Mishima's Sword - Travels in Search of a Samurai Legend
by Christopher Ross
Harper Perennial, HK$132
Three-times Nobel nominee Yukio Mishima wanted a proud Japan free of the humiliation of the 1945 surrender. But mostly he wanted Japanese to turn away from materialism and modernism that had made them soft. He failed and committed seppuku on November 25, 1970, aged 45. Mishima's Sword - Travels in Search of a Samurai Legend is Christopher Ross' search for the sword used to decapitate the disembowelled Mishima after his failure to rouse the officer cadets of the Self Defence Force to a coup d'etat. Ross is shown a rusting, chipped sword, but suspects it's a ruse to hasten an end to his inquiries, which have encompassed swordsmen, swordsmiths, S&M and samurai tradition. The narrative is interspersed with an outsider-insider view of Japanese culture and Mishima's writings - The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Forbidden Colours, his Noh plays - even as he's insistently told that Mishima has nothing to say about Japan, today or ever. Could this be true? Ross offers no answers, because - and this is the book's weakness - the reader is in the dark about the object of his quest.