A Devil of a Job

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

notes

1. Mishima's most famous public “rehearsal” of his suicide was in the film version of his short story “Patriotism” [Yūkoku, 1966], in which he himself starred as a young army officer of the “fascist Japan” of the 1930s who commits seppuku after the failure of a right-wing coup attempt.

2. Cornyetz 111.

3. The authors of the two major biographies in English, for instance, agree on the general factual accuracy of the Confessions, and both make free use of it as source material. See Nathan; Stokes.

4. Mishima, Confessions of a Mask 21.

5. Ibid. 14.

6. Ibid. 33.

7. Quoted in Nathan 94.

8. Mishima, Mishima Yukio zenshū 192; my translation. For another English version, see Mishima, Confessions 41. Note that Mishima uses the word “sadistic” here rather than “masochistic” or “sadomasochistic,” words that don’t seem to have been in his vocabulary – or perhaps he was reluctant to use them regarding himself.

9. Freud 553–54.

10. Ibid.

11. Mishima, Mishima Yukio zenshū 3, 166; idem, Confessions 5–6.

12. Mishima, Mishima Yukio zenshū 3, 181; idem, Confessions 24–25.

13. Mishima, Mishima Yukio zenshū 3, 182; idem, Confessions 27.

14. Mishima, Mishima Yukio zenshū 3, 189; idem, Confessions 37.

15. Mishima, Mishima Yukio zenshū 3, 198; idem, Confessions 50.

16. Freud 566–67.

17. Mishima, Mishima Yukio zenshū 3, 210; idem, Confessions 66.

18. Mishima, Mishima Yukio zenshū 3, 211; idem, Confessions 68.

19. Mishima, Mishima Yukio zenshū 3, 211–12; idem, Confessions 69.

20. Freud 570.

21. Nietzsche, The Will to Power 17–18. To consult the original, see idem, Nietzsche Werke VIII 214–15.

22. Quoted in Ross 193–94.

23. Ibid. 198–99.

24. The leading contemporary American psychoanalyst Arnold M. Cooper suggests that “masochism and narcissism are so entwined, both in development and in clinical presentation, that we clarify our clinical work by considering that there is a narcissistic-masochistic character and that neither appears alone” (Cooper 111). The most extreme expression of this conflation, obviously apropos to Mishima's case, is what Lacan calls “aggression suicidaire narcissique” (narcissistic suicidal aggression), whereby the subject's autoerotic identification with his own (always de-centered and therefore unsatisfying) specular image leads ultimately to self-destruction, as in the “classical” case of Narcissus himself. Lacan, Écrits (Paris) 187.

25. Starrs.

26. Deleuze 46.

27. Ibid. 40.

28. Cornyetz 132.

29. Ibid.; emphasis in original.

30. Ibid. 133.

31. Deleuze 39–40.

32. Lacan, Écrits (New York) 92.

33. Idem, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis 186.

34. “This formula,” he notes, “will make it possible to illuminate many things concerning the true nature of sadism” (ibid.).

35. Ibid. 196.

36. Ibid. 177.

37. Ibid. 206.

38. Ibid. 178.

39. Ibid. 183.

40. Ibid.

41. Ibid.

42. Ibid. 183–84.

43. Ibid. 185.

44. Ibid.; my emphasis.

45. Ibid.

46. Ibid. 200.

47. Ibid.

48. Bergeron 186–88.

49. Ibid. 189.

50. Ibid. 190.

51. Ibid. 191.

52. For a more in-depth discussion of Mishima's “lawyerly defenses” see my Deadly Dialectics 181–85.

53. Bergeron 191.

54. Cornyetz 144.

55. Ibid. 151.

56. Ibid.

57. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil 73.

58. Vidal.

59. From a queer studies point of view, James Vincent objects to the “Frankfurt School” conflation of homosexuality with fascism and to the portrayal of Mishima as “everyone's favorite homofascist.” He suggests that Mishima was in some sense parodying this “homofascist” stereotype purveyed by a postwar “heteronormal” and homophobic society. An interesting possibility but, if so, Mishima certainly must be said to have “given his all” for the sake of a convincing performance! See Vincent.

60. Nathan 98.

61. Ibid.

62. Ibid. 99.

63. His play glorifying de Sade's moral nihilism, Madame de Sade, clearly shows that Mishima liked to adopt the stance of a moral provocateur. When he formed his private army he gave Byron as the precedent; and, of course, his writings are full of a Wildean love of paradox, especially the kind of paradox that thumbs its nose at conventional morality or turns it on its head.

64. Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis 207–08.

65. Sartre 474.

66. Ibid. 475.

67. Ibid.

68. Ibid.

69. Ibid.

70. Ibid.

71. Ibid. 491.

72. Ibid. 492; emphasis in original.

73. Ibid.

74. Ibid.

75. Ibid.; emphasis in original.

76. Ibid. 492–93.

77. Ibid. 493; emphasis in original.

78. Witnesses have testified to the latent sense of the threat of violence they felt in his presence. See Stokes 8.