Life for Sale - Yukio Mishima

 

I finished another book before this. but I need to finish another book before I do that one but let's talk about the messy man known as Yukio Mashima.

From the basics I've read about him, Mashima is...a mess. Messy messy mess mess.

1. Traditionalist right winger
2. Closeted gayby (see above)
3. Theatre kid
4. Staged a revolutionary coup against commies
5. Failed the coup
6. Killed self following failed coup (which may have been his plan for the coup?)
7. And is one of the most important writers out of Japan.

I wanna make a joke about how Mishima feels like the worst possible outcome to Murakami's present, but I don't believe he has to fall short like his elders and I still can't finish anything Murakami's made. It does however seem to service the different landscape of Japan in its pursuit of fiction, and the writers of it. It's the also western world who elevates and decides what they want to signify a nation's identity by in their own territories. Mishima, also withstanding Murakami's surrealist liberalism, is a pulp fiction writer by Life for Sale's standard. That may not relate to his other works, but the way it works in Life for Sale is interesting and important. If Japan needed pulp novels in its post-WWII apparatus of both hyper capitalization and redefinition of the social structures by it written by a wingnut preaching the emperor's power, it makes sense that something the present does with heterosexual aueter stories is rebrand their politics.

I don't want to play it exactly parallel to his real life but I think reading some basic overview info via a review or two or the Wikipedia summary helped me understand some of the poltics of the piece. Mishima, when I say messy, feels messy for his pulp ficiton novel (serialized in a Japanese equivalent to Playboy) has no original thoughts beyond his character's "desire to die by selling his life" (but not Marxian).

This is not, as some other pieces I've been reading, a waxing philosophical novel, yet touches some philosophy as the genre. The ultimate "twist" of the novel is unplanned - obviously - even if it's brought into question multiple times. There isn't subtlety but there is Sherlock-ian nonsense observation that leads you to think of it as a come-uppance. I was surpised that the end happens as it does - in the middle of a moment. Hanio sells his life but to what amends. This action, the selling of ones life, is truly paradoxical within right wing ideologies and their preachings - pointing at the senseless self-preservation through self-destruction.

Essentially: the individual runs capital and the individual also matters most. But some individuals better than others. Some individuals cannot have power. Some individuals exhibit autonomy but autonomy shouldn't be allowed if outside the wants of the mechanation. But autonomy is everything. God worship man and the good of man through the production of ones self. The sanctity of life is the sanctity to posssible suppression of the lesser suppressed.

This is a bunch of garbled nonsense, and if every goddamn neocon was just messy like Mishima instead of messy like they are it'd be less annoying and almost comically enjoyable. Almost like the way that liberals get to see the world. Life for Sale is strictly an anticommunist work but doesn't know what it's trying to say about anything but the rhetoric it accepts everyone should understand. Its characters and pulpy unoriginality speaks to that too.

I can't really say why I finished or enjoyed this book beyond it being at its heart a very funny read of the detective novel trope. I also...took another...one of his books out... My new roommate called him a freak at the point of me trying to describe the book I had spent the empty headed library shift reading. Yeah, he's a freak and these pictures of him as St. Sebastian are super hot. 10/10 would reccomend St. Sebastian cosplay for any traditionalist writer. Makes them much more enjoyable.

If I shorthand critique - Mishima's Life for Sale, and likely other works, are not good good reads. His patriarchal and empirist mind shows and he challenges and brings up nothing critical. He is not exactly Ben Shapiro, but maybe akin to Glenn Beck trying to write what he thinks is the next great American-Japanese novel. In reality, all nationalism is fairly similarly tired but Mishima's is an interestingly derived identity out of some small peanut ideas.

Footnote: I use the word traditionalist here a few times and our western word can sometimes see it as milquetoast substitute for fascism or racial supremacy and I don't think it's necessarily applicable that way back towards Mishima by what I understand. His traditionalism is actually fairly anticolonial but also preaches a guide towards tradtion by leaning towards monarchy structures. Which ain't it bub.