Swaddling Clothes (Historical Context)

Historical Context

Art in a Political World

The Japan that Mishima lived and worked in had little reprieve from political upheavals. As an adolescent, Mishima would have been aware of the NiNi Roku Incident or the February 26th Incident (1936), a violent resistance movement that resulted in numerous deaths including the assassination of three high-ranking government officials when a military faction attempted to resist a large transfer of their group out of Tokyo by officials whom they claimed sought to attenuate the Emperor’s power. In 1945, when Mishima was twenty years old, he witnessed the surrender of Japan to the United States which was radio broadcast nationwide by Hirohito on August 15, 1945. Japan was to be occupied by United States military from 1945-1952 and forced to accept an American written Constitution that dictated radical changes in the country’s political structure. For one, Japan could no longer have a standing military force, although they were allowed to maintain a “self-defense” army, the Jieitai. The previously Emperor-centered government was turned into a western style “democracy” and the Emperor, while being permitted to remain on the throne and given immunity from prosecution as a war criminal, was forced to renounce his rule by divine authority and declare that he was a mere functionary of the state. This announcement, the ningen singen, occurred on January 1, 1946 and deeply affected Mishima as he dedicated several of his later works to criticizing the effects of American democracy on Japan and resurrecting absolute loyalty to the Emperor.

Though literary critics debate whether Mishima was primarily a “political” writer or an artist writing for art’s sake, the tumultuous political context of his Japan makes it difficult to conceive Mishima as not being influenced by his contemporary environment. In Confessions of a Mask he comments that as a young boy he was deeply affected by the sight of soldiers marching by his house gate, titillated by the scent of their sweat, the physical manifestation of their patriotism. His later works, such as the short story “Patriotism” (1966), which dramatizes the NiNi Roku incident and the double seppeku of a fictional high-ranking military officer and his wife, and his creation of the Tatenokai certainly attest to Mishima’s overt political commitment towards the end of his life. But this is not to say that he favored political critique over aesthetic development and exploration. It would probably be more accurate to say that for Mishima the political and the aesthetic were not mutually exclusive domains. Rather, for Mishima political and aesthetic concerns were inextricably intertwined and they emerged in his works in varying proportions at different stages of his personal and literary development.

The Meiji Restoration and the Fall of the Samurai

A descendent of the Tokugawa family, Mishima spent much of his childhood and adult life interested in samurai philosophy and lore. His commitment to reviving Emperor worship may have had less to do with extreme right-wing political beliefs than was a manifestation of his desire to return to the simpler days of feudal Japan where vassals and lords lived under mutual obligation. Mishima’s understanding of samurai culture and government was highly romanticized as though he envisioned the members of the rigidly stratified class system as living in “harmony” — the vassals offering unconditional service to the ruling class in exchange for absolute protection — he paid little attention to the oppression and exploitation that the agricultural vassals were subject to under the samurai class’s tyrannical military rule.

In 1869 the samurai class was officially removed from power by the newly ascended Meiji government and forbidden to carry swords. In 1853, American Naval officer Matthew Perry coerced Japan to open their trade ports to the West through military force and intimidation. Like in other Asian countries, the infiltration of western social, economic, and political structures resulted in profound economic and social disruptions in Japan. But unlike their Asian neighbors, and witnessing the violent defeat and devastation of these surrounding countries, Meiji Japan more willfully adopted western ideas and practices rather than struggle through escalating military conflict. Their aim was to one day supersede the West by “out-westernizing” them.

This strategy has made Japan one of the foremost economic powers of the world today, but also resulted in national spiritual and psychological confusion that still resonates. Was Japan its own nation, or a mere lackey of the West? Citizens were also disturbed by the destruction of traditional values and culture in favor of the adoption of western, moneymaking oriented practices. This confusion redoubled when the terms of surrender in World War II placed Japan under military supervision and regulation by America. Mishima viewed the negative effects of westernization as a direct result of the disenfranchisement of the samurai class and envisioned the revival of samurai philosophy as a salve to what he perceived as the degradation of Japanese culture, tradition, and conservative mores under modernizing, western influences.

Bunburyodo: the Dual Way of Art and Action

Before the Meiji Restoration, the ruling military elite of Japan were the samurai. The collaboration of politics and aesthetics is the central concept of bunburyodo, “the dual way of art and action,” a samurai ethic that Mishima chose to adhere to as part of his personal philosophy. To enhance their physical fitness and military prowess, the samurai were expected to cultivate literary and artistic interests. Already an artist, Mishima embraced bunburyodo by developing himself physically an d training for patriotic “action.”

Also central to samurai philosophy was the requirement to commit hara-kiri or seppuku, ritual suicide by disembowelment in the face of dishonor. (Hara-kiri and seppuku describe the same process but some Japanese dislike the graphic nature of the former term, literally meaning “belly cut”). When Mishima realized that the Japanese public did not take seriously his call to resurrect Emperor worship and renounce the American written Constitution, he committed suicide in this way, fulfilling the ultimate commitment to samurai philosophy.

Compare & Contrast

• 1868: Ascendancy of Meiji government, characterized by adoption of western economic, social, and political practices. The Meiji period is traditionally marked as the beginning of Japanese westernization, modernization, and industrialization. Meiji leaders justify this radical social transformation by professing its goals are to ultimately “out-westernize” and supersede the west. The samurai class is removed from power and public sword-carrying is outlawed.
  1980s: High-technology “bullet train” travel is extended throughout the nation. First constructed in 1967, it is the most sophisticated form of train travel of its kind in the world. American consumer automobile production exceeded by Japanese production.
• 1940s: U. S. levies economic sanctions on Japan. Surprise attack on U. S.’s Pearl Harbor by Japanese airforce. United States drops atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Until this day, this is the first and only large-scale deployment of nuclear weapons on civilian populated areas during a war. Allied Occupation of Japan. Japan is forced to adopt a model of western democratic government and an American written Constitution.
  1990s: After the Japanese economy becomes one of the strongest in the world, with the Japanese buying up American properties and companies in the 1980s, their economy begins to falter as their stock market drops.
• 1942: President F. D. Roosevelt issues Executive Order No. 9066, ordering all American residents of Japanese ancestry to be removed from the United States west coast regardless of American citizenship. They are interned inland in concentration camps to protect against “espionage” and “sabotage” to “national-defense material, national-defense premises, and national-defense utilities” (Executive Order No. 9066 from Roger Daniels, Prisoners Without Trial p. 129). A similar order is issued in Canada, removing all Japanese from British Columbia’s west coast.
  1976: President Gerald Ford issues Proclamation 4417, subtitle “An American Promise,” officially retracting Executive Order 9066 and offering a national apology to Japanese Americans and their families who were interned during World War II. Proclamation states: “I call upon the American people to affirm with me this American Promise — that we have learned from the tragedy of that long-ago experience forever to treasure liberty and justice for each individual American, and resolve that this kind of action shall never again be repeated” (Proclamation 4417, from Daniels, p. 133).
  1980s: U. S. House of Representatives votes to pay surviving internees of World War II relocation of Japanese Americans $20,000 in reparations. In 1989, President George Bush signs the 1987 vote on reparations into law.