NEW YORK -- I was recently intrigued by the constitutional debate -- not in Iraq, but in Japan -- when I read a book on the art of writing, "Bungei Tokuhon," that Yukio Mishima dictated in 1958.
Any mention of Mishima and the Japanese Constitution in the same breath is likely to provoke incredulity, if not mirth. After all, he is the man who harangued a unit of the Self-Defense Forces and, failing to incite it to a revolt, turned toward the Imperial Palace and shouted "Long live the Emperor!" before plunging a sword into his stomach.
So, what did Mishima say a dozen years before his constitutional agitation? "I think you will remember that constitution was a mysterious literal translation of English after the war's ending," he said, "that literal translation of the MacArthur constitution. It was composed, yes, with something resembling prose in spoken language in Japanese, but it was a truly monstrous, hideous prose, and not a few people must have felt the sorrow of the Occupied at the fact that it became the Japanese Constitution."