Abstract
This article aims to contextualise Mishima Yukio’s works and nationalist politics into a history of Japanese queer politics. Mishima Yukio is considered as one of the most prominent artists in modern Japan, famous for his homosexual-themed works and nationalist politics. This article explores the discursive relationships between Japanese national politics and homoeroticism through analysing Mishima Yukio’s works. It will review discourses about Mishima, his performance, works and sexuality; it points out how these discourses contain homophobic presumptions and overlook the wider social and historical contexts of Mishima’s works. The article will discuss Mishima’s far-right political discourses and representations in his famous political essays The Defense of Culture (Bunka bōuei ron) (1969) and The Manifesto of Anti-revolution (Han-kakumei ron) (1969) and the film Patriot (Yūkoku) (1966). This article points out that Mishima intertwined homoerotic ethos and Japanese national politics through the emperor, establishing a space for queer homoerotic desire in Japan’s public culture and politics. In conclusion, this article discusses how Mishima’s representation of the homoeroticised emperor prepared the ground to limit political discourses of queer politics in contemporary Japan.
Highlights
Mishima Yukio (1925-1970) was a distinctive artist and popular figure in post-war Japan, bringing homoeroticism to national culture
Togo’s political purpose is the opposite of Mishima’s but the latter’s discourse of same-sex desire, which admits it into the national political domain, enabled Togo to promote his desire as a political issue in Japanese society
The contextualisation of Mishima’s ultranationalist political discourses into Japanese politics appear to be repeating already well-discussed topics of ‘homofascism’ in Sexuality Studies: how essential homoeroticism has been in fascist aesthetics and ideology (Champagne, 2013; Mosse, 1985; Tanaka, 2008)
Summary
Mishima Yukio (1925-1970) was a distinctive artist and popular figure in post-war Japan, bringing homoeroticism to national culture. He often represented himself in public as a traditional Japanese man, or ‘samurai’ warrior who is a protector of the emperor (Mishima, 2006b) He wrote several stories and political essays for nationalistic causes in Japan and passionately engaged in right-wing politics. His followers, who frequently admire his far-right political beliefs, have organised events, called Yūkoku-ki, which means the ‘anniversary of patriot’s death’, every year His performances, acting the ‘samurai’ in post-war Japan, are well-remembered among the Japanese. Some literary and cultural critiques focus on Mishima’s sexuality for understanding his personality and works (Izumo, 2010; Piven, 2004; Vincent, 2012; Yamazaki, 1971), it is rare, if not at all, to discuss Mishima in the context of male same-sex politics in post-war Japan, for he is widely regarded as too nationalistic to be a gay pioneer. This article will argue how Mishima’s adaptation of the emperor system as the homoerotic object has later influenced gei [gay] activism and development of gay studies, and demonstrates the limitation of Japanese contemporary queer national politics
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