Death as life's accomplishment

In all of Mishima's writings, death occupies a fundamental place. It is as if all life has meaning only in the face of perfect death. The very meaning of life is given only with respect to the end of it. More than some have misinterpreted his own death. Mishima prepared for it possibly all his life. In the last hours of it, he addressed part of the Japanese army to convince it to go back to the traditional values of the medieval samurai and abandon the modernist trend and Westernization that oppressed the authentic spirit in favour of gross and quantitative non-values such as the American ones.

His speech was not understood, nor followed up and soon after Mishima killed himself through the ritual suicide of the Seppuku, together with his small private army. It is absolutely wrong to think that he committed suicide because he saw failure, Mishima had prepared himself to commit suicide regardless. His suicide, as he wrote many times before, represented the climax of his life. A suicide "at the top" when he perceived the highest peak of perfection, physical, lying and spiritual, possible. But above all an aesthetically wonderful end to fulfill his own philosophy that could not foresee decay and corruption.

We should not judge Mishima by Western values of which he is not a part. But his death should be considered for what it is, that is, an extreme attempt to give meaning to existence that obviously has nothing to do with the superficial satisfaction of pleasure that is so popular today.  

m.m.