On Nov. 25, 1970, Yukio Mishima committed seppuku or, to employ the term he preferred, hara-kiri. He did so with a great deal of fanfare (he had hoped to have the event televised) at the Tokyo headquarters of the Ground Self-Defense Force after he had harangued the soldiers there about yamato damashi (Japanese spirit) and other arcane and outdated concepts.
Christopher Ross notes that a journalist leaving the base shortly after the incident "passed a group of SDF soldiers . . . excitedly playing volleyball." "They must have started to play," Christopher Ross comments in "Mishima's Sword," "soon after Mishima's balcony appeal. They were still playing when his body was not yet cold."
That Ross includes this vision of soldiers engaged in a decidedly nonmartial game is characteristic of the sharp eye and dark wit with which he scrutinizes Mishima's life. All too often observers who are, like Ross, enthusiasts of "the way of the sword," treat Mishima's 45 years with a seriousness that is perhaps not the most fruitful attitude to adopt when examining an existence that was, even as one must admire aspects of it, not devoid of silliness. Gore Vidal once remarked that America is the only country that could have created a Hemingway and not seen the joke. The good news is that, when Japanese bother to think about Mishima at all, they do see the joke, and so does Ross.