The Physicalism of Mishima Yukio’s Art

Abstract

The Cartesian concept of the dualistic nature of meaning has frequently been criticized throughout the history of philosophy of language. The oeuvre of Mishima Yukio seems to reflect a kind of anti-Cartesian concept in the physicalism of its language, in the mode of narration and the mere script of Mishima’s stories as well. It seems obvious that at the very center of Mishima’s writings lay some kind of coherent metaphysical vision or phantasm, that can be clearly traced even in one of his earliest novels, Confessions of a Mask (1949). The main theme of Mishima’s writings was cruelty shaped in the manner of psychopathy, discussed in connection with a certain concept of subject/object metaphysics. This could be the reason why Mishima was so concerned with the disharmonic world-view of the archaic Greeks and their theory of tragedy, which shaped his aesthetics. But at the same time one may find that the particular metaphysical vision of Mishima according to a concept of meaning of words can be easily interpreted as the dogmatic meaning of anātman or non-self in Buddhism.