Yukio Mishima 三島 由紀夫

1925-1970

“Fair is the knight who lieth slain
Amid the rush and the reed…” Oscar Wilde

Yukio Mishima, born Kimitake Hiraoka in Tokyo, was 16 years old when Japan entered into the second world war. An alienated child, Mishima spent most of his time reading, growing obsessed with the “beauty of the violent or excruciatingly painful death of a handsome youth.” The Japanese, a historically isolated nation, supported war efforts by promoting worship for their benevolent Emperor while parading racial and cultural superiority. Mishima, an aspiring writer, formed close ties with a band of literary nationalists who formed the Nippon Roman-Ha (Japanese romanticism) movement.

The movement was an embodiment of Japanese ethos: “elegance and that of samurai” An exalted warrior class, The Samurai was honour bound “to lay down his life for duty” as well as remaining “spiritually prepared to meet death bravely and fittingly at any time.” A certain Samurai spirit was revived during the war by conscripted university students boarding kamikaze planes towards a sacrificial death and romanticized by writers who viewed the war as “sacred”. Mishima yearned to satisfy his own desire for death in the military but he was declared unfit for service after embellishing a cold.

Japan surrendered in 1945, enacting a new constitution implemented by allied powers that prohibited the nation from maintaining a military and forced the Emperor to renounce his benevolence. After the war, Mishima made his debut as a novelist, releasing his first book Confessions of a Mask. A deeply revealing autobiography, the novel surprisingly made no reference to the war that marked his adolescence. For the next 20 years, Mishima would write thirteen novels and ten plays, remaining remarkably apolitical despite Japan’s rapid and forceful modernization.

In 1965, bubbling extremism in the form of public demonstrations piqued Mishima’s dormant interest in politics. The Japanese, according to Mishima, accrued a large amount of stress after being forced to “an ultra-modern way of life in [a] short space of time…” After a literary decline, he formed the Tatenokai (shield society) his “spiritual army” comprised of right-wing university students who would get together to perform military exercises and sing about “ballads of cherry blossoms, kamikaze pilots, gangsters…the spirit of old Japan.” On November 25^th, 1970, Mishima committed ritual suicide (hara-kiri or seppuku) at the Ministry of Defense in Tokyo after an attempted coup d’état by four members of the Tatenokai. Before disemboweling himself, Mishima delivered a speech to a confused and irritated regiment who had been assembled at his request. The speech, barely audible, was a call for constitutional reform and restoration of Japan’s greatness.

“Modernization” writes Mishima, “damage[s] the totality of culture.” It is thus that “what is most exquisite in a national culture is tied closely to what may also be most disagreeable.” Mishima had recognized that since the end of the second world war the West “underrated the importance of the ‘dark’ side of Japanese culture.” The Japanese aesthetic, admired by Westerners, which includes the tea ceremony, Zen Buddhism, and haiku poetry only shows “one side of a moon, to the West, while pushing on busily with modernization.” As a result, Japan suppressed its martial tradition and, as stated ominously by Mishima, “insane incidents occur…wherever national culture seeks to regain its totality.” Referring to the “painful condition of Japanese culture” in which the rational humanism of Modernization “turns the eyes of modern man towards the brightness of freedom and progress” while “[wiping] the problem of death from the level of consciousness, pushing it deeper…turning the death impulse…to an ever more dangerous inner-directed impulse” Mishima poetically prophesized the dangers of unmitigated modernization upon cultures with incompatible traditions.

Hidden deep in the subconscious mind, Mishima writes, is the “impulse to be free and the impulse to die” which arise from the “fundamental contradictions of human existence.” Post-war Japan “overflowing with a mood of peace” could not fulfill “the impulse for surrender and death.” Thus individuals seek out “a goal worth dying for” in order to “avoid the boredom and fatigue that seep into an age of peace.” At the age of 45, Mishima was hardly the young handsome youth whose death he had so craved but by his own hand he had restored the traditional Japanese balance between “the chrysanthemum and the sword” for which he sacrificed his life.

In the 47 years following Mishima’s death, Japan’s incredible modernization fueled by “sacrificing everything for industrial growth” allowed them to catch up with and advance beyond other nations. It wasn’t until the 1990s when the country’s economy stalled that the extreme nature of the country’s progress came to light. According to Japanologist Alex Kerr, the nation fell into the pitfalls of both developing countries and advanced economies, “concreting its own rivers and seashores”, and mismanaging public wealth, resulting in a soaring national debt. Recently, Japan’s current prime minister Abe Shinzo has resurrected Japanese nationalism, pushing forward revisions to Article 9 which would end the country’s post-war pacifism. Mishima’s life and death serves as both a testimony and tragedy to the lingering human spirit that earnestly desires to detest, eagerly seeking out a cause to action for which one’s energy may be spent.

Jacob Krone

Works Cited:

Mishima, Yukio. Death in Midsummer and Other Stories. Penguin Books, 1971.

Scott-Stokes, Henry. The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1974.

Mishima, Yukio, and Kathryn Sparling. The Way of the Samurai: Yukio Mishima on Hagakure in Modern Life.

Basic Books, 1977.

Ihara, Saikaku, and Caryl Ann. Callahan. Tales of Samurai Honor. Monumenta Nipponica, Sophia University, 1983.

Kerr, Alex. Dogs and Demons: The Fall of Modern Japan. Penguin, 2002.

Pekkanen Robert J., author, and author Pekkanen Saadia M. “Japan in 2014 : All about Abe.” Asian Survey no. 1

(2015): 103. JSTOR Journals, EBSCOhost (accessed October 21, 2017).

Other Relevant Reading:

Wolfe, Alan Stephen. Suicidal Narrative in Modern Japan. Princeton University Pres, 1990.

Mishima, Yukio. Confessions of a Mask. New Directions, 1958.

Mishima, Yukio, and Michael Gallagher. Runaway Horses. Vintage International, 2002.

 

Walter Benjamin

July 1892- Sept 1940

Walter Benjamin, a German Jew, lived in the unluckiest time and place: Germany, at the turn of the 20th Century. History could not have chosen a more unfavourable time for Benjamin to be born; combining his race, religion and radical ideas with cultural change and growing hatred against Jews. Benjamin was a writer and philosopher who committed suicide in 1940 while trying to escape the Nazi’s. His ideas were a mix of marxism, German idealism, Romanticism, and Jewish mysticism. He was a devout religious man, believing Judaism to be the highest form of spirituality, and opposing what he called “capitalist religion” (Robinson, Andrew). His ideas opposing modernity and capitalism were profound, and have added to marxist ideology. He was friends with famous figures such as Theodor Adorno and Hannah Arendt. From 1933-1940, he spent his days exiled in France, where he produced some of his most famous pieces before his death (Wolfe, Ross.).

Benjamin felt alienation from German writers, and instead tended towards the culture and ideas of France thinkers (Benjamin, Walter et al.). France was emerging from the tides of revolution, switching power throughout the 1800s from free Republic to ruled Empire. In the late 19th Century, French thinkers were moving more towards Realism, and away from Romanticism. However, Benjamin would have felt more at home amongst the Romantics and Symbolists, who valued human emotion and traditional religious values. He also wrote about the “concept of criticism in German Romanticism,” combining ideas from the Enlightenment and Romanticism (Walter, Eiland, and McLaughlin).

In Walter Benjamin’s “Theses on History,” he explains marxism as a response to capitalism that has become a religion in France. He saw how capitalism changed the very fabric of cultural life and even the experience of time. Walter’s idea of homogeneous empty time occurs when moments are viewed as equal and interchangeable along a continuum. Empty time lacks any differentiation and special moments that give life meaning (Robinson, Andrew). This form of time is a result of capitalism, and creates an empty existence with no meaning, as labour and commodities are continually measured, used and replaced. Benjamin contrasts this empty existence with the jetztzeit, or “now time,” that exists in “messianic time” (Robinson, Andrew). In messianic time, all of history is compressed into a single moment in time, and real truth can be seen. Benjamin relates this to social movements and revolutions, as all past failed struggles are fulfilled in one messianic moment of redemption. History can only be understood through the lens of immediacy and redemption (Robinson, Andrew).

This was Benjamin’s philosophical reasoning for his marxist views on revolution. His ideas are such a wild mix of religious, political and romantic ideas. Reading his work transports one immediately to the social context in which he lived, yet his ideas transcend time. Benjamin’s writing itself is descriptive and vivid, you can see what he saw. For example, Benjamin starts his text, Berlin Childhood Around 1900, by a vivid description of his childhood home:

“The caryatids… may have [sung] a lullaby beside that cradle- a song containing little of what later awaited me, but nonetheless surrounding the theme through which the air of the courtyards has forever remained intoxicating to me… and it is precisely this air that sustains the images and allegories which preside over my thinking, just as the caryatids, from the heights of their loggias, preside over the courtyards of Berlin’s West End.” (Walter, Bullock, and Jennings. )

He switches in this quote from past to present, pulling the air of the courtyards throughout time and portraying his childhood innocence and adult awakening, connected by a common theme of the caryatids. In the same way, he views history as connecting through time with a common thread of revolution and messianic redemption.

What he considered his greatest work, left unfinished when he died, was the Arcades Project (Walter, Eiland, and McLaughlin). It was a series of observations on the Paris Arcades, the beautiful glass arches that cased the products of modernity and technological advances of his time (Schwartz, Vanessa R.). He used this project to portray the meaninglessness of bourgeois life, and communicate his marxist ideas. Benjamin did not view this collection as merely observations, but a blueprint for the ideal city, and wrote in a letter that he wished to apply his observations to the city (Walter, Eiland, and McLaughlin). He always considered his work more important than even his life, demonstrated by how he lugged a suitcase of writings over the mountains when trying to escape from the Nazi’s (Limone, Noa). His tragic death left many of his pieces unfinished, but as his friends and colleagues sorted through the writings he had left, it was only then that the world saw the true brilliance of this philosopher and his ideas became famous.

Veronica Klassen

Works Cited

Ball, David. “Walter Benjamin.” Ambit, no. 185, 2006, pp. 22–22. JSTOR,

www.jstor.org/stable/44336533.

Benjamin, Walter, Marcus Paul Bullock, and Michael William Jennings. (2003). Walter 

Benjamin: Selected Writings Volume 3 1935-1938. Harvard University Press.

Benjamin, Walter, Howard Eiland, and Kevin McLaughlin. The Arcades Project. Harvard

University Press, 1999.

Cohen, Josh. “Phenomenologies of Mourning: Gillian Rose and Walter Benjamin.” Women: A 

Cultural Review, vol. 9, 1998, pp. 47–61., doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09574049808578334.

Clark, T.J. “Reservations of the Marvellous.” London Review of Books, London Review of

Books, 21 June 2000, www.lrb.co.uk/v22/n12/tj-clark/reservations-of-the- marvellous.

Jeffries, Stuart. “Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life Review – Gambler, Womaniser, Thinker.”

The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 7 Aug. 2014, www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/07/walter-benjamin-critical-life-howard- eiland-michael-w-jennings-review.

Limone, Noa. “Chronicling Walter Benjamin’s Final Hours.” Haaretz.com, 7 Apr. 2013,

www.haaretz.com/chronicling-walter-benjamin-s-final-hours-1.449897.

Robinson, Andrew. “Walter Benjamin: Messianism and Revolution – Theses on

History.”Ceasefire Magazine, 30 Nov. 2013,

ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/walter-benjamin-messianism-revolution-theses-history/.

Schwartz, Vanessa R. “Walter Benjamin for Historians.” The American Historical Review, vol. 106, no. 5, 2001, pp. 1721–1743. JSTOR,  www.jstor.org/stable/2692744.

Wolfe, Ross. “Walter Benjamin’s Writings in German and in English.” The Charnel-House, 9 Jan. 2017,thecharnelhouse.org/2015/12/10/walter-benjamins-writings-in-german- and-in-english/.

Other Relevant Reading

Gilloch, Graeme. “Three Biographical Studies of Walter Benjamin — Walter Benjamin. Eine

Biographie by Werner Fuld / Spinne Im Eigenen Netz. Walter Benjamin: Leben Und Werk by Momme Brodersen / Benjaminiana Edited by Hans Puttnies and Gary Smith.” Telos, no. 91, 1992, pp. 173, International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS); Politics Collection; Sociology Collection, libaccess.mcmaster.ca.libaccess.lib.mcmaster.ca/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.libaccess.lib.mcmaster.ca/docview/214365417?accountid=12347

Wohlfarth, Irving. No-Man’s-Land: On Walter Benjamin’s ‘Destructive Character’ in Walter 

Benjamin’s Philosophy, Benjamin, Andrew (Ed). Routledge, 1994, Philosopher’s Index,

libaccess.mcmaster.ca.libaccess.lib.mcmaster.ca/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.libaccess.lib.mcmaster.ca/docview/42793130?accountid=12347.

Catherine the Great

21 April 1729 – 17 November 1796

 

Catherine II of Russia , also known as Catherine the Great and born Princess Sophie of Anhalt – Zerbst, was empress of Russia from 1762 until 1796 , and was the country’s longest ruling female leader. Her reign, set during a period of Russian enlightenment, saw the Russian Empire transform into one of the great powers of Europe. Furthermore, she enthusiastically embraced enlightenment ideals and corresponded personally with the salonnieres who were cultivating the enlightenment in France. It was these actions which in evitably earned her the title of enlightened despot by historians as well as herself .1 Catherine also read a great deal of philosophical works from her era and as such was exposed to most of the prominent philosophers of her time, including Montesquieu and Voltaire. As a result, she tried to rule with reason and logic as the enlightenment dictated. Despite this many of her critics questioned her adherence as many thought it was simply a ploy to garner support and to further her own selfish gains.2 Although many of these criticisms were focused on gender as they interpreted her as a mix of masculine strength and feminine vanity and so cannot be taken as credible. In contrast to the criticism many of her contemporaries saw her for a hero of the enlightenment and a great woman. A Salonniere by the name of Suzanne Necker has been quoted saying Catherine is, “the model woman of the century, she never had a taste for pleasure … and this characteristic was one of the causes of her greatness.” 3 This is further shown simply by the fact that under her rule the Russian enlightenment was at its height. Furthermore, Catherine helped to personally fund the salons which allowed enlightenment ideals and philosophers to thrive and discuss such ideas and views which would be otherwise may have been frowned upon.3

 

As well as contributing spiritually and intellectually to the Russian Empire and her peoples, Catherine II also made attempts to improve the Russian economy, expand the borders of the empire and improve the educational system. Her attempt at economic improvement was a minor success it was well below the western European standards. Historian Francois Cruzet describes Catherine’s Russia as still having a large peasantry and little private enterprise but making large strides in modernizing industry, mainly in textiles and ironworks .4 While this made her already a strong leader in the eyes of many it was the military conquests which took place under rule which solidified Russia as a great power. Where Peter the Great had failed to gain more than a small foot hold in the south, near the Black Sea, Catherine was able to conquer the south and it was under her reign which the Turks suffered their heaviest defeats.5 Catherine quite clearly held western European culture, philosophy and education close to her heart. She wanted to create a new type of person in Russia. One who would be a well-educated intellectual who would meet or even surpass the western European standard.6 Although her attempts to create a national school system were not met with success she was able to pass a great deal of educational reforms. She commissioned the first institute for higher learning aimed at girls which was completed in 1808 , and created a system were young men were educated until they were 21 years of age.7 All in all, Catherine the Great ’s reign over Russia dragged the Empire into the modern European world by cultivating the enlightenment , the economy and by expanding Russian borders otherwise contested .

 

 Matthew Barone

Works Cited

1. Kenneth C. Campbell (2015). Western Civilization: A Global and Comparative Approach: Since 1600: Volume II: Since 1600 . Routledge. p. 86. ISBN 9781317452300 .

2. Riasanovsky, Nicholas V., and Mark D. Steinberg. A History of Russia . 8th ed. Vol. 1. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. n.p. Print .

3. Okenfuss, Max J. “Catherine II’s Restored Image, and The Russian Economy in the Age of Catherine the Great. ” Jahrbücher Für Geschichte Osteuropas , Neue Folge, 45, no. 4 (1997): 521 – 25.

4. François Crouzet (2001). A History of the European Economy, 1000 – 2000. U of Virginia Press. p. 75 .

5. Anderson, R. C. Naval wars in the Levant, 1559 – 1853. Mansfield Centre, CT: Martino Pub., 2005 .

6. Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, A History of Russia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

7. Max (2006). “If these walls …. Smolny’s Repeated Roles in History”. Russian Life. M.E Sharpe, 2012.

Additional Reading

Osteuropas, Neue Folge, 56, no. 3 (2008): 322 – 29. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41052100 .

WIRTSCHAFTER, ELISE KIMERLING. “Religion and Enlightenment in Eighteenth – Century Russia: Father Platon at the Court of Catherine II.” The Slavonic and East European Revie w 88, no. 1/2 (2010): 180 – 203. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2078 0417 .

Okenfuss, Max J. “Catherine, Montesquieu, and Empire.” Jahrbücher Für Geschichte Osteuropa s , Neue Folge, 56, no. 3 (2008): 322 – 29. h ttp://www.jstor.org/stable/41052100 .

Billington, James H. The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Cultur e . Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1966. pp. 217 – 26. Print .

Tumarkin, Nina. “Russia’s Moral Rearmament.” The Wilson Quarterly (1976 – ) 24, no. 2 (2000): 48 – 49. http://www.jstor.org/sta ble/40260038 .

“Catherine the Great.” Wikipedia. November 26, 2017. Accessed November 26, 2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_the_Great#CITEREFMax2006 .

“Russian Enlightenment.” Wikipedia. October 13, 2017. Accessed November 26, 2017. https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Enlightenment#Economics .

Secularism

Identification

Secularism is the belief that religion should not influence decisions made by the government or anything else that may effect the public life. It is an advocation of separating the church and the state. It is regarded as a method for modernization. Many key historical figures such as Voltaire, Diderot, Locke and Paine supported the idea. The term first surfaced in 1851 and was first used by George Jacob Holyoake. Secularism was supported by the intellectuals who realized that it aligned with their philosophy of self-improvement.

Historical Significance

Today, most countries in the world are secular, a lot of them don’t even have a state religion. Secularism has led to modernization by allowing radical thoughts and reforms to be discussed more freely. Secularism was a significant source of newly emerging creed of scientific naturalism in the mid- nineteenth century. It also led to liberalism and progressiveness. This led to modernization of several countries, which led to industrial revolution and increased the scientific, social and economic progress exponentially. Secularism was promoted by nationalist states, organized religion was undermined in many nationalistic states, such as France, Germany and Turkey. Secularism was also promoted in socialist and communist states, where people were mostly Atheists.

Key Historical Proponents

French Revolution had several effects on the relationship between the state and the church. A new religion was being developed by the revolutionaries, where the people worship a creator, but there was no head of an organized religion. Later on French secularism was called Laicite.

Another example of secularism is Turkey. The republic was founded in 1923 by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, where it adopted a secular policy similar to France. The republic cracked down on all religious affairs harshly, and brought them all under state control. Just like France, all government employees must not wear religious symbols or articles. But, today those laws are changing.

Another example of secularism is the United States of America, but their secular policies are different from the European model. There are amendments which prohibits the congressional government from interfering with the free exercise of religion and establishment of religion. It is regarded in higher regard compared to the European model, because it creates a co-operative environment between the government and other religions.

Jaan Parekh

 

Bibliography

Bonham, John M. Secularism, Its Progress and Its Morals. New York; London, 1894.

RECTENWALD, MICHAEL. “Secularism and the cultures of nineteenth-century scientific naturalism. ” British Journal for the History of Science , Vol. 46 Issue 2, Jun2013 , Jun2013 . Historical Abstracts, 10.1017/S0007087412000738.

Tombuş, H. Ertuğ . “(Post-)Kemalist Secularism in Turkey. ” Journal of Balkan & Near Eastern Studies , Aygenç, Berfu , Vol. 19 Issue 1 , Feb2017 , p70-85 . Historical Abstracts, 10.1080/19448953.2016.1201995