The Queer Case of Yukio Mishima, or Joy Before Death

Bataille, “Nietzsche of Eroticism”

Eroticism: Death and Sensuality

• “… [D]eath, the rupture of the discontinuous individualities to which we cleave in terror, stands there before us more real than life itself…death does not affect the continuity of existence, since in existence itself all separate existences originate; continuity of existence is independent of death and is even proved by death…In sacrifice, the victim is divested not only of clothes but of life…The victim dies and the spectators share in what his death reveals…Eroticism opens the way to death. Death opens the way to the denial of our individual lives.” –Erotism, 1957

Erotic Mishima

Sun and Steel• “Only through the group, I realized—through sharing the

suffering of the group—could the body reach that height of existence that the individual alone could never attain. And for the body to reach that level at which the divine might be glimpsed, a dissolution of the individuality was necessary. The tragic quality of the group was also necessary—the quality that constantly raised the group out of the abandon and torpor into which it was prone to lapse, leading it on to ever-mounting shared suffering and so to death, which was the ultimate suffering. The group must be open to death—which meant, of course, that it must be a community of warriors…” –Sun and Steel, 1972

Mishima’s Warriors-Tatenokai

Seppukku Rehearsals

Mishima worked with photographers Eiko Hosoe and Kenshin Shinoyama.

Patriotism

Barakei-Ordeal of Roses-Eiko Shosoe

Tom of Finland (1920-1991)

Goh Mishima (1924-1988)