Chapter I: Pages 3-6.

Of late, I have come to sense within myself an accumulation of all kinds of things that cannot find adequate expression via an objective artistic form such as the novel.

Sun and Steel was written in 1968. Two years before Mishima took his life. We can perceive from the first line of this essay that he was aware of some kind of 'evolution', but for some reason, he couldn't express it in the way he used to do. I guess the present work was that. The rest of the novels Mishima used characters to camouflage himself. This is a 'face-to-face' essay. Mishima is showing himself without taboos.

The “I” with which I shall occupy myself will not be the “I” that relates back strictly to myself, but something else, some residue, that remains after all the other words I have uttered have flowed back into me, something that neither relates back nor flows back.

This is interesting. Mishima is now at a point of no return. He is no longer a novelist but something else. A warrior? A samurai? A Japanese nationalist? He was perfectly aware of his transformation. When he stated that 'neither relates back nor flows back', he was probably thinking of suicide.

One day, it occurred to me to set about cultivating my orchard for all I was worth. For my purpose, I used sun and steel. Unceasing sunlight and implements fashioned of steel became the chief elements in my husbandry. Little by little, the orchard began to bear fruit, and thoughts of the body came to occupy a large part of my consciousness.

Important feature: Mishima was also interested in bodybuilding. I think he just used metaphors: orchards, husbandry, fruits, sun and steel. The pure work on the body. His physical body started to occupy the largest part of his awareness. Time for the katana and not the pen.

First comes the pillar of plain wood, then the white ants that feed on it. But for me, the white ants were there from the start, and the pillar of plain wood emerged tardily, already half eaten away.

Mishima had a poor image of himself when he was young. I can't know if this thought continued to the rest of his days. Everything started when he was rejected from joining the Japanese army because he appeared to be sick and not strong enough. This is something that influenced him in most of his novels, but writing didn't heal Mishima, and he felt like the pillar of plain wood was already half eaten away. Time for building a more robust body. He no longer will be rejected for being weak.

The natural corollary of such a tendency was that I should openly admit the existence of reality and the body only in fields where words had no part whatsoever.

Mishima started his journey to bodybuilding with accepting another reality. Surprisingly, he never left literature behind. He kept writing for two years straight. He even finished his trilogy with 'The Corruption of an Angel'. Yet Mishima felt the necessity to prepare himself for the 'point of no return' that I referred to before.

It is perhaps only natural that this type of panic and fear, though so obviously the product of a misconception, should postulate another more desirable physical existence, another more desirable reality. Never dreaming that the body existing in a form that rejected existence was universal in the
male, I set about constructing my ideal hypothetical physical existence by investing it with all the opposite characteristics. And since my own, abnormal bodily existence was doubtless a product of the intellectual corrosion of words, the ideal body—the ideal existence—must, I told myself, be absolutely free from any interference by words. Its characteristics could be summed up as taciturnity and beauty of form.

That summarises pretty well the first chapter. :smile:

Mishima is now in another reality; he is preparing his body to go to a point of no return, and words can be left behind. Now, we will see how he goes through it.

In this way my mind, without realizing what it was doing, straddled these two contradictory elements and, godlike, set about trying to manipulate them. It was thus that I started writing novels. And this increased still further my thirst for reality and the flesh.

:sparkle:

TO BE CONTINUED...

Is anyone interested in doing the second chapter? :smile: Feel free to comment!

Is anyone interested in doing the second chapter? :smile: Feel free to comment! — javi2541997

I am interested - mainly by my antipathy to the man and the culture he was trying to reconcile with the defeat of the war. So I anticipate i will contribute, if at all, mainly with questions, incomprehension, and antagonism. Or if you prefer, I can just follow in silence.

No, please! Don't remain in silence. Every question, comment or opinion on 'Sun and Steel' or Mishima is welcome!

I didn't continue with the summary because of the damn blackout of last Monday. :confused:

Cheers! I'll start with a word about the cultural context.

I imagine Japan of the time of WW2 as culturally medieval in character, the romantic culture of Arthurian legend that concerned itself only with the aristocracy. 'Might is right'; 'death before dishonour'; there are only masters and slaves and only masters have any value. It is a culture of trial by ordeal, where cruelty is not only functional but an aristocratic virtue. I can see how those of the land of Don Quixote, might find an affinity with such a culture, but WW1 I think largely destroyed the vestiges of it in British culture. It turned out that machine-guns have no romance and do not distinguish between gentlemen and peasants.

Unconditional surrender of this culture to 'their inferiors' (the Americans) became a contradiction that had to be resolved.Enter "Sun and Steel".

If anyone wants an audiobook version: https://youtu.be/Gd7Trt0jWyA?si=5xcOWum_FLlouwb4

You can convert YouTube videos to mp3s quite easily if you just look on any search engine for a converter site too.

On the early part about carrying the shrine, I think he gets at something quite important. Why is it sports in particular that we say are "good for learning teamwork?" Afterall, all sorts of other, less physical pursuits involve cooperation. I think the physical exertion and ascetic discipline has something to do with the particular success of sports in this realm.

This is precisely why military training often involves shared hardship and exertion. Yes, they need to get soldiers in shape so that they can perform demanding tasks, but that's only part of it. Special forces training, for instance, is often far in excess of what is ideal for athletic output or health; the entire point is that it is extremely hard. I remember reading about how "shared hardship" is useful for building common identity and orientation towards a common good in some leadership literature. This is also why the US Americorps program (volunteer work, mostly doing disaster relief) also has a physical training component.

Mishima's observation of the way this smooths out differences in perception (getting us further away from words, which cut away through difference) is interesting.

It also reminded me of one of my favorite aphorisms from Nietzsche's Human, All too Human:

A Path to Equality. — A few hours' mountain climbing make of a rogue and a saint two fairly equal creatures. Tiredness is the shortest path to equality and fraternity — and sleep finally adds to them liberty.

His "turning back towards the sun" section reminded me of some good stuff Byung-Chul Han writes about Hegel re "living versus merely surviving." I'll try to find it.

It is not the first time I read that people claim that Japanese society in the context of WWII was 'mediaeval'.

This is a difficult point to explain to a Western person. It was even difficult to understand for me, even though I am very passionate about Mishima.

First, we should not use concepts such as 'mediaeval' because this is a Western notion of the world. If we want to understand Mishima, we have to see Japan from a different view.

Why was Mishima bellicose? Most of his biographers agree that Mishima got a trauma when he was rejected by the Japanese army. At that time, when he was less than 20 years old, he just wanted to serve the country and (probably) had the fetish of dying in the field, like a good samurai. But any of this happened, and his dad (an influential person) forced him to study instead of supporting the army. Mishima never forgot the fact that he was rejected since then, and he starts expressing it through different characters in his novels because, according to him, it is better to die young (youth is equal to purity) and in the army (loyalty) than old in a house (this means dirt, corruption and boredom to him).

Why did Mishima start with physical training and form his own army? I guess he started to feel 'incomplete' with only writing novels, and he wanted to become a 'man of action'.

Honestly, after reading most of his books, I believe he always wanted to die the way he did. He even stated in an interview that he did not expect to live past the age of 50, and he committed suicide at the age of 45. His pursuit was the heroic death that he did not have in WWII, but I believe it is worth noting how he changed over time. From shy novelist to samurai warrior.

Why didn't Mishima volunteer as a Kamikazi pilot?

I imagine Japan of the time of WW2 as culturally medieval [pre-modern] in character, the romantic culture of Arthurian legend that concerned itself only with the aristocracy. 'Might is right'; 'death before dishonour'; there are only masters and slaves and only masters have any value. It is a culture of trial by ordeal, where cruelty is not only functional but an aristocratic virtue. I can see how those of the land of Don Quixote, might find an affinity with such a culture, but WW1 I think largely destroyed the vestiges of it in British culture. It turned out that machine-guns have no romance and do not distinguish between gentlemen and peasants. — unenlightened

:100:

It's been a long time since I read about Mishima, but I always thought of him as a man who faced deep psychological problems, which informed his work and his theatrical behaviors. He was unsure about the role of physical power, uncertain about his sexuality, and conflicted about his culture and the future. It's easy and perhaps unhelpful to romanticize such figures. Jack London, the American author, often struck me as wrestling with similar themes—his obsession with physical beauty, masculinity and power, his self-styled projection of the Nietzschean superman persona, his disillusionment with, and ruminations on, the failure of American culture to resist the corrupting forces of capitalism. London overdosed on morphine at 40. It was probably accidental, but we're not certain.

Why didn't Mishima volunteer as a Kamikazi pilot? — 180 Proof

He wanted to; but the army didn't allow him for two main reasons: 1) He didn't know how to play a plane; 2) he was considered 'weak' or 'ill' due to his physical appearance, so all the possible chances to fight in WWII were dismissed by the army.

He was unsure about the role of physical power, uncertain about his sexuality, and conflicted about his culture and the future — Tom Storm

I agree. Mishima faced those psychological issues during his life. However, I believe it would be interesting to know where the issues began: either when he was rejected by the army or after WWII. Many Japanese suffered crises of identity after the loss in the war. But the main example of this was Mishima. A very talented writer who ended up eaten by everything he believed. I will not say that's fine, but we will hardly meet any writer like him. There is an interesting interview with Japanese cinema director Shohei Imamura and he said about Mishima: he is clearly an interesting person but quite contradictory with his beliefs. People like him die soon.

we should not use concepts such as 'mediaeval' because this is a Western notion of the world. If we want to understand Mishima, we have to see Japan from a different view. — javi2541997

Have you seen "Silence"?

I suppose if someone is psychologically unstable, it's never very difficult to find things in the outside world that seem to confirm their feelings and even amplify them. Politics and culture can become extensions of inner turmoil.

I have read the novel, but no, I didn't watch the film.

It is complicated. At the beginning of his writer career, he seemed to be a shy young person, but surprisingly, he started to transform in a very different way. "Confessions of a Mask" and "The Sound of Waves" are examples of a soft or 'chill' writer; and his 1960s novels took a different notion: very influenced by existentialism, the traditional culture and values of Japan and a clear fetish for destruction and death, as he shows it in The Temple of the Golden Pavilion or The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea.

Mishima was a controversial person, but I believe it is worth reading some of his novels and trying to understand the author.