From ‘the land of the rising sun’ to ‘the countries of the sun’: Mishima Yukio in Greece and Italy

Abstract

AbstractThe famous Japanese author Mishima Yukio is known to have been keenly interested in ancient Greek culture. In this article, I seek to explain how his visit to Greece and Italy in the spring of 1952 intensified his philhellenism. To such an end, I will rely on Mishima’s travelogue titled Apollo’s Cup, which was published in the fall of that same year. I will pay close attention to Mishima’s encounters with the ancient ruins in Athens and with the sculptures of Antinous in the Vatican City, because they were the highlights of Mishima’s trip. I will argue that Mishima’s philhellenism was driven by his personal needs at the time and heightened by his fascination for the materiality of ancient Greece, since the ‘placeness’ of ancient Greece allowed Mishima not only to position and approach ancient Greece but also to idealize ancient Greece.