Culture warrior

Non-fictionMishima’s use of science-fiction tropes to describe contemporary life alienated critics and readers in a way that his reactionary psychodramas did not. That the Mishima Incident was met with public horror does not obviate the fact that his literary overtures to Japan’s imperial past – replete with the veneration of death central to Bushido, and the taboo-ish trope of lovers’ suicide – were a hit with audiences. However eager the Japanese public might have been to forget World War II in its sincere commitment to postwar democracy, the past remains more legible than the future, let alone the present.