Yukio Mishima: Trending quotes

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Yukio Mishima: 120 quotes43 likes

“Japanese people today think of money, just money: Where is our national spirit today? The Jieitai must be the soul of Japan. … The nation has no spiritual foundation. That is why you don’t agree with me. You will just be American mercenaries. There you are in your tiny world. You do nothing for Japan. … I salute the Emperor. Long live the emperor!”

Addressing the SPF Garrison at Ichigaya Camp during his failed coup attempt, as quoted at "Yukio Mishima" by Kerry Bolton at Counter Currents Publishing http://www.counter-currents.com/2011/01/yukio-mishima-2/; upon going back inside he is said to have commented to his followers: "I don't think they even heard me". <br class="br">Final address (1970)

“Other people must be destroyed. In order that I might truly face the sun, the world itself must be destroyed….”

Yukio Mishima book The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

Source: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“… living is merely the chaos of existence…”

Yukio Mishima book The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

Source: The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

“We live in an age in which there is no heroic death.”

“Young people get the foolish idea that what is new for them must be new for everybody else too. No matter how unconventional they get, they're just repeating what others before them have done.”

Yukio Mishima book After the Banquet

Source: After the Banquet

“if the world changed, i could not exist, and if i changed, the world could not exist”

Yukio Mishima book The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

Source: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“When people concentrate on the idea of beauty, they are, without realizing it, confronted with the darkest thoughts that exist in this world. That, I suppose, is how human beings are made.”

Yukio Mishima book The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

Source: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“Nobody even imagines how well one can lie about the state of one’s own heart.”

Yukio Mishima book Thirst for Love

Source: Thirst for Love

“I want to make a poem of my life.”

As quoted by Mishima's biographer, Henry Scott-Stokes in the documentary Yukio Mishima : Samurai Writer (1985)

“History knew the truth. History was the most inhuman product of humanity. It scooped up the whole of human will and, like the goddess Kali in Calcutta, dripped blood from its mouth as it bit and crunched.”

Yukio Mishima book The Decay of the Angel

Source: The Decay of the Angel

“Again and again, the cicada’s untiring cry pierced the sultry summer air like a needle at work on thick cotton cloth.”

Yukio Mishima book Runaway Horses

Source: Runaway Horses

“For clearly it is impossible to touch eternity with one hand and life with the other.”

Yukio Mishima book The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

Source: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“He felt that taking naps was much more beneficial than confronting catastrophes.”

Yukio Mishima book Spring Snow

Source: Spring Snow

“There isn't any fear in existence itself, or any uncertainty, but living creates it.”

Yukio Mishima book The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

Source: The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

“The highest point at which human life and art meet is in the ordinary. To look down on the ordinary is to despise what you can't have. Show me a man who fears being ordinary, and I'll show you a man who is not yet a man.”

Yukio Mishima book Thirst for Love

Source: Thirst for Love

“… of all the kinds of decay in this world, decadent purity is the most malignant.”

Yukio Mishima book Confessions of a Mask

Source: Confessions of a Mask

“a samurai is a total human being, whereas a man who is completely absorbed in his technical skill has degenerated into a ‘function’, one cog in a machine.”

“Was I ignorant, then, when I was seventeen? I think not. I knew everything. A quarter-century's experience of life since then has added nothing to what I knew. The one difference is that at seventeen I had no 'realism'.”

Yukio Mishima book Sun and Steel

Source: Sun and Steel

“The special quality of hell is to see everything clearly down to the last detail.”

Yukio Mishima book The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

Source: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“Possessing by letting go of things was a secret of ownership unknown to youth.”