261

PSYCHOSOCIAL FACTORS IN THE SUICIDE OF

YUKIO MISHIMA
by
MAMORU IGA
San Fernando Valley State College (California)
I. INTRODUCTION
to participants in the Hungarian Freedom fighters, Devereux
ITH reference
W points out that their participation is not explained entirely by &dquo;identical (and
sociological) motives&dquo; (e.g., patriotism) but by &dquo;a variety of authentically subjective
motives,&dquo; which &dquo;may seek and find an ego syntonic outlet in the same type of
collective activity&dquo; (1961:236). This distinction between sociologistic motives (modal
motives inferred from institutional and documentary analysis) and psychologistic
motives (subjective motives obtained by psychological tests or clinical observation)
seems to apply to an explanation of any behaviour. I attempt to show that suicide
cannot be explained only in terms of sociologistic factors, with reference to the
harakiri (self-disenbowelment) of Yukio Mishima, a Nobel Prize candidate for
literature in 1970.
II. FACTORS IN MISHIMA’S SUICIDE
The sociologistic modal motive of Mishima’s suicide is professed in his final
plea to Jieitai (Self-Defence Forces) soldiers immediately before his harakiri. The
major points in this appeal would read as follows in free translation :
1 Postwar Japan has lost its great foundation and national spirit in economic
prosperity; I have witnessed, with clenched teeth, Japanese people defile their
history and tradition in pursuit of trivials. Politics are used only for glossing
over contradictions, self-protection, greed for power, and hypocrisy.
2 Our national future is entrusted to the hands of a foreign country; the disgrace
of the defeat in war has not been wiped out, but camouflaged with chicanery.
3 I have thought that only in the Self-Defence Forces, true Japan, true Japanese,
and true samurai spirit are retained. However, the Self-Defence Forces are
legally unconstitutional. The attitude of relying on a falsification for such an
essential problem of national defence has caused spiritual deprivation and
moral degradation of Japanese people. Only the awakening of the Self-Defence
Forces from their long sleep can save Japan.
4 We believe that there is no greater responsibility for us than to work to change
the Constitution, thereby transforming the Defence Forces into a real Japanese
army-an army that will defend Japanese history, culture, and tradition under
the Emperor (13 :207-210).
Mishima’s attributing the moral weakness of modern Japan to the loss of the
&dquo;sword&dquo; aspect of their traditional culture suggests a feudalistic philosophy as a
cause of his suicide. An assumption is that the clash between his feudalistic

philosophy and modern Japanese conditions caused an &dquo;altruistic&dquo; suicide for

remonstration.
PSEUDO-FEUDALISTIC PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE :t

Japanese tradition, which Mishima wanted to defend, can be termed feudalistic

in the sense of : (1) a ruling class composed of governmental bureaucracy, scholars,

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262

nobility, and militarists (or samuraz); (2) the existence of minorities occupying a
marginal position; and (3) education emphasizing &dquo;memorisation and understanding
of the ancient thought-ways and the simulation of the elite’s ideal pattern by
subservient masses&dquo; (20 :46-49). The Japanese life today is still &dquo;largely conditioned
by a feudalistic pattern&dquo; (7 :169).
Mishima’s feudalism has been pointed out by many critics. For example, Sho
Kobayashi maintains that &dquo;Mishima was a complete Tenno shugisha (Emperor cultist)
in his childhood, and since then he did not grow ideologically&dquo; (13 :62). Mishima
himself aspired for the restoration of samurai culture. He professed that &dquo;in the past
13 years since I started fencing, I have gradually felt the old samurai spirit surging
back in me&dquo; (13 :42). His feudalistic inclination was probably formed by his child-
hood experiences. He was reared by his paternal grandmother, who was an eptiome
of Japanese feudalism; she was a sickly and vain daughter of a judge of the Japanese
Supreme Court. Education during his childhood and adolescence was at the Peers
School, whose commencement ceremony was held in the special presence of
the Emperor and Empress. Past principals of the school were mostly generals and
admirals; one of them a Japanese national hero, General Nogi, who with his wife
committed junshi (suicide to follow a deceased master) after the death of Meiji
Emperor.
Although Mishima’s ideology appears to be feudalistic, it is not entirely so,
because of its highly abstract nature. While the basic unit of feudal system is personal
loyalty to the lord, Mishima’s concept of Emperor is entirely impersonal. His
Emperor is the symbol of the &dquo;totality and continuity of Japanese culture&dquo;-the
authoritarian system which does not allow &dquo;egoism&dquo; (13 :198). Consequently he did
not approve of the present Emperor’s personal contact with the public; the Emperor
should not be human (13 :175).
Mishima’s ideology is in actuality an elitism, with a traditionalistic justification.
Such elitism is evident in his statement: &dquo;Let the weak alone. In the present world,
it is the strong who are tortured. There has been no time when the ’morality of being
strong’ is so suppressed. Therefore, it is my task to restore the priority of the strong&dquo;
(13:214). He regarded himself as &dquo;the flower of Japanese tradition,&dquo; while the
masses in his-eyes were ignorant, always concerned with the status quo, accepting any

ideology for economic prosperity. Since the masses are an easy prey for the Com-
munists, Mishima stressed the necessity for the elite to adhere to their sogai (alien-
ation) and to uphold the rights of the elite minority (13 :163-64). Japanese tradition
served as the foundation for this elitism. Even assassination was good in his eyes if it
followed Japanese tradition, i.e., the assassin commits suicide afterward (13 :167).
Thus, Mishima’s apparent feudalism could be seen in part as a facade for what he
himself called &dquo;egoism&dquo; (wish for enhancing or maintaining own prestige and
privileges). Despite his crusade against general egoism among Japanese people, he
evinced similar traits under another guise.

&dquo;ACTIVE NIHILISM :&dquo;

If Mishima’s suicide was not caused wholly by a clash between his feudalism
and modern Japanese trends, another assumption is that Mishima committed suicide
because of a nihilistic denial of existence. Nihilism appears to be quite common
among Japanese intellectuals. It is said that Japanese people act more by &dquo;mood&dquo;
than by ideology, and Mishima’s mood was clear in his own assertion that &dquo;you can-
not really perform a significant work without being a nihilist. All those activists who
appear to be optimistic are fakes&dquo; (13 :110). Regarding Kyoko no Ie, one of the most

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 263

important of his works, Mishima wrote that &dquo;the characters in the book ran about in
this direction or that, their individual personalities, their profession, and their
as
sexual preferences commanded them, but in the end all roads, no matter how round-
about, led back into nihilism&dquo; (8 :5). Although Kyoko no Ie was not received warmly
despite Mishima’s great expectations (21 :105), it summarised the philosophy of life
presented in his preceding works and foreshadowed the philosophy of his later
writings. Roughly, Mishima’s works showed changes parallel to the general trends
in Japan since World War II : (1) a period of the reconsideration of world views
(1946-1952), (2) a period of obsessive concern with love and sex, with a tendency
toward anomie (1953-1958), and (3) a period of attempts at a solution (1959 and
after) (12 :77-80). Mishima’s harakiri may symbolise the advent of the fourth period
-the period of reaction. Considering its importance, what Mishima thinks about
Kyoko no Ie seems to reflect his basic frame of reference.
Mishima’s nihilism has been called &dquo;active nihilism&dquo; (8 :5). It is the philosophy
that the ultimate significance of life is in attaining the ’great nothingness.&dquo; In order
to attain it, it is necessary to reject oneself for a great cause. Although Mishima
maintained that the Wang-Yangming’s &dquo;great nothingness&dquo; is the root of hs active
nihilism (11 :217), there’s a great difference between the two. The &dquo;great nothingness&dquo;
is as Mishima himself describes, &dquo;the root of creation and the fundamental truth be-
yond good and bad.&dquo; When a person attains it, his action reaches &dquo;justice beyond
life and death&dquo; (11 :216). Heihachiro Oshio, a scholar of the Wang-Yang-ming
school, who was one of the few scholars whom Mishima respected, demanded in
1837, a time of terrible famine, that the government open its storehouses to the
starving people of Osaka. &dquo;The government officials refused, and in desperation
Oshio and his men broke open the storehouses. This triumph was short-lived ... he
dismissed his followers and killed himself&dquo; (8 :5). In Oshio’s mind, the &dquo;great nothing-
ness&dquo; was the root of justice for which he died. On the other hand, the &dquo;great noth-
ingness&dquo; for Mishima was not a root of justice but of action characterised by &dquo;solitude,
tension, and tragic resolution&dquo; (11:56). The more apparently meaningless the action
the better, because it is &dquo;purer and more unique&dquo; (14 :54). It is a moment of ecstasy
that Mishima wanted; it was really his own ultimate satisfaction. His activism
seemed to be closer to koodo maibotsu shugi (the principle of merging oneself in
action for the purpose of tension reduction) (6 :41) than to Wang-Yang-ming’s
&dquo;great nothingness.&dquo;
It is also highly questionable whether Mishima was a true nihilist, despite his
own use of the term. Nihilism denies traditional values as unfounded and existence as
senseless and useless. More generally, it denies any objective ground truth and
morality. Since Mishima was greatly concerned with elitism, as the preceding section
indicated, his nihilism seems to have been a superficial or at least paradoxical one.
In this respect, Lifton points out the tendency among Japanese intellectuals to
conduct their exploration of selfhood &dquo;through an attitude of negation, through the
mood of nihilism&dquo; (9 :272). Their nihilism is often a feigned one.
PSYCHOLOGICAL MOTIVES :t

Thus, neither feudalism nor nihilism alone explains Mishima’s suicide. A psycho-
social explanation seems to be necessary. An immediate cause of suicide is assumed
to be the definition of the situation as an irrecoverable failure, with a self-destructive
response to the definition. The definition of the situation seems to be determined by
a wide goal-means discrepancy and an alienated conception of self. These two
factors will be discussed with reference to Mishima’s major works and life experiences.

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264
’

I GOAL-MEANS DISCREPANCY :

According to two popular magazines which published special issues on Mishima

shortly after his suicide, 11 (27 per cent) of 41 critics attributed his suicide to the
discrepancy between his ideal society and actuality, and 27 (65 per cent) to the
discrepancy between his ego-ideal and self-conception. Three (8 per cent) regarded
his suicide as Joshi, or love-pact suicide, with focus on homosexuality. Thirty-five of
the 41 critics evaluated Mishima’s works. Of the thirty-five, 9 (23 per cent) praised
them as first class deserving a Nobel Prize, and 5 (14 per cent) labelled them as
&dquo;very good.&dquo; Six (17 per cent) evaluated only his earlier works2 as good, and the
remaining 16 (46 per cent) expressed their disapproval. Five of them critisised his
works as superficial, and four others called him kichigai (insane). The sizable per-
centage in this category betokened the attitude of a large number of Japanese intel-
lectuals toward Mishima and his works.
Their general consensus seems to be that Mishima was a genius but that his
later works showed little variation or development despite the fact that he continued
to be a superb critic (19 :151). Probably Vidal is right to comment that once Mishima
became famous, he was &dquo;too quickly satisfied with familiar patterns and did not
venture into new patterns of literary art&dquo; (22 :10). Seidenstecker pointed out the
&dquo;intrinsic emptiness’ of Kinkakuji (1951) in 1965, suspecting that Mishima might not
have found what he really wanted to write (13 :88). In 1968 the same critic observed
that Mishima seemed to have been exhausted, and his &dquo;recent works have nothing to
add to what have been already published in foreign countries. He probably needs to
make a new start&dquo; (13 :70). Reactions by Japanese critics were similar. For example,
in Shooichi Saeki’s opinion, Mishima’s later works revealed only &dquo;dried up
emotion&dquo; (13 :99). According to Dr. Mizutsu’s analysis of Mishima’s discussion with
students on different campuses, Mishima showed only fanatic conviction without
making any effort to understand student’s arguments (13 :183). An example of his
logic is that freedom of speech leads to irresponsible freedom and eventually to re-
actionary controls, making for totalitarian suppression. Often his answer to criticisms
by students, who clamored for the freedom of speech, was &dquo;Then, you must like the
secret police&dquo; or &dquo;you must be for concentration camps&dquo; (13 :181). In this way he
tried to squelch opposition. His dogmatic affirmation is exemplified by a discussion
with Waseda University students about society : &dquo;Since I started as a novelist, I
regard society as my enemy. There will be no writer who is so foolish to think other-
wise&dquo; (13 :70). Mishima’s detachment from reality and human feelings is probably
the major cause for disapproval by many Japanese intellectuals, who tend to be
attracted by more &dquo;naturalistic&dquo; works.
These criticisms are parallel to Mishima’s own growing sense of the inadequacy
of words, as expressed in his autobiographical Sun and Steel (1968). To him, beauty
is only in higekiteki na mono (&dquo;tragic matter&dquo;), such as &dquo;life with no tomorrow,&dquo;
which a writer can describe but cannot experience (13:220). Therefore, the literary
task is self defeating. His talk with Yukio Miyoshi in March 1970 was extremely
pessimistic. Life was a nose-dive to decay, without any alternative potential left, he
thought, and he wished to die quickly ( 13 :125). Just about a week before his death,
he told Sho Kobayashi that &dquo;Mine is probably the last generation which knows the
Japanese language ... I am the last person ... I am exhausted ... I am
disgusted ... There is no way out&dquo; (13 :57-58). These gloomy confessions were
again probably a revelation of the discrepancy between his ego-ideal and self
conception, implying a goal-means discrepancy. Factors in the goal-means discrepancy
may be analysed in terms of narcissistic temperament and limited life experiences,

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 265

together with a pseudo-feudalistic philosophy and active nihilism, which were dis-
cussed in the preceding sections.
(a) Narcissistic Temperament:
It is assumed that narcissism makes for a high ego ideal and a neurotic need
for attention, which in turn produce constant dissatisfaction and insecurity. In-
security produces the effort to &dquo;sell&dquo; oneself beyond one’s actual worth not only to
others but to himself, leading to self-inflation. Self-inflation produces further a greater
need for attention, setting in motion a vicious circle (5 :88-99).
Mishima’s narcissism is represented in his discussion with students at Waseda
University in October 1968 : &dquo;Regarding the problem of humanism and egoism, and
I am not the one who can have sympathy with other people. I am only worried about
myself&dquo; (13 :39). He explained his own narcissism that &dquo;the inferiority complex
during my childhood has become inflated into over self-expectation&dquo; (13 :56). Narcis-
sism is also revealed in his typical way of thinking. In the discussion at Waseda, he
told why he became anti-Communist, and his explanation is obsessively egocentric.
He said : &dquo;Frankly, I first thought of action. This is the first. I have felt that
ideology, idea, and spirit debilitate when there is no enemy. So, I wanted to have an
enemy at any cost. I decided to have Communism as my enemy&dquo; (13 :38). His anti-
Communism seemed almost like a new toy.
Another indication of his narcissism was his obsession with own appearance.
In Sun and Steel, Mishima recalled that at the age of 18, he wanted to die young,
but since he felt that he did not have a muscular body suitable for a dramatic death,
he had to build a beautiful body first. On New Year’s Day of 1966, he faced a
dilemma between finishing his life work and dying while still young. He wrote :
&dquo;When I finish this big work (his final tetralogy), I shall be 47 years old,
and I shall have to give up forever the opportunity to die a hero’s death. Shall
I give up a hero’s death or shall I complete my life work?&dquo; (13 :118).
His obsession to the hero’s death also showed his narcissism.
(b) Limited Life Experiences:
The more narcissistic, the higher ego ideal. However, limited life experiences
apparently affected negatively Mishima’s capability as a writer. The discrepancy
between his goal of becoming a heroic writer and available means became keener
because of his superb competency as a critic.
Generally, Mishima’s childhood and adolescence were characterised by the
atmoshpere of rigidity, fanaticism, indulgence and detachment from reality, which
all limited his life experiences. Forty-nine days after his birth, he was separated from
his parents and reared as the only child by his grandmother, who had a &dquo;rigid,
indomitable, frantic and poetic&dquo; personality. She reared Mishima as if he had been
a girl until he became 14 years old, when she died. He was then returned to his

parents. Because of his sickliness, his childhood was spent in almost complete indul-
gence, and his world was that of picture books and children’s stories ( 15 :78). His
boredom and the wish to escape from it are suggested by a poem of his childhood,
which he composed at the age of 15 :
&dquo;Every evening, I stood by the window
Waiting for some disaster to occur-
For the wicked, ferocious looking dust storm of a calamity
To march in a big wave from beyond the horizon
Like a big dark rainbow.&dquo;
As an adult, he was strongly self-restraining in both heterosexual and homo-
sexual associations (2 :140), making for a smooth and unchallenging life. Generally

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266
his life was surrounded by adulation and adoration. The too easy and (subjectively)
unexciting life apparently affected his goal as a writer, which was to describe toosui
(rapture), isshun no jonetsu no kooyo (a moment of frensied passion), or isshun no
seimei no nenshoo (a moment of burning life). More importantly, it affected
negatively his capability to understand and describe a great variety of emotions.
The negative effect seems to be indicated by the criticism by Naoya Shiga, who
is generally called &dquo;God of novels&dquo; in Japan : Are wa dameda. Yume bakari kaite
irukara ikan&dquo; (He is not good. He writes only dreams) (19 :87). Hideo Kobayashi,
who is often called &dquo;God of literary critics,&dquo; criticised that &dquo;Kinkakuji (The Temple
of the Golden Pavilion) is not a novel. It is a lyric produced by Mishima’s brain.
Despite his superabundant talent, no characters are alive; they give no sense of
reality&dquo; (13 :97). Mishima himself denounced realistic writings. To him, the writer’s
life should be separated from his novel, which should describe a life as &dquo;should be&dquo; or
&dquo;could be&dquo;; although his work may be confession, the confession represents his
interpretation and wish, which are never reality itself. The theory is reasonable, but
all writers reveal their interpretations, whether they theorise or not. The difference
among them is evaluated by how the interpretation and wish are expressed in a
literary form. The expression requires concepts to compose. A large number of
concepts (symbols plus meanings) facilitate the expression, and the amount of
concepts accumulated is largely determined by the degree of variety and intensity
of life experiences.
Mishima’s limited life experiences are represented by his knowledge of Japanese
tradition. He knew the samurai culture but not the merchant one. The former is
characterised by an emphasis on on (favour to repay), gimu (heavier obligation to
repay on all through life), the fanatic belief in the supremacy of own group, and
nonrational obedience to the lord at the sacrifice of family members and lovers.
Merchant culture, on the other hand, stressed nin jo (human feelings), giri (lighter
obligation to repay received favour),3 calculation for selfprofit, and cooperation
among family members and friends. Takashi Yasuda comments that Mishima did not
understand the beauty of wagoto (&dquo;tender behaviour&dquo;), e.g., coyness displayed by a
kabuki player performing a femine role. He understood harakiri (self-disembowel-
ment) but not joshi (love-pact suicide), which is an aspect of the merchant culture
and requires treating the female as an equal individual (19 :162).
Not only did Mishima not know the merchant culture, but the samurai culture
which he knew was that of the later Tokugawa Period. At that time the samurai
was an alienated figure, entirely dependent for his survival upon the rice stipend
which his lord bestowed upon him. The cultivation of a spirit of selfsacrifice was
the price for securing the master’s protection. His anxiety due to dependence was
compensated for by his prejudice against, and maltreatment of,4 commoners and
outcastes. Since commoners composed a vast majority of the Japanese population, the
samurai was almost entirely insensitive to feelings of the majority of his society. In
disregarding humanity underneath. The samurai was a human being too; he would
have had similar basic needs and wishes as others did. The human side of the samurai
culture is shown by those before the establishment of the rigid status stratification
under the Tokugawa Regime (1600-1867). Samurai then were independent fighters
who could support themselves by their own land and count on their own ability for
gaining a better future. Because of their lesser alienation from life, they were more
rational about life and death, and freer in selfexpression and enjoyment (18 : 100).
Thus, the very narrow conception of traditional Japanese culture-the lack of under-
standing of the non-samurai culture and the actual culture of samurai as human
beings-became a handicap for Mishima as a writer.

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2 Alienated SelfConception:
Thus the four factors, which have been discussed thus far-feudalistic philo-
sophy, active nihilism, narcissistic temperament, and limited life experiences-made
for his alienated self conception among Japanese writers and critics, who generally
are hostile to their feudal tradition. Alienation here involves separation from fellow
men, as indicated by mistrust and loneliness.
Ooka recalls that Mishima had no friend among literary colleagues and that
Mishima felt &dquo;he had been betrayed by his seniors and friends one after another&dquo;
(16 :110). To Mishima even a happy family was an &dquo;enemy&dquo; (14 :53). His mistrust
not only of people but also of himself is expressed in his philosophy that life’s only
significance is in a moment of toosui (rapture) and kikikan (sense of imminent
danger). The central theme of his life and work was &dquo;a romantic impulse to death.&dquo;
A moment of rapture and the sense of imminent danger were best embodied in the
samurai spirit-to be ready, or forced to be ready, to sacrifice one’s self for his lord.
Since the samurai spirit as Mishima knew was characteristic of the alienated one at
later Tokugawa Period (18 :100), Mishima’s identification with samurai appeared to
indicate his own alienation from his living compatriots.
His idolisation of physical appearance was also an indication of his mistrust of
himself. In his view, beautiful actions, the most beautiful of which was suicide, re-
quired physical beauty, and physical beauty was contingent upon biological youth.
He believed that &dquo;when a man becomes 40 years old, there is no way to die beauti-
fully&dquo; (19:101). The beautiful body, which he developed by strenuous efforts for
ten years, became a focal point of his pride. Underneath the pride, however, there
lurked a strong sense of futility, because the bygone youth could never be regained.
The idolisation of physical beauty was an indication of alienation because only part
of the self became the focal point of the feeling of identity and dominated his whole
life (17 :76).
Despite his maintenance that the elite should adhere to his sogai (alienation),
upholding the rights of the elite minority (13 :164), Mishima apparently had a wish
for escaping from alienation. When he carried about Mikoshi (portable shrine) on his
shoulder with young commoners he heaved a sigh of relief :
I undertook to help in shouldering a portable shrine, and was at last able to
solve the puzzle that had plagued me since infancy. They were simply looking
at the sky. In their eyes there was no vision : only the reflection of the blue and
absolute skies of early autumn ... the sky that my own poetic intuition had
shown me, and the sky revealed to the eyes of those ordinary young men of the
neighbourhood, were identical. That moment for which I had been waiting so
long was a blessing that the sun and the steel had conferred on me. ( 10 :13).
After all, Durkheim seems to be right when he holds that the meaning of life is
obtainable only by social attachment (4 :212). Despite this wish for the identity with
&dquo;ordinary&dquo; youth, Mishima’s elitist contempt of the ignorant masses (13 :164)
prevented him from gaining an understanding of commoners’ feelings.
III SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
This paper has first discussed the insufficiency of sociologistic modal factors,
such as feudalism and nihilism, for the purpose of explaining Mishima’s suicide, and
then explained it by psychosocial factors in goal-means discrepancy, such as narcissism
and limited life experiences. When these factors are combined with an alienated self
conception and with attitudes favourable for suicide, suicide often occurs. Mishima’s
attitudes toward suicide has been touched upon frequently in this paper.

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268

In conclusion, Mishima’s suicide was, I think, caused by his frustration from

narcissism and limited life experiences, and by his feudalistic and nihilistic response
to the frustration. In order to make his suicide more heroic, he upheld Japanese
tradition under Emperor against current &dquo;democracy&dquo;, which was, in his eyes, a
facade of egoism. In this reaction, his hostility against Japanese intellectuals, who
tend to talk but not act, appears to have led him to an emphasis on the Wang-Yang-
ming’s principle of chikoo gooitsu (identity of knowledge and action).
The concept of chikoo gooitsu has an important implication to American de-
mocracy too. The question is: Do citizens of a &dquo;democratic&dquo; nation, whether Japan
or the United States, act in a &dquo;democratic&dquo; way? Bonfenbrenner questions whether
Americans behave in accordance with democratic ideas such as social responsibility
and human dignity, in comparison with the consistency among Russians between
training and Communist ideals (1 :570). When democracy was accepted en masse
by Japanese people after the war, its interpretation was left to them. Their inter-
pretation was generally an overreaction to their traditional totalism, resulting in the
equation of democracy with the attitude &dquo;to enjoy today, for tomorrow who knows&dquo;
(’7 :193), or &dquo;unlimited egoism&dquo; in Mishima’s terms. It is this conception of democracy
that Mishima emotionally opposed, although because of his background and lack of
sensitivity to human feelings, he found the corrective principle in his quasi-feudalistic
elitism.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I would like to express my appreciation to Professor Joseph B. Ford for reading

the manuscript and providing comments.
’

<
.

.’ ~

NOTES
1. The Shuukan Gendai (Dec. 12, 1970) and the Bungei Shunju (Feb. 1971). A few nonliterary figures (e.g.,
actresses) were excluded.
2. Major works in his include Kamen no Kokuhaku (Confessions of a Mask) (1949), Ai no
Kawaki (Thirst for earlier period
Love)
(1950), Kinjiki (Forbidden Colours) (1951), Shiozai (The Sound of Waves) (1954),
Kinkakuji (The Temple of the Golden Pavilion) (1956), and Kyoko no Ie (The House of Kyoko) 1959).
3. Tiri is a debt which has to be repaid with mathematical equivalence to the favour received and time limits
(Benedict, Ruth, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company 1946, p. 116).
4. For example the samurai "might kill commoners with impunity." (Quigley, H. S. and Turner, J. E., The
New Japan, U. of Minn. Press, 1956, p. 11).

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ABSTRAGT ~
ABSTRACT

Yukio Mishima’s final plea to Jieitai (Self Defence Forces) soldiers expresses a
highly feudalistic philosophy. Therefore, the first assumption is that his suicide was
caused by a clash between his feudalism and modern Japan. It is discussed that
Mishima’s ideology is not really feudalism but elitism with a traditionalistic justific-
ation. Since the general mood of Japanese intellectuals is nihilism, the second
assumption is if Mishima died because of a nihilistic denial of life. It is discussed
that his nihilism was a mood without a philosophical conviction, and that his basic
frame of reference was activism with egoism (the wish for maintaining own prestige
and privilege) despite his crusade against egoism.
A more reasonable explanation of Mishima’s suicide is in terms of psychosocial
factors, such as goal-means discrepancy and an alienated self conception. His goal-
means discrepancy is discussed in terms of narcissism (an unrealistically high ego
ideal and a neurotic craving for attention) and limited life experiences, which
hampered his capability to understand and express a great variety of human emotion.
When the goal-means discrepancy was combined with an alienated self conception,
accepting attitude toward suicide, and a narcissistic craving for attention, his
dramatic harakiri (self disembowelment) was a result.

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