Lucy Moore

Modern Asian History

Charles Marcotte

October 30, 2018

“Patriotism” by Yukio Mishima

The February 26th Incident was an attempted military coup against the Japanese

government. Yukio Mishima’s short story “Patriotism” was based on the February 26th Incident

and its aftermath. It was about a Japanese military officer, Shinji Takeyama, who committed

suicide out of torn loyalty to both factions - the military and the imperial government. He

supported the military rebellion’s goals but did not want to be branded a traitor to the

government.

“Patriotism” began after the couple committed suicide. Mishima explained who the two

characters were and what their roles in the February 26th Incident were. Takeyama was torn

between loyalty to his military brothers-in-arms and loyalty to the imperial Japanese

government. While he was a proud military man, he was loyal to the Emperor and refused to

fight against Imperial forces, even if his side was trying to restore the nation’s honor. Later on in

the story when he killed himself, he saw in his wife “a vision of all those things he had loved and

for which he was to lay down his life - the Imperial Household, the Nation, the Army Flag”

(Mishima, 15). For him, he might as well have been married to Japan itself.

Mishima’s depiction of Reiko, Takeyama’s wife, showed how patriarchal Japanese

society was. On her wedding night, Takeyama explained to his wife that she would be expected

to follow him to the grave. As she watched her husband die, she felt as if she had no certain
proof at all of her own existence” (Mishima, 17). Her concessions to an independent existence

outside of her husband were in her suicide note, where she apologized to her parents for

preceding them to the grave, and when she applied her makeup for “the world which she would

leave behind” (Mishima, 19) rather than her husband. Her makeup for the world was

“magnificent and spectacular” (Mishima, 19) rather than demure.

Mishima romanticized Japanese militarism and even eroticized it.Takeyama took great

care in shaving himself before his suicide, and did not want his “death face” to be ugly or

blemished. Before Takeyama had sex with his wife one last time time, he thought as if sex and

death “seemed to overlap, almost as if the object of this bodily desire was death itself” (Mishima,

9). As Reiko watched Takeyama’s suicide, she thought that “never in this world had she seen

anything so beautiful” and her husband was “masculine beauty at its most finest” (Mishima, 15).

“Patriotism” was not supposed to be a historical document, as it was a short story. As

Mishima was a staunch Japanese nationalist himself and romanticized pre-war Japanese

militarism, this short story could give some insight as to what he himself thought of the February

26 Incident. His descriptions of Takeyama and Reiko’s lives and deaths were extremely

romanticized and their deaths were shown as noble acts. Despite Mishima’s writing skills, his

political views were abhorrent and readers should enjoy the prose and ignore the politics, no

matter how seductive his depiction of Japanese nationalism was.