The Value Of The Last Samurai

The value of the last samurai

Introduction

The flower of Japan, beautiful and elegant in its possession, separated from the tree from life. It was on November 25, 1970, the last samurai, representative of the imperial Japan, committed his last act of honor, the aristocratic suicide, showing the world a higher value of devotion to life. Era Yukio Mishima, the most famous Japanese writer of the twentieth century. But Yukio was much more than that. Mishima was born in 1925 under the name of Kimitake Hiraoka. He grew up with his grandmother and returned to the parents’ house only at the age of 12. 

He was closely linked to his mother while his father was in a military exercise. At the request of his grandmother, Yukio Mishima attended an elite state school, where he studied literature in detail. The actor, poet, warrior, nationalist, versatile personality that through his political-philosophical and idealistic thinking, was oriented to restore the value of traditional Japan against the vision of consumer’s life, imposed on his country by atomic bombs and a period of decline through US occupation. 

Developing

His life was the continuity of the fight against Japanese invasion and the destruction of his native values. As a writer, he traveled to the United States and Europe; He was especially impressed by Greek culture, in which he found a compound of intellect and physical strength, the will to power as the application of the ‘will to power’ of Nietzsche.

His life in Japan was almost so known for the construction of the body as for his books. He declared that his life objective was to acquire as many attributes as warriors. 

He, who was the body of Sun spirit and steel, as the author of ‘spiritual lesson for young samurais’, full of reasons of Japanese tradition reading, could not accept the imposition of the United States to his country of origin. In addition, he, as the most prominent and authentic incarnation of the philosophy of action, which dedicated life to beauty, form, the ingredients of life and death. He accepted the Nietzschean concept of active nihilism, ready to delineate the values ​​of a consumerist, empty and plastic society. 

An example is this better youth in the decadent world, because he thought that in pacifism and democracy the spirit of rot and the death of the heroic perception of life. The thought, idea and honor of those who fought for the ideal, on November 25, 1970, became work and, finally, in blood and spirit. Mishima along with four other close members of Mishima, kidnapped General Mishitu in his office within the Ichigaya military base in Tokyo. The warrior writer goes to the balcony with all his explosiveness and addressed the Japanese Armed Forces in order to raise them to the revolt. 

conclusion

The operation did not have the desired effect. Mishima’s words were not accepted by soldiers. At that point, he left nothing more to do the supreme gesture. The spirit separated from the body. In the last act of honor, the Son of the Sun took his life through seppuku, ritual suicide. Mishima had previously described the positive side of suicide, which is not a sign of defeat, how it is understood in the West, but the maximum expression of free will, self – esteem and uncompromising idealism. 

Knowing, sacrifice as a manifestation of such will opens the path to existential questions about the meaning of life. Pointing to others the strength and value of an idea above anything else about material. Therefore, at the age of 45, he died, the last Japanese samurai that remained among the ruins. The man of honor to whom his time did not defeat has found immortality in mortality. Yukio Mishima, a man who will live forever.