can we talk about yukio mishima?

I was starting investigations a while back for an article about camp, Romanticism, homosexuality and fascism, but the project petered out for lack of any central point to nail down. All I know is that it involves Mishima, Robert Brasillach, Starship Troopers, fascism as "the aestheticization of politics," and that part of Kiss of the Spider Woman where Molina's describing the Nazi film and basically says "yeah, I know they're Nazis, it's just that the film itself is beautiful."

Camp/romanticism/fascism/homosexuality.. Pro wrestling. Fight Club. The Governator.

Anyone read Yourcenar's book on him?

this is one of my favourite photographs EVER:
http://www.designboom.com/portrait/hosoe/o2.jpg

Hey, and voila voila, here you are.

watching law & order and vincent d'onofrio & the other woman (dont know name) were searching the apartment of a suspected serial killer. woman runs her hand along the bookshelf: "novels by yukio mishima?" d'onofrio: "domination porn for intellectuals"

lol

Mishima fans must see 'Black Lizard'. It was sold as camp, but it's so much more. Adopted for the screen & starring Yukio (as the 'Human Statue').

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/videos/blacklizardnrhinson_a0a71c.htm

I really loved "Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea", but haven't gotten around to reading the other Mishima stuff I bought.

i think i would find this totally unreadable now..

Read "Spring Snow" and "Confessions..", liked them ok...something a bit stiff, not as grim as I thought it would be, but its not as if I ws reading v closely and I did end up feeling like wanting to read a lot more in the end.

What are his plays like?

Scratch the above: Sea of Fertility tetralogy is pretty much vital, just takes a while to tune into his schitck which, through sheer repetition and stuff like BELIEF and CONVICTION carried me along and becomes anything but schtick.

Anyone catch the run of Schrader's film at the ICA this week? Glass's score is as oppressive as Mishima's 'nonsense'.

Gotta see his film next.

Forbidden Colours is a fascinating look into the gay life of Japan circa the 1950s. Also a look into Mishima's own sexual arrangements, it seems.

also this catalog/book is indispensable, imho.

http://www.kunsthallewien.at/cgi-bin/img.pl?id=2192

I really loved "Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea"

http://www.tomita.net/image/mishima.jpg

what a piece of ass

didn't know cankles was gay. damn.

i've only read the sailor who fell from grace with the sea, and acts of worship, a collection of his short stories. i need to read more, seems like he led an extraordinary life. the circumstance surrounding his suicide sound utterly surreal

S/D biographies on the guy? I've been reading a few pages of Forbidden Colours every night before bed, and am only like a hundred pages in, but damn, I really need to know more about this guy.

guy

...Okay then, shucks.

i like both of these. feel free to talk about him any time. he is among my favorites...

The Madness and Perversion of Yukio Mishima by Jerry S. Piven

Mishima by Marguerite Yourcenar

vhs of arena doc bunged onto the tube

Strongly agree w/Oshima's comment - he should've observed his own decay.

I watched that a few months ago. It's pretty good but the sound is a tad rough.

Its an awful copy, get what you pay for.

Mishima as an artist is totally dead at the moment isn't he? He is a bit like Fassbinder or Pasolini - a v interesting figure but no one talks about him at all, books aren't reissued (though his film was), no essays, little engagement.

I only knew about him from new-ish writers talking about him on forums. Don't know if he's in any different a situation from the other japanese writers from around that period. Vintage are keeping a few of his books in the shops.

Sure - its not as if they are hard to find, but he is so out of the conversation.

I see more around the likes of Soseki.

mishima's biography, especially his fateful end, can't help but affect how people read his work -- for good or ill -- so maybe that is part of the issue.

i read the sound of waves in 9th grade and didn't think much of it. i bought confessions of a mask a few years ago and it's still on my shelf.. i really like the film about him though

Mishima as an artist is totally dead at the moment isn't he? He is a bit like Fassbinder or Pasolini - a v interesting figure but no one talks about him at all, books aren't reissued (though his film was), no essays, little engagement.

people don't talk about fassbinder and pasolini any more?

No what I meant is that people still talk about both of those but not Mishima - but they are all v alike as these artists who actually also had a very high profile when alive.

I've read so much Mishima. I like the bucolic class-observation stuff ("After The Banquet") way more that the overtly fascist stuff. It does seem as if his profile has dipped but compared to whom? He's still the third most widely read Japanese novelist in the West after Murakami and Ishiguro, no?

Oe's best work (his early stuff, "Nip The Buds, Shoot The Kids", "A Personal Matter", "Teach Us To Outgrow Our Madness") is similar to, and rivals, Grass afaic. I was told that Oe and Mishima would do alternating lecture tours around the Japanese university circuit and rebut each other's lecture from the previous month. 1994 was 21 years ago but he got the Nobel

Oe that is, not Mishima. Mishima's "Forbidden Colours" is the craziest book, the most beautiful manifesto-for-misanthropy ever written by a 24 year old

A few of Mishima's former lieutenants moved into concert booking in the 70s and 80s and would take curious musicians (Bowie, Sylvian) around on Mishima tours

I'm halfway through Donald Ritchie's memoirs and the tiny snippets of info and gossip about Mishima are so alluring.

Isn't Ishiguro an English language author? (I recall him saying he didn't know that much about Japan)

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2015/11/21/general/yukio-mishimas-enduring-unexpected-influence/

Some interesting comments too.

I've heard a number of Japanese creators complain that Japanese people are too homogeneous. That sounded to me like the sort of complaint a lot of people have about their own countrymen, it seemed especially ridiculous when considering the sheer variety of subcultures. But I've heard this complaint about Japan a bit more than most places (which isn't saying much because I don't know much about most countries).
I read an interview with Ishiguro yesterday and he said if he stayed in Japan he would have become a conformist businessman.

Thoughts on this?

I wish he had.

LOL

Found it as I was reading about the translator.

Massive biog, has anyone read it?

I haven't read enough Mishima, but what I've read, I have loved because of the unflinching judgement he makes of his characters. There's a purity in his contempt which somehow becomes a universal sympathy for? acknowledgement of? human failure.
Maybe I've just read the cold ones.

Nah its all like that.

There is a Mishima novel, never translated before, now available in English for the first time.

The translator is a corp lawyer

Has anyone read Beautiful Star? It was I think his only science fiction novel, written in 1962 but only translated into English last year. It's about a family of four who each come to the realization that they hail from different planets after being visited by flying saucers. It's the first Mishima I've read and it exceeded even my inflated expectations--a gorgeously rendered meditation on humanism vs. nihilism and the fickle nature of romance and politics, all steeped in Cold War paranoia.

I found cheap vintage paperbacks of The Sound of Waves, The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea, and After the Banquet last week, so those are next on the queue.

Interesting I'll have to check that out. I've only read CONFESSIONS OF A MASK and TEMPLE OF THE GOLDEN PAVILION. It's hard to track his books down! It always seemed to me that he was obsessed with shame.

I was told by a J to E translator friend that Beautiful Star is excellent excellent

Still waiting on someone to tackle Kyoko’s House

Re: availability I meant to mention Beautiful Star has only been released in the UK so far, so I had to order an import copy to the US. Was about $23 incl. shipping, totally worth it.

Frolic and Star are new ones that I'd love to read. I don't know how I ended up reading virtually everything of his in English but he is very addictive.

i found a copy of THE SOUND OF WAVES in a thrift store yesterday and inhaled half of it last night; will take in the other half tonight i'd guess.

so far it's about young love blossoming in small fishing town on and island. pretty great if not mind-blowing

It's an amazing book imo, follow it up with "After The Banquet" for Mishima at his light-romantic best

i'll look into it. normally i wouldn't let a book jump straight to the beginning of my to-read list, but it basically charmed my pants off. sometimes you just gotta live!