Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985) - full transcript
A fictionalized account in four segments of the life of Japan's celebrated twentieth-century author Yukio Mishima. Three of the segments parallel events in Mishima's life with his novels (The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (Kinkaku-ji), Kyoko's House, and Runaway Horses), while the fourth depicts 25 November 1970, "The Last Day"...
All my life, I have been acutely aware...
...of a contradiction
in the very nature of my existence.
For 45 years,
I struggled to resolve this dilemma...
...by writing plays and novels.
The more I wrote, the more I realized
mere words were not enough.
So I found another form of expression.
When I examine my early childhood...
...I see myself as a boy
leaning at the window...
...forever watching a world
I was unable to change...
...forever hoping it would change by itself.
At 7 weeks of age, I was taken
from my mother by my grandmother.
I looked after
my grandmother's failing health.
She entertained me with stories
and provided playmates.
On special occasions,
she arranged trips to the theater.
When I was 12,
my grandmother, then dying...
...permitted me to return
to the care of my mother.
Later that year, I entered middle school.
In my earliest years, I realized life
consisted of two contradictory elements.
One was words,
which could change the world.
The other was the world itself,
which had nothing to do with words.
For the average person,
the body precedes language.
In my case, words came first.
Suddenly I came across a picture...
...whose only purpose had been to lie
in wait for centuries and ambush me.
The white matchless beauty of the youth's
body hung against the tree trunk...
...his hands tied by thongs.
I trembled with joy. My loins swelled.
My hand unconsciously began a motion
it had never been taught.
My need to transform reality
was an urgent necessity...
...as important as
three meals a day or sleep.
When I was 18,
my class was assigned air-raid duty.
I wrote short stories and poems...
...but dreamed only of joining the war
and dying for the Emperor.
I wanted to explode like a rocket...
...light the sky for an instant
and disappear.
I took the pen name Yukio Mishima.
I'd always dreamed of dying
on the battlefield.
So why did I lie?
Why did I exaggerate my illness?
My words were lies.
I never really wanted to die.
At the end of the war, I felt left behind.
I thought I was the symbol of my times...
...a kamikaze for beauty.
But I'd only been a boy
who wrote bad poetry.
I quit my job at the Ministry of Finance
to become a writer.
I wrote Confessions of a Mask
in six months.
Thirst for Love took five months.
Forbidden Colors took nine.
Sound of Waves, four.
Modern Noh Dramas, three.
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, ten.
Every night I returned to my desk,
precisely at midnight.
I thoroughly analyze
why I am attracted to a particular theme.
I drag everything into my conscious mind.
I boil it into abstraction.
I am constantly calculating
until I sit down to write.
Only then can my unconscious dreams
take over.
My life is in many ways
like that of an actor.
I also wear a mask, I play a role.
When he looks in the mirror,
the homosexual, like the actor...
...sees what he fears most:
The decay of the body.
As the ship approached Hawaii,
I felt as if I'd emerged from a cave...
...and shook hands with the sun.
I'd always suffered
under a monstrous sensitivity.
What I lacked was health, a healthy body,
a physical presence.
Words had separated me from my body.
The sun released me.
Greece cured my self-hatred
and awoke a will to health.
I saw that beauty and ethics
were one and the same.
Creating a beautiful work of art and
becoming beautiful oneself are identical.
I obtained physical health
after becoming an adult.
Such people are different
from those born healthy.
We feel we have the right
to be insensitive to trivial concerns.
The loss of self through sex
gives us little satisfaction.
I was married in 1958.
My daughter was born in 1959.
My son, 1961.
A writer is a voyeur par excellence.
I came to detest this position.
I sought not only to be the seer,
but also the seen.
Men wear masks
to make themselves beautiful.
But, unlike a woman's, a man's
determination to become beautiful...
...is always a desire for death.
Words are a deceit.
In order to transform reality,
the writer must be deceitful.
But action is never deceitful.
"The harmony of pen and sword. "
This samurai motto
used to be a way of life.
Now it's forgotten.
Can art and action still be united?
Today this harmony can only occur
in a brief flash, a single moment.
The average age for men
in the Bronze Age was 18...
...in the Roman era, 22.
Heaven must have been beautiful then.
Today it must look dreadful.
When a man reaches 40,
he has no chance to die beautifully.
No matter how he tries,
he will die of decay.
He must compel himself to live.
The Shield Society is proud
to welcome you on our first anniversary...
...for the presentation of our new uniforms.
We are a standby army...
...an army of shields to protect
His lmperial Majesty.
We are a spiritual army...
...dedicated to purity.
We oppose the corruption...
...and modernization
of the Japanese spirit...
...both from the right...
...and the left.
A month after the radical left
occupied Tokyo University...
...they challenged me to speak.
The police warned
they could not guarantee my safety.
For a moment I felt I was entering
the realm where art and action converge.
For a moment, I was alive.
Sitting alone at my desk at midnight,
as I had every night for 20 years...
...I felt empty.
Then, again came the words.
Effortlessly, urgently.
Again the rehearsal began.
Running in the early mist
with the members of the Shield Society...
...I felt something emerging
as slowly as my sweat:
The ultimate verification of my existence.
Our members were allowed to train
in the facilities of the regular army.
I flew in a combat fighter.
These privileges were granted us...
...because of the symbolic significance
of our society.
Even in its present weakened condition...
...the Army represented
the ancient code of the Samurai.
It was here on the stage of Japanese
tradition that I would conduct my action.
Having come to my solution,
I never wavered.
Who knows what others will make of this?
There would be no more rehearsals.
Body and spirit had never blended.
Never in physical action...
...had I discovered
the chilling satisfaction of words.
Never in words had I experienced
the hot darkness of action.
Somewhere there must be a higher
principle which reconciles art and action.
That principle, it occurred to me,
was death.
The vast upper atmosphere,
where there is no oxygen...
...is surrounded with death.
To survive in this atmosphere,
man, like an actor, must wear a mask.
Flying at 45,000 feet...
...the silver phallus of the fuselage
floated in the sunlight.
My mind was at ease,
my thought process lively.
No movement, no sound, no memories.
The closed cockpit and outer space...
...were like the spirit and body
of the same being.
Here I saw the outcome of my final action.
In this stillness
was a beauty beyond words.
No more body or spirit, pen or sword...
...male or female.
Then I saw a giant circle
coiled around the Earth.
A ring that resolved all contradictions,
a ring vaster than death...
...more fragrant than any scent
I have ever known.
Here was the moment
I had always been seeking.
"The instant the blade tore open his flesh...
"...the bright disk of the sun soared up
behind his eyelids and exploded...
"...lighting the sky for an instant. "
...of a contradiction
in the very nature of my existence.
For 45 years,
I struggled to resolve this dilemma...
...by writing plays and novels.
The more I wrote, the more I realized
mere words were not enough.
So I found another form of expression.
When I examine my early childhood...
...I see myself as a boy
leaning at the window...
...forever watching a world
I was unable to change...
...forever hoping it would change by itself.
At 7 weeks of age, I was taken
from my mother by my grandmother.
I looked after
my grandmother's failing health.
She entertained me with stories
and provided playmates.
On special occasions,
she arranged trips to the theater.
When I was 12,
my grandmother, then dying...
...permitted me to return
to the care of my mother.
Later that year, I entered middle school.
In my earliest years, I realized life
consisted of two contradictory elements.
One was words,
which could change the world.
The other was the world itself,
which had nothing to do with words.
For the average person,
the body precedes language.
In my case, words came first.
Suddenly I came across a picture...
...whose only purpose had been to lie
in wait for centuries and ambush me.
The white matchless beauty of the youth's
body hung against the tree trunk...
...his hands tied by thongs.
I trembled with joy. My loins swelled.
My hand unconsciously began a motion
it had never been taught.
My need to transform reality
was an urgent necessity...
...as important as
three meals a day or sleep.
When I was 18,
my class was assigned air-raid duty.
I wrote short stories and poems...
...but dreamed only of joining the war
and dying for the Emperor.
I wanted to explode like a rocket...
...light the sky for an instant
and disappear.
I took the pen name Yukio Mishima.
I'd always dreamed of dying
on the battlefield.
So why did I lie?
Why did I exaggerate my illness?
My words were lies.
I never really wanted to die.
At the end of the war, I felt left behind.
I thought I was the symbol of my times...
...a kamikaze for beauty.
But I'd only been a boy
who wrote bad poetry.
I quit my job at the Ministry of Finance
to become a writer.
I wrote Confessions of a Mask
in six months.
Thirst for Love took five months.
Forbidden Colors took nine.
Sound of Waves, four.
Modern Noh Dramas, three.
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, ten.
Every night I returned to my desk,
precisely at midnight.
I thoroughly analyze
why I am attracted to a particular theme.
I drag everything into my conscious mind.
I boil it into abstraction.
I am constantly calculating
until I sit down to write.
Only then can my unconscious dreams
take over.
My life is in many ways
like that of an actor.
I also wear a mask, I play a role.
When he looks in the mirror,
the homosexual, like the actor...
...sees what he fears most:
The decay of the body.
As the ship approached Hawaii,
I felt as if I'd emerged from a cave...
...and shook hands with the sun.
I'd always suffered
under a monstrous sensitivity.
What I lacked was health, a healthy body,
a physical presence.
Words had separated me from my body.
The sun released me.
Greece cured my self-hatred
and awoke a will to health.
I saw that beauty and ethics
were one and the same.
Creating a beautiful work of art and
becoming beautiful oneself are identical.
I obtained physical health
after becoming an adult.
Such people are different
from those born healthy.
We feel we have the right
to be insensitive to trivial concerns.
The loss of self through sex
gives us little satisfaction.
I was married in 1958.
My daughter was born in 1959.
My son, 1961.
A writer is a voyeur par excellence.
I came to detest this position.
I sought not only to be the seer,
but also the seen.
Men wear masks
to make themselves beautiful.
But, unlike a woman's, a man's
determination to become beautiful...
...is always a desire for death.
Words are a deceit.
In order to transform reality,
the writer must be deceitful.
But action is never deceitful.
"The harmony of pen and sword. "
This samurai motto
used to be a way of life.
Now it's forgotten.
Can art and action still be united?
Today this harmony can only occur
in a brief flash, a single moment.
The average age for men
in the Bronze Age was 18...
...in the Roman era, 22.
Heaven must have been beautiful then.
Today it must look dreadful.
When a man reaches 40,
he has no chance to die beautifully.
No matter how he tries,
he will die of decay.
He must compel himself to live.
The Shield Society is proud
to welcome you on our first anniversary...
...for the presentation of our new uniforms.
We are a standby army...
...an army of shields to protect
His lmperial Majesty.
We are a spiritual army...
...dedicated to purity.
We oppose the corruption...
...and modernization
of the Japanese spirit...
...both from the right...
...and the left.
A month after the radical left
occupied Tokyo University...
...they challenged me to speak.
The police warned
they could not guarantee my safety.
For a moment I felt I was entering
the realm where art and action converge.
For a moment, I was alive.
Sitting alone at my desk at midnight,
as I had every night for 20 years...
...I felt empty.
Then, again came the words.
Effortlessly, urgently.
Again the rehearsal began.
Running in the early mist
with the members of the Shield Society...
...I felt something emerging
as slowly as my sweat:
The ultimate verification of my existence.
Our members were allowed to train
in the facilities of the regular army.
I flew in a combat fighter.
These privileges were granted us...
...because of the symbolic significance
of our society.
Even in its present weakened condition...
...the Army represented
the ancient code of the Samurai.
It was here on the stage of Japanese
tradition that I would conduct my action.
Having come to my solution,
I never wavered.
Who knows what others will make of this?
There would be no more rehearsals.
Body and spirit had never blended.
Never in physical action...
...had I discovered
the chilling satisfaction of words.
Never in words had I experienced
the hot darkness of action.
Somewhere there must be a higher
principle which reconciles art and action.
That principle, it occurred to me,
was death.
The vast upper atmosphere,
where there is no oxygen...
...is surrounded with death.
To survive in this atmosphere,
man, like an actor, must wear a mask.
Flying at 45,000 feet...
...the silver phallus of the fuselage
floated in the sunlight.
My mind was at ease,
my thought process lively.
No movement, no sound, no memories.
The closed cockpit and outer space...
...were like the spirit and body
of the same being.
Here I saw the outcome of my final action.
In this stillness
was a beauty beyond words.
No more body or spirit, pen or sword...
...male or female.
Then I saw a giant circle
coiled around the Earth.
A ring that resolved all contradictions,
a ring vaster than death...
...more fragrant than any scent
I have ever known.
Here was the moment
I had always been seeking.
"The instant the blade tore open his flesh...
"...the bright disk of the sun soared up
behind his eyelids and exploded...
"...lighting the sky for an instant. "