The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima

Manga—strip cartoons—and video games are all the rage now. This société sans litérature is what Mishima surely had in mind when he predicted, late in life, that “Japan will disappear. It will become inorganic, empty, neutral-tinted; it will be wealthy and astute, a large economic power in a corner of the Far East.”

The same is true of the written word. If one writes: ‘I will die in November,’ then one has to die. If you make light of words once, you will go on doing so.”

Nationalism is used one way or another for political purposes, and thus people often lose sight of the fact that nationalism is basically a problem of culture.

‘To know and not to act is not yet to know.’