Death and Night and Blood... (Hagakure)

The Japanese have always been a pretty suicidal race.  

At one time- ritual disembowelment was all the rage. 

These crazy blood-thirsty bastards would fall on their swords at the drop of a chopstick.   

I remember as a kid, reading about the author Yukio Mishima and his attempt to inspire a coup d'etat in order to restore the emperor by barricading himself and his fellow members of the imperialist group the Tatenokai in the commandant's office of the Ichigaya Camp- the Tokyo headquarters of the Eastern Command of the Self Defence Forces.  

With a prepared manifesto and banner of demands, he addressed the soldiers gathered below, & much to his surprise and dismay was mocked and jeered- at which point he returned to the office to commit seppuku (cut belly) as a symbol of protest.

It was a dog-root.  The member of the clan assigned the task of committing the necessary act of coup de grace (beheading) on Mishima as he lay bleeding on the Tatami wasn't up to the task.
After a couple of attempts, another member took over while the bumbler cut his own belly.  

The third in line successfully took both men's heads.  

(Watch Schrader's movie on 'Mishima'.  It's pretty much flawless, and there is a comprehensive edition on Criterion, including many of the high points of this strange author's life.)      

Anyway...suffice it to say, I was fascinated by this somewhat anachronistic episode in Japanese history.  

You might say obsessed.  I guess in the same way young girls romanticise the suicide of Sylvia Plath and misunderstand it to be some kind of grand romantic act.    

I am less fascinated by it now- I guess because I have more to live for. 

But this Nipponese preoccupation with death, night and blood for so much of their history must have seeped somehow into the collective culture and manifest destiny- much as the radiation from Fukushima is slowly drenching the earth under the land of the rising sun.

So it doesn't surprise me they would sooner or later commit an act of collective Hara Kiri.  

I just never expected them to take the rest of us along for the ride.


これはあなたの魂に毒でなければなりません。私たちの魂のすべての時に毒...

(RIP Mishima-San.)