Patriotism

It was my first time teaching Yukio Mishima's "Patriotism" in class so I didn't know how that was going to turn out considering the intense subject of seppeku. You all took it with maturity, especially your reaction to the graphic nature of Mishima's short film. So is the story and film worth bringing in again in a future class?

Also, if you'd like further reading about the film and its production history, click here.

Themes and Meanings in "Patriotism"
Yukio Mishima was a writer who became obsessed by what he saw as the loss of Japanese traditional values, although he led a cosmopolitan and bizarre life. He used his writing success to fund a small private army, the Shield Society, to fight against Communism and support a prewar vision of the emperor as the soul of the Japanese nation. However, he was also an exhibitionist inspired by violence and homosexuality. Sexuality and violence are combined in “Patriotism,” in retrospect perhaps the most revealing of Mishima's works, because the author, like his protagonist Takeyama, committed seppuku.


On November 25, 1970, Mishima led a band of his private army to the headquarters of the Japanese Self Defense Forces, where he told the troops to show the “samurai spirit” to protect the “Imperial Way.” These prewar sentiments were derided by the soldiers, who saw Mishima as a crackpot. Mishima then showed his sincerity by withdrawing from the balcony on which he was speaking and disemboweling himself. The nation was shocked at this spectacular and strange death of one of Japan's most popular writers. It is difficult to consider his writing without reference to his suicide.


In “Patriotism,” written more than a decade earlier, one can see an early sign of Mishima's linking sex and death, or ecstasy and agony, in his version of the Takeyama suicide. The theme of this very tight story—the focus is on the suicide—is the honor and dedication of the lieutenant and his young and beautiful wife. They transcend the life-preserving spirit of most people to find peace in death. Their dedication to the nation and to the emperor is unsullied by selfishness: “The last moments of this heroic and dedicated couple were such as to make the gods themselves weep.”


Mishima wanted to restore what in his personal vision were the traditional values of Japan, values that were deeper than the materialism of the 1960's. Many contemporary Japanese intellectuals worry that Japan's rush to economic success has left behind any real values other than an increasing gross national product and electronic gadgets. Like Mishima, some seek answers in Japan's military past, while others look to religion to restore a sense of values that transcend materialism.


Suicide is a sin in the Christian view, and the Western reader is likely to be repelled by the act if not by the motives of Takeyama and his wife. In Japan, however, there is a long tradition of the “failed hero,” to quote Ivan Morris, in which admiration is given to the loser in a failed but just cause. In the feudal period, the losing hero could redeem himself by committing deliberately painful seppuku to show, quite literally, that he had guts. In Takeyama's case, he was ready to die rather than attack his comrades in revolt, who were supposedly acting in the name of the emperor, the nation, and the army.


Another theme is doing things in the proper way, even suicide. This becomes very clear as the couple prepare their bodies, home, clothes, and suicide notes in a ritualistic manner. The only new element that Mishima introduces into this tradition is the strong eroticism that describes the bodies and passion of Takeyama and his beautiful wife. Beauty and truth are seen as one, and pleasure and pain are integrated in this disturbing story.

Richard Rice. "Patriotism." Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition. Salem Press, 2004. eNotes.com. 2006. 1 Mar, 2009