Yukio Mishima: Existence

Yukio Mishima was Japanese author. Explore interesting quotes on existence.
Yukio Mishima: 120 quotes43 likes

“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

“… 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

“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

“Only through the group, I realised — through sharing the suffering of the group — could the body reach that height of existence that the individual alone could never attain.”

Yukio Mishima book Sun and Steel

Source: Sun and Steel (1968), p. 87.
Context: Only through the group, I realised — through sharing the suffering of the group — could the body reach that height of existence that the individual alone could never attain. And for the body to reach that level at which the divine might be glimpsed, a dissolution of individuality was necessary. The tragic quality of the group was also necessary, the quality that constantly raised the group out of the abandon and torpor into which it was prone to lapse, leading it to an ever-mounting shared suffering and so to death, which was the ultimate suffering. The group must be open to death — which meant, of course, that it must be a community of warriors.

“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

“All my life I have been acutely aware of a contradiction in the very nature of my existence.”

Yukio Mishima

As quoted in Mishima : A Life in Four Chapters (1985).
Context: All my life I have been acutely aware of a contradiction in the very nature of my existence. For forty-five years I struggled to resolve this dilemma by writing plays and novels. The more I wrote, the more I realized mere words were not enough. So I found another form of expression.

“Is there not a sort of remorse that precedes sin? Was it remorse at the very fact that I existed?”

Yukio Mishima book Confessions of a Mask

Source: Confessions of a Mask (1949), p. 144.

“There is something that even now strikes me as strange. Originally I was not possessed by gloomy thoughts. My concern, what confronted me with my real problem, was beauty alone. But I do not think that the war affected me by filling my mind with gloomy thoughts. 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

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (1959).