Essay about The Conflicted Japan of Yukio Mishima’s...

The Conflicted Japan of Yukio Mishima’s Spring Snow Yukio Mishima was a revolutionary author. His dramatic public suicide is the perfect capstone to a life full of turmoil and unrest. Mishima himself was as conflicted as his many stories and plays, which tend to play out the problem of which direction is Japan heading, and should the nation be developing that way. Mishima romanticized the samurai and nurtured a lifelong affair with traditional Japanese theater. At the same time, he admired the West and studied Western art and literature avidly. The influence is evident, from the decidedly 19th Century British feel of his novel, Spring Snow, to the many references therein to Western art, literature, film, and philosophy. Mishima was†¦show more content†¦Kiyoaki is he son of the Marquis Matsugae, a sort of nouveau-riche during the reign of the Meiji Emperor. Kiyoaki, a beautiful young man on the path to success in the new Japan, is in love with his childhood friend, Satoko, the beautiful daughter of the Ayakura family. The Ayak uras are very prominent, of higher aristocratic class than even Kiyoaki’s family, and the Matsugaes view the closeness of the families as a fortune. Kiyoaki is a moody, pensive boy who gets a thrill out of alternately rejecting and accepting Satoko’s demure advances. Eventually the Ayakuras will wait no more for Kiyoaki to make his approach for Satoko’s hand in marriage, and, faced with another offer from an impressive suitor, Satoko becomes engaged to be married. Kiyoaki realizes only as the situation escalates beyond any reparation that he truly loves Satoko. With the help of his friend, Honda, the son of a judge in the Japanese court system, Kiyoaki begins an affair with her. The two meet cladestinely for sex, and Satoko eventually becomes pregnant. Having violated multiple social barriers, and after the realization of Satoko’s pregnancy, the couple are found out. Satoko is sent to a nunnery, and Kiyoaki dies, presumably of heartache and the flu, at th e age of 20. The tragic story follows an arc not at all unlike British literature of the 19th Century. It makes since that Mishima would use that style to write this novel; after all, given