was a small one, but it was clear that the homeland would be threatened if Japanese military momentum was lost. In June the sea battle of Midway took place. By good fortune, the U.S. Navy sank four Japanese aircraft carriers, destroying a large fighter force in the process; this was a blow from which the Japanese Navy did not recover. Plans for advancing across New Guinea and invading northern Australia were aborted; after Midway, in effect, the war was lost. It continued for another three years, with immense loss of life and destruction of property, but after the Guadalcanal campaign of late 1942 the Japanese were on the defensive in the Pacific.
Mishima associated at this time with a group of writers who believed that the war was holy. Hasuda, the leading spirit in the Bungei Bunka group, and twenty-one years Mishimaâs senior, encouraged the boy to believe in the ideal of death in the service of the Emperor. A scholar with an exceptional capacity for interpreting the Japanese classics in contemporary terms, Hasuda wrote a study of Åtsu-no-Miko, a tragic prince of the seventh century.The moral was, in Hasudaâs words: âI believe one should die young in this age. To die young, I am sure, is the culture of my country.â Hasuda had a great regard for the young Mishima; a friend, Masaharu Fuji, recorded this impression (in an article in
ShinchÅ
magazine, February 1971) of Hasuda saying good-bye to the boy: âWhen we visited Hasuda he went out to see Mishima off at the station, and he stared after the departing train for a long time. His attachment to the boy was obvious; he regarded Mishima the prodigy as his own precious jewel.â
Hasuda was a slim, tense schoolteacher from Kyushu, the traditional home of priests in Japan. He had served in China and been invalided back to Japan, but in 1943 he was to be drafted againâto Malaya. In 1970 Mishima wrote a preface to a biography of Hasuda in which he remarked: âHis enemies [in Japan] had not tried to understand nor wanted to know the source of Hasudaâs fierce anger and uncompromising conduct. They were the pure product of his stern tenderness . . . I received Hasudaâs tenderness and affection when I was a boy. I saw the grand spectacle of his anger, suddenly coming and then evaporating . . . For me Hasuda was a poet who had a scholarly knowledge of Japanese literature. He loved classical lyrical poetry and injected the quality of the classics into his own work. I could not understand his anger . . . Hasuda placed his confidence in me when he was drafted for the second time [in 1943] and set out on his journey to
shishi
[death granted by the favor of the Emperor], but, naïve as I was, I could not understand his feeling even after I heard of his death . . .â Though as a schoolboy Mishima did not fully understand Hasuda, he did sympathize deeply with his ideals.
The Bungei Bunka was a small, little-known band of literary nationalists. Hasuda encouraged Mishima to get in touch with the leading intellectuals, who believed in the holiness of the war their country had embarked on. They had formed a movement known as the Nippon Roman-ha (Japanese Romanticists), led by YÅjurÅ Yasuda, a critic with a rhetorical gift, a highbrow agitator for the âsacredâ war. In 1942 Mishima collected Roman-ha works, including the poetry of Shizuo ItÅ, the best artist in the Roman-ha, with whom he corresponded. ItÅâs work was more to his taste thanYasudaâs, but this did not keep him from visiting Yasuda in 1943. Yasudaâs ideas, however, were too extreme for the young Mishima, and his language obscureâa characteristic of Roman-ha writers with the exception of ItÅ. Jun EtÅ, a scholar with an interest in the Roman-ha, summed up the ideals of the movement in conversation with me: âThey believed in the value of destruction and ultimately in self-destruction.
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