into this complex man. It is gracious of Nathan to admit, in the foreword to the newest printing of his biography, that he now understands Mishima better than he did when he wrote the book. Having read both biographies, I know what he means.

Henry Scott Stokes' THE LIFE AND DEATH OF YUKIO MISHIMA is one of the few biographies in English of the Japanese novelist, whose 1970 death by seppuku after a failed coup d'etat is just as much a part of his legacy as his works.

Scott Stokes understands how Mishima's death overshadows all else, and he begins the work with a very detailed description of Mishima's failed coup and suicide, before going back to his birth and beginning his life stories. His book is based on few interviews; Scott Stokes feels that everything is already out there in written form and can be compacted for English readers. The description of Mishima's unsuccessful coup, for example, is based on records of the trial of the survivors.

Scott Stokes knew Mishima himself in the late 1960's, and was a keen observer of his political activity. He was even the only journalist to view training exercises of Mishima's private army. Because of this first-hand perspective, the latter portion of Mishima's life is told in great detail. Much less, satisfying, however, is his coverage of Mishima's earlier years, in which a large amount of detail is "reconstructed" from Mishima's semi-autobiographical work CONFESSIONS OF A MASK, a dubious approach. For a better view of Mishima's life prior to 1964, I'd recommend John Nathan's MISHIMA: A BIOGRAPHY, written by one of his translators who knew him early on, and to which Mishima's family contributed through personal interviews.

There is a wealth of information about Mishima's books, especially about his masterpiece "The Sea of Fertility" for which detailed summaries are given. I found this had a downside in that it spoiled the surprise ending of THE DECAY OF THE ANGEL for me, and I'd recommend reading that entire cycle, as well as other works which interest you, before coming to this biography.

While Scott Stokes autobiography has not been changed since the first edition in 1974, he has contributed an epilogue to the new Cooper Square Press edition which I feel is actually the strongest part of the book. Certainly necessary reading for Mishima fans. It shows how the perspective on Mishima's work has changed in the last quarter-century, and how many still consider him a fine writer, but fewer and fewer would actually consider him a genius. He also explains how the Japanese now perceive him, complaining that it is sad that Japan's post-literary culture of movies and manga has resulted in Mishima and his mentor Kawabata being nearly forgotten.

A curious matter about the life and death of Yukio Mishima is that the more one learns, the more questions one has. And nothing entirely suffices to explain the way he chose to end his life. Still, Scott Stokes does give some helpful clues. I'd recommend THE LIFE AND DEATH OF YUKIO MISHIMA to fans of the writer's work, as well as those who just marvel at the novelist's bizarre death. Pick up Nathan's biography at the same time, though.

If you're going to read a biography on Mishima Yukio, please read Mishima: A Biography by John Nathan. Nathan met Mishima when he agreed to translate one of Mishima's novels into English, (and thus got to know him as the two hung-out on a number of occasions during this time). In the writing of this biography, Nathan had the cooperation of Mishima's family and some of his closest friends, as well as access to Mishima's vast library, and the resultant work is amazing. Scott-Stokes's book, in contrast, seems sophmoric and downright ridiculous at times. Yes, he knew Mishima. Yes, he spent time with him before he died. But only Mishima knew what Mishima was planning to do prior to his suicide. For Scott-Stokes to pretend to have a fly-on-the-wall view into Mishima's actions and thoughts leading up to that event is ridiculous. It was completely off-putting for me and cheapened what could have been an okay treatment of this complex man. Wait, an ammendment to my earlier statement: Do read Scott-Stokes's book (check it out from your local library); it will make you appreciate your subsequent reading of Nathan's book that much more.

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.

"The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima" by Henry Stokes is to say the least, an impressive study in abnormal human psychology, literary genius, and tragic insanity. Yukio Mishima was obvioulsy a man of many facets, and one of great complexities. Mishima appears to have viewed himeslf as an "elected angel of the gods" to resurrect the greatness of Imperial Japan. Even more evident were his perverse ideals of self, and..."love."

The book explores Mishima's twisted views of beauty and anachronoistic minglings between fantasy and reality; but always...always hinged on the obsession of death as the ultimate "savior of youth."

Yet, no matter how askewed or, twisted Mishima's ideas of resurrecting Yamato Damashii (Japanese fighting spirit), he was without a doubt; Poet and... Samurai.

The author seems to rely almost totally upon Mishima's main literary work: "Confessions of a Mask" to develope his understanding and psychoanalysis of this very complex personality. Although, the author knew Mishima his contact with him was overall, limited compared to others in Mishima's life. None the less, Mr. Stokes is able to give the reader an educated opinion of this extraordinary man who ended his failed coup d' etat by the only way Imperial Japan would have allowed...Hara-Kiri.

"TENNO HEIKA BANZAI....TENNO HEIKA BANZAI...TENNO HEIKA BANZAI!"

The book is somewhat indepth and requires some patience and on-going concentration. It is a unique book about a unique subject, and a unique individual. Well worth the price!!

I first started reading Mishima ten years ago when I lived in Japan, and immediately gobbled up Confessions of a Mask, Forbidden Colors, Noh Plays and his novella; Patriotism. A few years ago I also read The Sea of Fertillity series of books (Spring Snow/Runaway Horses/The Temple of Dawn/The Decay of the Angel) that are acknowledged as his 'masterpiece' and, although many readers are guided toward the earlier novels and short stories, I'd definitely suggest the long-haul project of reading The Sea of Fertillity. To understand Mishima these last books are really the ones to focus on, for me.

At the same time as finishing this sequence I found myself picking up second-hand copies of both the biographies mentioned here (I chose Scott-Stokes to focus on). Neither the Nathan book nor Scott-Stokes, in my opinion, really show a deep understanding of Mishima or his books, mainly because they show no deep understanding of the traditions that formed his upbringing and the time that he lived in... I hope that soon translators will delve into the mounds of criticism written on Mishima from within his home country so as to give the reader in English a more rounded sense of him as the complex multi-faceted writer that he was.

What DOES reveal something much more genuine about Mishima is Paul Schrader's little known 1985 film Mishima - A Life in Four Chapters, anyone also interested in Mishima's life should also track down his film Patriotism, released in 1966. It seems that there were rehearsals of his suicide on film and in his books (notably Runaway Horses) that predicted his self inflicted death.

After reading a bunch of his books it struck me that to understand Mishima's death one must understand his life (and this is why I was intrigued by Scott-Stokes title) and, in detail, the Samurai heritage that moulded his life and art. Much of this detail is not present in current perspectives on Mishima in English, and, since Japanese culture has moved away from its imperial past (and, not well known to most researchers, had its constitution written by the U.S after WWII) it may even be difficult to find a Japanese scholar among newer generations who understands the traditions Mishima was trying to protect, particularly toward the end of his life. In fact, the legend that he simply went a bit mad and did away with himself (as hinted at by the news reports in another review) doesn't help the curious observer to understand his final actions.

What I will say is that, from living in Japan a fair while, and from using my own intuition about what people told me, rather than depending on books like Scott-Stokes, an analysis of post-war Japan is needed. Mishima, it is document, had no love for either the radical left or the radical right in the 1960s... he saw a much deeper psychic turning point in the collective mind of his nation that involved the endangerment of its sovereignty, and the spirituality of his people. As well as this, contradictorily, he was hungry for fame and success in a literary culture that focussed less on the fundamentals of Japanese culture and more and more on European literary traditions... and perhaps the later work tries to focus more on what were the true influences on his sense of what art and literature might be, and of what was essential to his view of the Japanese spirit.

(As a side-note to this I'd say I have deep reservations of what Mishima saw as the function of art, possibly because it was deeply dependant on the newly emerging conceptions of what structuralism and post-modernism might do for the human mind, with particular notice given to Mishima's Francophile leanings)

The Japanese, prior to the second world war, had an immense pride in the sovereignty of their nation and I myself spoke to elderly women who mentioned that, when at school (after the war), many of their teachers had gone out into the countryside and committed suicide so as not to 1/admit Japan's defeat in the war in front of their students or 2/not to be subject to the propagandist education system that produced the faux history that the Japanese student protestors of the 1960s inherited.

This is the context in which Mishima's life should be commented on. Those of Mishima's generation had seen, and analysed carefully, both worlds... Japan: pre and post-war. I'd like to quickly suggest, before I wrap up, that there are five historical prongs that any researcher would need to include if they were to understand Mishima's death (and thus; life) coherently and sensibly, and, in that way, be able to write an insightful biography of the man.

Firstly, the undermining of the emperor's role in public life after WWII. Remember that just a decade or so earlier the emperor was worshipped as a human deity on earth. This is a very quick and significant change for those of Mishima's generation.

Secondly, the undermining of the financial systems that were in place in Japan prior to the war. Schrader's film documents that Mishima lay the blame for Japan's spiritual degradation squarely at the feet of the Bank of Japan (an interesting point to follow up on in light of what is happening in Japan presently) who assume, as in Europe and the U.S, a secret governmental role in the affairs of the public, something perhaps more clear to those of Mishima's day than those of our own; so governed by media spin.

Thirdly, the poverty in Japan within at least the first decade and a half after WWII, making students more receptive to forms of social control such as T.V propoganda, along with the beginnings of Japan's modern consumerist culture, exactly at the time that Mishima is becoming more and more acknowledged as a writer.

Fourthly, the undermining of the military in Japan, in fact, it's effective disbanding in all but name after WWII, as well as its constitution stipulating that it must not take part in nuclear arms research (now carried out without much press coverage). More importantly, the military had its roots inextricably bound up with Samurai lineage, and the sixties were the era for its incoming generals to slowly lose this part of their cultural memory... encouraged, in the main, by larger salaries provided by the banks, and thus further devotion to the new consumerist culture that was beginning to become prominent.

Here, I can't help thinking back to the words of another well known writer who died around the same time, Ezra Pound, who, in a letter to his editor for the introduction to a new edition of his Selected Prose, just four months before his death, wrote:

re USURY:
I was out of focus, taking a symptom for a cause.
The cause is avarice.

4th July 1972

It was this same avarice, I suggest, that had caused Mishima's criticism of the military in his own country, and very probably why Schrader's film of 1985 courted such little publicity at the time, given that the same brand of person that made up the generals and politicians that ran Japan at the time also infest the corporate media of the `free world' fifteen years later... with avarice of the individual inextricably linking both author's concerns.

Lastly, as in the U.S, the attempts to limit and therefore co-opt the protest movements in Japan of the mid-late 1960s, and to obscure left and right via corporatism so as to divide the culture and undermine its history and cultural traditions... we can then see these specifically Japanese problems in tandem with the well known assassinations of John F.Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King and other world events.

In order to research the protest movements of Japan during the 1960s I'd also recommend, with a few reservations, the well known documentary maker Tsuchimoto Noriaki's 1969 film Pre-Partisan

As a footnote any budding biographer would also have to look into Mishima's complex sexual leanings (whether heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual or a combination of all three) specifically with reference to what was tolerated in mainstream society at the time, how Japanese masculinity and the male self image had progressed in Japan before and during Mishima's day, and also, without prejudice, investigate how his sense of his own Samurai lineage with its concordant conceptions of tragedy/virility interplayed (played along with/worked against) his sexual sense of himself (how could an analysis of Kyoko's House or or the Japanese Nausee; Confessions of a Mask, not include these focii?)

If the budding biographer took up all of these things and set themselves a thorough research program (particularly immersing themselves in the Japanese scholarship and commentary of the last half century) then a statisfying brick of a book, marketed and written with both scholars and the general reader in mind, MIGHT help us on our way to having a 'definitive biography' of sorts in English.

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.

this is the kind of book where, if youve read enough of mishima, you'll feel like you have a better interpretation of him than this biographer. scott-stokes was a financial columnist who knew mishima for the last few years of his life. its impressive that he was the only foreigner at the press conference the day of mishima's death, as well as the funeral, but how he writes about it is not that good; he starts the book with an omniscient naration of mishima's last day, then shifts to actual biography. his appreciation of mishima's suicide is almost derisive, very western.

he admits he didnt read much of mishima during their friendship, and had little interest for biographical reflections like sun and steel. he required a translater during interviews, he doesnt even speak fluent japanese. he also admits he must skip analysing some periods of mishima's work because of the length of his book, but his book is only 250 pages! and i did not agree with what he had to say about the sea of fertility. so much of his description of mishima's early life is based on either regurgitating confessions of a mask or extensively quoting donald keene, mishima's early translator.

the whole mess comes off as scott-stokes trying to profit by filling a niche, the niche of an english biography of an infamous japanese figure five years after his death. theres still probably an article on line which contradicts a lot of his attitude in this biography, and posits he knew Mishima's suicide intentions but didnt know what to do, and now is trying to sell a script about their friendship. bah. oh, and there are only like 12 photos, the importance of which is misrepresented on the back page of my edition.