Yûkoku

Based on Mishima’s own novel of the same name, Yûkoku deals with the ritual suicide of high-ranking naval officer Takeyama. His harakiri is spun out as a long, emotional, romantic ritual in which he is joined (all the way to the graphically bloody end) by his wife Reiko. With its cast of two and minimalist set, the film allows nothing to interfere with the passion between husband and wife as they say their goodbyes.
Shot in black and white, silent with long expository intertitles, Mishima visually references Noh theatre. Set in a single one-room interior, with only a sign reading ‘shisei’ (fidelity) emblazoned on the wall, Yûkoku is made up of carefully composed, static wide shots and lingering close-ups – none of which, incidentally, show Mishima’s eyes. The filming was completed in two days, technicians had been borrowed. At Mishima’s insistence, all of this was kept secret. The calligraphy used in the film was all Mishima’s – the hanging scroll on the set, the credits etc. Only intermittently screened abroad, it was banned from exhibition in Japan by Mishima’s widow, who apparently ordered all available prints to be destroyed. No doubt this was due to the remarkably parallels to Mishima’s own suicide in 1970. The making of the film Yûkoku was also featured in dramatized form in Paul Schrader’s 1984 biopic Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, with Ken Ogata playing the author.