Yukio Mishima (三島由紀夫) of its true name Kimitake Hiraoka (平岡公威 Hiraoka Kimitake) is a writer Japan board, born the January 14th 1925 and deceased the November 25th 1970.

Biography

Childhood

Mishima is resulting from a family of the farming community. Its childhood is marked by his/her Natsu grandmother who withdraws it with her mother to deal with it, separate remainder of the family. Its family had origins ancillaires. She was related to the Samurai S of the era Tokugawa. His/her grandmother however kept aristocratic claims even after having married the grandfather of Mishima him so resulting from a family of servant but who made fortune with the colonial trade. It thus read the French and the German and appreciated the theater Kabuki. This grandmother, victim of pains and Sciatique was extremely obstinate and prompt with accesses of violence; Mishima massed it. Its biographers allot to Natsu his fascination for death and the exaggeration. It prohibited in Mishima to leave to the sun, to make sport or to play with boys: it passed the majority of its time alone or with its cousins.

Mishima joined its family at 12 years and develops a very strong relation with his/her mother. This one comforts it and encourages it to read. His/her father is a brutal man marked by the military discipline which educates it by forcing it for example to be held beside a train moving. He also makes raids in his room to find evidence of his interest effeminatized for the literature and tears his manuscripts. It would seem that Mishima did not revolt against him.

Studies and the first work

Mishima writes its first history at twelve years. It reads with voracity works of Oscar Wilde, Rainer Maria Rilke and traditional Japanese. It goes to school of elite of Peers on the insistence of his grandmother.

After six years of school, he is always a fragile teenager but becomes the youngest member of the leading team of the company of literature of his school. It is invited to write a novel in serial for the prestigious magazine of literature Bungei-Bunka ( Art and Culture ) to which it subjects Hanazakari No Mori ( the forest all in flower ) for which it took its pseudonym of Yukio Mishima . It will be published in book in 1944 in a small number of specimens because of the paper food shortage caused by the war. He attends the medium of the Japanese romantic School at that time.

Mishima is convened by the Japanese Armée during the Second world war but claims to have the Tuberculose what enables him to escape the conscription. Although it was relieved to have escaped with the war, it will feel guilty to have survived and have missed the chance by a heroic death.

Continuous Mishima, in spite of the prohibition of his/her father, to write in secrecy while being supported by his/her Shizue mother who was always the first with reading her writings. After the school, his/her father who had sympathized with the Nazis, the constrained one to study the German Droit. While having continued to write, it leaves graduate prestigious the Université of Tokyo in 1947 and enters to the Ministry of finances where it is promised with a brilliant career.

His/her father accepts whereas he resigns to devote himself one year to his passion of the writing then definitively resigns himself to see his son becoming writer. Mishima meets Yasunari Kawabata which encourages it to publish its manuscripts.

The writer of post-war period

Mishima attends the group of the Modern review Littérature but does not feel in phase with Japan of post-war period. In 1946, it begins its first novel Tōzoku which it publishes in 1948. It is followed of Confessions of a mask ( Kamen No Kokuhaku ) an autobiographical work on a young boy having to hide his homosexual desires. This last returns celebrates Mishima which does not have whereas 24 years.

It then begins brilliant and prolific career of author. One can quote his novels prohibited Amours (1951), appeared the year of its first voyage in Occident, the Tumult of the floods (1954), the House of gold (1956) or After the banquet (1960). He also writes popular accounts to secure material comfort, plays Kabuki for the theatrical company the Bungaku-za as well as collections of news and tests literary.

He obtains an international repute, in particular in Europe and with the the United States. He travels much and is had a presentiment of three times for the Nobel Prize of literature. This one returns to his/her friend Yasunari Kawabata and Mishima understands that the chances so that another Japanese author gains it soon are weak. It would also seem that he voluntarily left the price to Kawabata by respect for the man who had introduced it into the literary circles of Tokyo.

It writes 1965 until its death in 1970 the work which it will regard as most important, a cycle of four novels entitled Sea of the fertility ( Spring snow , escaped Chevaux , the Temple of the paddle , the Angel in decomposition ).

Private life

After Confessions of a mask , Mishima tries to escape from its fragile character in demanding from physical exercises. In 1955, Mishima has a body of athlete whom it will maintain until the end his life. He becomes an expert in Kendo. Its physical exercises will not allow him a muscler the legs which will remain fine.

He attends the gay bars in observer and would have some connections with foreigners of passage in Japan. After having considered an alliance with Shoda Michiko which will become the woman of the Emperor of Japan Akihito, it Marie in 1958 with Yoko Sugiyama. It will have with her two children. In 1968, he plays in the black Lizard at the sides of his lover the transvestite Akihiro Miwa.

In the Sixties, it expresses strongly nationalist ideas. In 1967, it engages in the Forces of Self-defense of Japan then form the private militia Tatenokai (company of the shield) intended to ensure the protection of the emperor.

At the end of its life, he plays in several films and Co-carries out an adaptation of his novel Patriotisme .

Commit suicide by éventrement

During the year 1970, it completes its tetralogy the Sea of the fertility with its fourth volume, the Angel in decomposition . The November 25th, it posts with its editor the end of his manuscript then goes to the Ministry for armies accompanied by four young disciples. We are on the second floor of the Military academy of the general headquarter of the Ministry for Defense, old quartie of Ishigaya, today Mémorial of the forces of self-defense of the Japanese army. It takes as an hostage the general commander-in-chief of the forces of self-defense and makes convene the troops: it then holds to them a speech in favor of the traditional Japan and the emperor. The reaction of the 800 soldiers is quickly hostile. In front of the hootings, it is withdrawn. It is more 11:00. According to the ritual, Yukio Mishima gives itself death by Seppuku. One of the members of Tatenokai, Masakatsu Morita, was to achieve decapitation but in front of its difficulties (it trembled), it is Hiroyasu Koga which finishes the gesture. Morita will follow then Mishima in death. This blow of glare had been thoroughly prepared during more than one year; Mishima had even described a very similar action in its novel escaped Chevaux , with an end quite as tragic. Some claimed that this coup attempt of State was only one pretext intended to achieve the ritual suicide whose Mishima always had phantasm.

Its work

It published nearly forty novels for a total of a small hundred works: tests, 20 collections of news, 18 plays… Its work is very ambiguous: until the beginning of the Years 1960, its writings are of type more European than purely Japanese. He lived besides with Western, in a modern villa, generally vêtu of complete-jackets, reading traditional Europeans abundantly (he affectionnait Racine, but read also English and a little the Greek). However he asserts Japanese traditional tradition of which he is also familiar. Ambiguity also in its homosexuality, all at the same time assumed in its books and driven back in its life. Of weak condition, he proclaimed the worship of the physical force; by practice the musculation and martial arts, it ends up obtaining in its last years a body of athlete.

Its work is impressed of a certain pessimism and abounds in tragic outcomes. Fascination for the suffering is for example a recurrent theme. Mishima was said envoûté by table Saint Sebastien of Guido Reni which represents a beautiful young man with bored naked half of arrows. Besides a famous photography of Eikoh Hosoe represents it in this posture (published in the album Ordalie by the pinks ( Barakei ) in 1963: 39 portraits and a foreword of the writer).

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