7 Years After Suicide, Japanese Writer's Taboo Eases -- Extreme Views, Spectacular Death Were Embarrassing

TOKYO - A quarter-century after his spectacular ritual suicide, novelist Yukio Mishima is still committing the ultimate social sin in Japan: He embarrasses people.

Enduringly popular abroad, Mishima is far less lionized at home. Although his books remain in print and sell steadily, his showy style, dark homoeroticism, macho posturing and right-wing nationalism cause unease even today.

"He became taboo in his own country," said cultural critic and author Donald Richie, who knew Mishima. "The accepted wisdom in Japan became that he was a minor figure, but that's not true. I think he's a strong influence and a troubling one. He's like a bad conscience."

What set the author at odds with Japan was a classically Japanese act.

On the cold, sunny afternoon of Nov. 25, 1970 - 25 years ago tomorrow - Mishima and four followers from his private "army" of ultra-patriotic youths stormed into army headquarters in central Tokyo.

Dressed in a military-style tunic and a headband with the rising-sun emblem, the 45-year-old author stepped onto a balcony and delivered a harangue against Japan's no-war constitution, urging soldiers to rise up and revolt.

Some of the officers and enlisted men listening in the courtyard below responded with hoots of derision. But Mishima wasn't finished.

Barricaded inside the commanding general's office, with the general shouting at him to stop, he stripped off his tunic, sat on the floor, and plunged a samurai sword into his belly.

A young disciple delivered the ritual coup de grace, lopping off Mishima's head before killing himself as well.

Shunned in death

The bloody drama caused a worldwide sensation. Thousands attended his funeral at a Buddhist temple in central Tokyo, and commentators searched for explanations.

Mishima's private army disbanded. Some of his followers went to jail. And the memory of Mishima went into exile. The Japanese literary establishment, having already distanced itself from Mishima's increasingly strident nationalism, shunned him posthumously.

Now, that could be changing. Author Naoki Inose has just published a new biography, "Persona: A Life of Yukio Mishima," which portrays a complex and tormented artist. NHK public television was airing a two-part program for tomorrow's anniversary.

"From his works alone, we can't fully understand the inner conflict he suffered," Inose wrote.

Critic Richie, too, believes it's time for a reassessment. One reason is the death this year of Mishima's widow, Yoko.

"She wanted to present an image she could live happily with, and this meant denying crucial aspects of him," Richie said, citing for example her long, expensive effort to track down and destroy prints of a movie in which Mishima acted out a ritual suicide in gory detail.

"People felt constrained, out of respect for her feelings," Richie said. "Now some of that pressure is off."

Some ideas becoming popular

Mishima - born Kimitake Hiraoka, the son of a government bureaucrat - was a pale, sickly child. Teased by classmates, he retreated into writing.

Rejected by the military as too weak - an experience that left a lasting mark - Mishima became a fitness fanatic, taking up boxing, kendo and body-building, affecting a buzzcut and posing for photos in a loincloth.

Under pressure from his father, Mishima spent nine months working for the Finance Ministry and hated it. His father relented, and Mishima's writing life began.

He quickly built a brilliant reputation with works such as the autobiographical "Confessions of a Mask," "The Sound of Waves" and "The Golden Pavilion," all widely translated and all focused on themes of fleeting beauty, obsessive purity and death.

Although Japanese overwhelmingly reject Mishima's fanaticism, they can identify with his belief that Japan's prosperity is destroying its soul. Earlier this year, when a doomsday cult staged a nerve-gas attack on the Tokyo subways, commentators zeroed in on the theme of spiritual barrenness.

Mishima's militarism finds little sympathy outside the right-wing groups that pay him tribute on every anniversary of his death. But many Japanese are questioning for the first time the Cold War pact under which they are host to U.S. troops.

The writer's love-hate relationship with the West - he embraced its literature and aesthetics while denouncing it as a cancer on Japanese culture - is also a familiar dilemma here.

Some of Mishima's later novels have a flowery, overblown style that has little in common with the spare, minimalist approach preferred by younger Japanese writers.

But Richie believes some of the earlier works, primarily "Confessions of a Mask," are classics.

"His tragedy," Richie said, "was that the persona got in the way of the work."