Beauty Destroyed

Yukio Mishima at the Japanese Self Defense Force boot camp, 1969, photo by Keiichi Toyoizumi.

Image 6: (Top left) Mishima practicing kendo in 1959. (Top right) Married to Yoko Sugiyama on June 1, 1958. (Bottom left) The Mishimas in Hawaii, 1960. (Bottom right) The Mishimas in New York, 1960.

Image 5: On August 19, 1956, Mishima carried a mikoshi (portable shrine) at the summer festival of Kumano Shrine in Jiyugaoka. The experience is described in detail in "About Ecstasy."

This is a book from the Yukio Mishima Literary Museum in Yamanakako Forest Park of Literature, on the shores of Lake Yamanaka, which is a location described in many Mishima works. The book was published in 1999, the year the museum opened.

Akhenaten of Judas Iscariot, 1996

Fenriz of Darkthrone

Yukio Mishima relaxing in his yard

Yukio Mishima

Let me color the night sky for an instant with all my being and then burn out." The boy thought hard, but could think of no other way to live. But he ruled out suicide. Preestablished harmony would do him the favor of killing him."

It gave him pleasure to think about the long speeches that would be delivered at his funeral, and about fame and honor after death. But the thought of his own corpse made him uncomfortable. "Let me live like a sky-rocket.+

During the wartime period, early 1940s, Yukio Mishima was heavily invested in poetry, and not only the Japanese classics, but a huge amount of Western poetry as well. His primary reading at the time was Rilke, Proust, Wilde, and Cocteau.

Jessicka of Jack off Jill performing at the Orange Peel in 2015

Yukio Mishima

jack of jill

The Moon Lay Hidden Beneath A Cloud performing at The Steeple in Waregem, Belgium July 26, 1997