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Entry: Mishima--Paleocon as Samurai Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/mishima_postpaleo_of_nippon#26149 Post contents: Thanks Raimondo, for your interesting piece which I mostly agree with. Having recently finished reading the tetralogy, I think the last novel, Decay of the Angel, gives us a clear idea of what Mishima thought of modern Japan. Far from being a conventional nationalist or a militarist, he hated what Japan had become. And while he believed that the military and the ziabatsu bore most of the blame, in Decay, he turns on the "Good Japanese" - represented by Honda, whose relationship with a malleable youth is as perverse as any in fiction. Through Honda, the only character to be present in all of the novels in the Tetralogy, he traces the gradual but final decay of the soul of ancient Japan. The earnest youth who avoided the extremes of his contemporaries has become the corrupted old man who cares for nothing but to exercise his fading strength on this boy; to convert him into an indifferent monster, a cipher for modern Japanese society. Thus viewed, Mishima's death is both a work of art and a political act. Having lost the political fight, Mishima made his point as an artist and as a representative of what has been lost. His act also signals a small victory of art over death, because we have not forgotten. Sent at: 2008 07 24