People are not strong enough to live and die for themselves [Yukio Mishima].

2023年08月26日

第二次世界大戦が終わり、日本が敗戦を迎えた後、三島由紀夫は予期せぬ現実と変わらぬ自然と向き合った。日本の再建について一部の人が楽観的であるにもかかわらず、彼は実際の「賢明な再建」には懐疑的であった。現代における死の性質を振り返り、武士の劇的な死と今日のよりありふれた結末を対比させている。人間には自分自身を超えた理想や目的が必要だと彼は信じており、病気による死を恐れる一方で、たとえそれが今の時代では達成不可能に思えても、意味のある死を切望している。(English) After World War II ended and Japan faced defeat, Yukio Mishima grappled with the unexpected reality and the unchanged natural world. Despite the optimism of some about rebuilding Japan, he remained sceptical of any actual "intelligent reconstruction." Reflecting on the nature of death in modern times, he contrasts the dramatic deaths of samurais with today's more mundane endings. He believes humans need ideals and purposes beyond themselves, and while he fears a disease-ridden death, he yearns for a meaningful one, even if it seems unattainable in this era.

People are not strong enough to live and die for themselves [Yukio Mishima].

I thought of the world I'd lived in until then, where it was headed, and how it would change. The uncertainty was intolerable.

When the war ended, or rather, when Japan lost the war, the world was supposed to end, yet there the trees were, still bathed in bright summer sunlight.

I heard the imperial decree announcement on surrender at Relatives home, where my family had evacuated from Tokyo to get away from the city.

I just happened to be there, back from the navy factory where I'd been mobilized to work. I returned from the factory because I had a fever apparently caused by typhus, so I'd gone there to convalesce for a while.

After hearing the announcement, I immediately returned to the factory to sort things out.

With regard to the imperial announcement itself, I felt only a strange sense of emptiness transcending any kind of emotional response.

The defeat wasn't the outcome I'd expected.

I thought of the world I'd lived in until then, where it was headed and how it would change.

The uncertainty was intolerable. When the war ended, or rather, when Japan lost the war, the world was supposed to end, yet their trees were still bathed in bright summer sunlight.

Seeing all this, especially in an ordinary family setting, with everybody all around the dinner table and life continuing as before, was truly puzzling.

Shortly after the announcement, I returned to Kanagawa Prefecture, to the navy factory where I'd been mobilized, and had various discussions with my friends.

By then, only a few student labourers were left.

Two things I saw then made a strong impression on me.

One was that air force planes based in Atsugi and elsewhere brought in loads of supplies, and soldiers commandeered our trucks to transport those supplies, leaving no trucks for our use.

At the time, academic types were in high spirits. I worked with quite a few of them.

Young law students were saying, "Our time is coming. We're going to build a new Japan.

The nightmare of military rule is over, and a new era of intelligent reconstruction will begin."

They were practically jumping for joy.

I've been a sceptic my whole life, and I began to have my doubts.

What did "intelligent reconstruction" or "the spiritual rehabilitation of Japan" mean?

Those doubts have remained with me for 20 years.

I've come to feel that those men did absolutely nothing.

In the first 20 years of my life, the military carried out various schemes and plans.

They may have been the actions of an extreme faction, but they drove Japan down the path of defeat and destruction.

The subsequent 20 years may have seemed like a time of peace, but that was simply the effect of Japan's industrialization.

There was no "intelligent reconstruction" in a spiritual or psychological sense.

Now that I'm 41 years old, I consider the war's end a turning point in my life.

One of the aims of my thought has been to understand how my life has unfolded since then.

No matter how long I live, the sunlight of that August 15th, that intense sunlight in the summer trees, untouched by that pivotal moment, will remain in my memory forever.

10)

Rilke writes somewhere that modern man can no longer die a dramatic death.

He dies in a hospital room, like a bee inside a honeycomb cell. That's how I recall it, at least.

Death in the modern age, whether due to illness or accident, is devoid of drama.

11)

We live in an age in which there is no heroic death.

I'm reminded of the 18th-century samurai classic, Hagakure, which is famous for the line: "The way of the samurai is found in death."

That age resembled our own.

The dreams of the Warring States period were gone.

Although samurai still trained in martial arts, a glorious death in battle was difficult to attain.

12)

There was corruption, a fallen aristocracy, and delinquents like today's "Ivy set" began to appear among the samurai.

In the midst of all this, the author of "Hagakure" wrote, "When it comes to either/or there is only the quick choice of death."

He preached this again and again, but he himself died in bed at a ripe old age.

13)

Even a samurai like him couldn't find the opportunity to die with honour and had to go on living while dreaming of such a death.

We who live today, however, imagine death, but I wonder if we're even really living.

I was most intimate with death during the war.

I was 20 years old when the war ended, so all that my teenage friends and I could think about was how and when we would die.

14)

We entered our 20s full of such thoughts.

In contrast, today's youth may seek out thrills, and though they're not exactly unafraid of death, theirs is not a tense existence in which death becomes the precondition of life.

15)

Therefore, in my own work, I naturally consider any so-called "weariness of life," or the idea that one can live for one's own sake alone, to be patently vulgar.

Human life is mysterious that way.

Human beings aren't strong enough to live and die only for themselves.

That's because we have ideals.

We can only act for the sake of something.

We soon tire of living only for ourselves.

It necessarily follows that we also need to die for something.

16)

That something used to be called a "noble cause(Taigi)."

TO die for a noble cause was thought to be the most glorious heroic, or honourable way to die.

But there are no noble causes today.

Democratic governments obviously have no need for noble causes.

17)

Yet if one cannot find a value that transcends oneself, life itself, in a spiritual sense, is rendered meaningless.

When I consider my own case in particular, in the days when I expected death, certain I would soon meet with death, I was happier than I am now.

It's a truly strange happiness, both because it seems so beautiful in retrospect and because one can even feel it at all.

18)

The happiness we pursue today is that of living.

It may be the happiness of family life or the enjoyment of leisure.

But the happiness felt by the man awaiting his death is quite rare today.

19)

That said, do I not fear death?

I do in fact fear death by disease.

Cancer, in particular. It scares me to think about it.

That's why I pray for an honourable death, a death for the sake of something.

But like the author of "Hagakure", I was born in the wrong era.

I'll probably die in bed after a life spent dreaming of a very different end.

//Postscript//

We Japanese have no choice but to try to prevent an emergency in Taiwan.

But something may happen in the next few years.

Will the US, South Korea and Japan be able to work together?

We are not the big Self-Defence Force; having a strong military will be difficult.

We respect the emperor but are unlikely desperate enough to risk our lives to defend him.

As Yukio Mishima said, we have not matured spiritually; we have only become an industrial nation.

But a car is still essential, and Japanese technology is alive and well.

I think we have finally woken up.

It is necessary not only to admire American films and technology but also to grow by accepting different cultures and histories.

Japan must negotiate from a position that only Japan can do.

Neither the United States nor China should expand their territories further, and maintaining grey areas would be mutually beneficial. It would be the first step towards addressing the earth's problems.