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Yukio Mishima (1925–1970) was one of the giants of Japanese letters as well as an outspoken Right-wing nationalist. Mishima shocked the world on November 25, 1970, when he and members of his private militia, the Tatenokai or Shield Society, took hostage the commander of the Japan Self-Defense Force’s Ichigaya Camp. Mishima then delivered a speech to the assembled soldiers and press, exhorting the Japanese to turn away from American-imposed consumerism back to their traditional aristocratic culture, which prized honor above life and comfort. (more…)
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Spanish translation here
Yukio Mishima was one of the giants of 20th-century Japanese literature. He has exercised an enduring influence on the post-World War II European and North American New Right. In commemoration of his birth, I wish to draw your attention to the following works on this website:
(more…)
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In post-1945 Japan — as in most of the states that lost in World War II — American occupation brought about radical political and social changes. In the 1946 to 1948 Tokyo trial (similar to Nuremberg), several leaders of the war cabinet were sentenced to death or long prison terms. It was also stipulated in the constitution that Japan cannot have its own armed forces, only Jieitai (Japan Self Defense Forces), a small number of volunteers for self-defense purposes. (more…)
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In the latest episode of Guide to Kulchur, Greg Johnson, Guillaume Durocher, and Ty E join Fróði Midjord to discuss the life and art of Yukio Mishima. On November 25th, 50 years ago, Mishima committed ritual suicide to inspire the Japanese to return to their aristocratic honor culture.
The episode is archived on BitChute (video) and Spreaker (audio only). Guide to Kulchur streams live on DLive every Tuesday at 2:00 PM Eastern Time / 20:00 CET.
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It was fifty years ago today that Yukio Mishima, one of Japan’s most celebrated men of letters and an ardent man of the Right, committed suicide at the age of forty-five. What happened, and what did it mean?
On November 25, 1970, Mishima and four followers wearing the uniforms of his private militia group the Shield Society (Tatenokai) visited the Ichigaya Barracks of the Japan Self-Defense Force (the Jieitai). (more…)
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Spanish translation here
Yukio Mishima was one of the giants of 20th-century Japanese literature. He has exercised an enduring influence on the post-World War II European and North American New Right. In commemoration of his birth, I wish to draw your attention to the following works on this website: (more…)
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Yukio Mishima’s 1963 novel The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea is one of his darkest works. Set in post-War Yokohama, it is the story of Fusako Kuroda, a thirty-three-year-old widow who runs a boutique selling Western luxury goods, and her thirteen-year-old son Noboru Kuroda. (See Alex Graham’s discussion of the novel here.)
Fusako’s world is entirely feminine, bourgeois, modern, and Western. She is also deeply lonely. Then she meets Ryuji Tsukazaki, the second-mate on a steamship. (more…)
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Original English translation here.
Příslušníkům Tatenokai (Společenství štítu):
Mezi vámi vidím jak mnohé z těch, kdo s námi neochvějně jsou už od založení organizace, tak členy páté třídy, kteří jsou s námi teprve devět měsíců. Přesto jsme, alespoň co (more…)
Banana Yoshimoto and Yukio Mishima.
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Banana Yoshimoto
Kitchen
Translated by Megan Backus
London: Faber and Faber, 1993
Yukio Mishima
Thirst for Love
Translated by Alfred H. Marks
New York: Random House, 1999 (more…)
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Yukio Mishima, one of the Right’s most celebrated authors, took part in a debate at the University of Tokyo in 1969 with members of the radical Left-wing student group Zenkyoto. The debate was filmed, (more…)
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Translated by Riki Rei
Translator’s note: Mishima penned this essay titled “Anti-Revolutionary Manifesto” in early 1969, almost two years before his suicide, at the peak of Leftist protests, demonstrations, and riots, which were sweeping not just across Japan, but throughout the entire Western world. (more…)
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To listen in a player, click here. To download the mp3, right-click here and choose “save link as” or “save target as.”
In the fall of 2000, I taught an adult education class entitled Philosophy on Film, where we discussed The Matrix, American Beauty, Ground Hog Day, Network, Pulp Fiction, Fight Club, Gattaca, and Crimes and Misdemeanors.
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Translated by Riki Rei.
Translator’s Note:
This text, entitled A Call to Arms, was left on the spot when Yukio Mishima committed seppuku in the General’s office of the East Japan Division of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force at the Ichigaya military base, Tokyo, on November 25, 1970. (more…)
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Translated by Riki Rei.
To the members of Tatenokai [Shield Society]:
Among you there are both those who have stayed with us consistently since the founding of our organization and those of the fifth class who have been with us for only nine months. Yet as far as I’m concerned, regardless of the degrees of your involvement and experience, we are all comrades of a shared identity who have gone beyond the difference of ages (more…)
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I have read Andrew Joyce’s article “Against Mishima” at The Occidental Observer with great interest and mixed feelings. I admire Dr. Joyce’s writings on the Jewish question, but to be candid, his critique of Mishima is on the whole tendentious and shallow. It is also overly emphatic on some topics while neglecting or downplaying other equally, if not more, important ones. (more…)
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Spanish translation here
Yukio Mishima was one of the giants of 20th-century Japanese literature. He has exercised an enduring influence on the post-World War II European and North American New Right. In commemoration of his birth, I wish to draw your attention to the following works on this website:
By Mishima:
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Yukio Mishima
Life for Sale
Translated by Stephen Dodd
London: Penguin Books, 2019
This past year has seen three new English translations of novels by Yukio Mishima: The Frolic of the Beasts, Star, and now Life for Sale, a pulpy, stylish novel that offers an incisive satire of post-war Japanese society. (more…)
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Translated by Guillaume Durocher
Translator’s Note:
This text is drawn from Dominique Venner, Un samouraï d’Occident: Le Bréviaire des insoumis (Paris: Pierre-Guillaume de Roux, 2013), 101-15.. I have previously reviewed this work at The Occidental Observer.
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Spanish translation here
Yukio Mishima was one of the giants of 20th-century Japanese literature. (more…)
Anthony Bourdain and his daughter, Ariane, in 2008.
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In his seminal work, Suicide of the West, James Burnham wrote:
Liberalism is the ideology of western suicide. When once this initial and final sentence is understood, everything about liberalism – the beliefs, emotions and values associated with it, the nature of its enchantment, its practical record, its future – falls into place. (more…)
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Yukio Mishima
My Friend Hitler and Other Plays of Yukio Mishima
Translated by Hiroaki Sato
New York: Columbia University Press, 2002
Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) is best known as a novelist and Right-wing activist who famously and publicly committed ritual suicide in 1970 one day after he had finished his tetralogy The Sea of Fertility. He was, however, a very prolific playwright with more than sixty plays to his name, (more…)
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Spanish translation here
Yukio Mishima was one of the giants of 20th-century Japanese literature. (more…)
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The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea remains imprinted upon the mind long after one has read it. It is one of Mishima’s shorter novels, but its tightly-woven narration heightens the intensity of the atmosphere, simulating a taut bowstring upon readying an arrow.
The novel takes place in Yokohama, Japan’s leading port city, during the American occupation, and unfolds mainly from the perspective of a 13-year-old boy by the name of Noboru Kuroda. (more…)
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In 1950, the Temple of the Golden Pavilion (Kinkaku-ji) in Kyoto was burned to the ground by a young monk. The temple had been built in the fourteenth century and was the finest example of the architecture of the Muromachi period. Covered in gold leaf and crowned with a copper-gold phoenix, it projected an image of majesty and serene beauty. It had been designated a National Treasure in 1897 and was considered a national symbol in Japan. (more…)
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Jonathan Bowden
Extremists: Studies in Metapolitics
Edited by Greg Johnson
San Francisco: Counter-Currents Publishing, 2016
Extremists: Studies in Metapolitics is a highly original book that contains the transcripts of nine of Jonathan Bowden’s orations: one on vanguardism followed by profiles of Thomas Carlyle, Gabriele D’Annunzio, Charles Maurras, Martin Heidegger, Savitri Devi, Julius Evola, Yukio Mishima, and Maurice Cowling. (more…)
653 words
Spanish translation here
Yukio Mishima was one of the giants of 20th-century Japanese literature. (more…)
653 words
Spanish translation here
Yukio Mishima was one of the giants of 20th-century Japanese literature. (more…)
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English original here
Suceden cosas similares en los Estados Unidos: un marginado, ratón de biblioteca, de derechas, comienza a practicar levantamiento de pesas y artes marciales, forma una milicia privada, y sueña con derrocar al gobierno; luego, acaba muriendo en un enfrentamiento espectacular, suicida y en apariencia sin sentido contra el Estado. (more…)
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Editor’s Note:
The following text is the transcript by V. S. of Jonathan Bowden’s New Right lecture in London on December 10, 2011. I want to thank Michèle Renouf for making the recording available.
Mishima’s life was dedicated to a return of the spirit of the samurai and a belief in Yamamoto Jōchō’s book Hagakure, which is partly the 17th-century bible of samurai morality (more…)
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Corneliu Zelea Codreanu
For My Legionaries
Introduction by Kerry Bolton; Historical Overview by Lucian Tudor; with new appendices and photographs.
London: Black House Publishing, 2015
Black House Publishing has been known to me only as the publisher of relatively inexpensive, nicely produced Kindles that bring back into circulation the works of Sir Oswald Mosely and others of his circle;[1] (more…)
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