My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Hang around online enough and you’ll hear his name.
Yukio Mishima did some pretty crazy things which ultimately ended his life. Caught between the death of one age and another, the ritual slaughter of Imperial Japan and the birth of modern nation state of today, he had trouble adapting to this new reality.
He lamented the loss of the rich Japanese tradition as a result of the defeat of the nation in WW2. Japan was going through rapid, radical change that left its people cut off from their past as they firmly laid their eyes upon a new future. While many welcomed this, Mishima believed this to be a grave mistake which could only spell disaster in the long run.
Unable to accept this new status quo, he attempted a national coup to restore the status of the Emperor prior to the new order. When unsuccessful, he committed the act of seppuku.
Secularising his actions away from his ideas, I thought that such a person would have had some thought-provoking writings extolling the virtue of traditional life before the world order that levelled his one.
I had heard a lot of positive things about Sun and Steel, the title alone was enough to convey an energy of power, strength, discipline and connection to the world around us, and so I picked it up.
Im sorry to report that the book wasn’t what I expected at all.
Sun and Steel is full of disparate, unconnected thoughts, woven only with a thread known to Mishima himself. There are no doubt occasional gems, but like their real life counterparts, they have to actively be sought after and require a lot of sifting through rocks.
Some of the interesting ideas from this book include his musings that words are but an interpretation of reality. They are by nature one step removed from reality because they are not reality in of themselves, they are just an attempt to describe it. This is why they are used effectively in propaganda and misinformation. They are able to be twisted such that reality is portrayed in a negative way suiting the one commanding them. The antidote to this therefore is nothing but physical reality itself, and for Mishima, one of the best forms to manifest this in is the human body, the apex of human physique.
He writes:
“…muscles had one of the most desirable qualities of all: their function was precisely opposite to that of words.”
Other gems exist, but their disconnected nature fail to beget any sort of obvious structure so as to cast a narrative of interpretation. Mishima speaks of various issues and provides occasional platitudes to expound upon his thoughts. One of them, on how exposing the core of an apple by cutting it open is the only and truest way to bring it to life gives us a glimpse into Mishima’s dangerous mind.
Mishima writes:
”The apple certainly exists, but to the core this existence as yet seems inadequate; if words cannot endorse it, then the only way to endorse it is with the eyes. Indeed, for the core the only sure mode of existence is to exist and to see at the same time. There is only one method of solving this contradiction. It is for a knife to be plunged deep into the apple so that it is split open and the core is exposed to the light—to the same light, that is, as the surface skin. Yet then the existence of the cut apple falls into fragments; the core of the apple sacrifices existence for the sake of seeing.“
The example in of itself seems harmless, but in context of his later actions we can see Mishima’s state of mind and how he led himself to carry out the actions he did.
Aside from these small ideas scattered throughout the book, I honestly found it hard to maintain a consistent narrative for what Mishima was trying to convey.
Can I give it the excuse of being too esoteric for me? Yes. Can I give it the excuse of an inadequate translation from the original? Perhaps. But none of these detract from the fact that this was an extremely difficult read. I had to make extra effort to inject structure, meaning and flow into the text and it might even be that my interpretations are a result of my own extrapolations rather than what Mishima intended.
It could be that the main reason this book of his is so famous is because of the actions he committed later in life. In a way, this book only gained in popularity based on the shocking acts he did rather than because of the quality and coherence of the ideas expressed within.
Unless you are digging deeper into Mishima’s works or are convinced you are able to understand any potential sense of esotericism he espoused, I do not recommend reading. Some ideas are useful and indeed interesting, but not otherwise worth the effort to discover them.