11.25 The Day Mishima Chose His Own Fate

Besides a feted writer, Mishima Yukio (1925-1970) was a fanatical supporter of the Japanese Emperor and ‘bushido’ honour codes of the Samurai. Here, director Wakamatsu Koji, who died in October 2012, shows Mishima’s right-wing radicalisation in the turbulent 1960s. Japan was a polarised society in which extreme left-wing students occupied universities while the right tried to put Japanese nationalism back on the map, by revising the 1951 security treaty between Japan and the US that banned Japanese military intervention and allowed American military bases in Japan.
The film, larded with archive footage, shows Mishima undergoing intensive military training and becoming increasingly radical, founding the paramilitary organisation Tatenokai (Shield Society) in order to organise a coup like the one in 1936. When this fails, there is nothing left for him than to commit seppuku (ritual suicide).

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