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Sun & Steel
In this fascinating document, one of Japan's best known-and controversial-writers created what might be termed a new literary form. It is new because it combines elements of many existing types of writing, yet in the end fits into none of them.
At one level, it may be read as an account of how a puny, bookish boy discovered the importance of his own physical being; the "sun and steel" of the title are themselves symbols respectively of the cult of the open air and the weights used in bodybuilding. At another level, it is a discussion by a major novelist of the relation between action and art, and his own highly polished art in particular. More personally, it is an account of one individual's search for identity and self-integration. Or again, the work could be seen as a demonstration of how an intensely individual preoccupation can be developed into a profound philosophy of life.
All these elements are woven together by Mishima's complex yet polished and supple style. The confession and the self-analysis, the philosophy and the poetry combine in the end to create something that is in itself perfect and self-sufficient. It is a piece of literature that is as carefully fashioned as Mishima's novels, and at the same time provides an indispensable key to the understanding of them as art.
The road Mishima took to salvation is a highly personal one. Yet here, ultimately, one detects the unmistakable tones of a self transcending the particular and attaining to a poetic vision of the universal. The book is therefore a moving document, and is highly significant as a pointer to the future development of one of the most interesting novelists of modern times.
At one level, it may be read as an account of how a puny, bookish boy discovered the importance of his own physical being; the "sun and steel" of the title are themselves symbols respectively of the cult of the open air and the weights used in bodybuilding. At another level, it is a discussion by a major novelist of the relation between action and art, and his own highly polished art in particular. More personally, it is an account of one individual's search for identity and self-integration. Or again, the work could be seen as a demonstration of how an intensely individual preoccupation can be developed into a profound philosophy of life.
All these elements are woven together by Mishima's complex yet polished and supple style. The confession and the self-analysis, the philosophy and the poetry combine in the end to create something that is in itself perfect and self-sufficient. It is a piece of literature that is as carefully fashioned as Mishima's novels, and at the same time provides an indispensable key to the understanding of them as art.
The road Mishima took to salvation is a highly personal one. Yet here, ultimately, one detects the unmistakable tones of a self transcending the particular and attaining to a poetic vision of the universal. The book is therefore a moving document, and is highly significant as a pointer to the future development of one of the most interesting novelists of modern times.
108 pages, Paperback, Paper Dust Jacket
First published January 1, 1968
1215 people are currently reading
24524 people want to read
About the author
Yukio Mishima
465 books9,251 followersYukio Mishima (三島 由紀夫) was born in Tokyo in 1925. He graduated from Tokyo Imperial University’s School of Jurisprudence in 1947. His first published book, The Forest in Full Bloom, appeared in 1944 and he established himself as a major author with Confessions of a Mask (1949). From then until his death he continued to publish novels, short stories, and plays each year. His crowning achievement, the Sea of Fertility tetralogy—which contains the novels Spring Snow (1969), Runaway Horses (1969), The Temple of Dawn (1970), and The Decay of the Angel (1971)—is considered one of the definitive works of twentieth-century Japanese fiction. In 1970, at the age of forty-five and the day after completing the last novel in the Fertility series, Mishima committed seppuku (ritual suicide)—a spectacular death that attracted worldwide attention.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,116 reviews
March 14, 2008
a peek inside the head of the finest japanese writer of the 20th century- hint: he is fucking nuts.
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August 8, 2017Mishima at his densest, finest, weirdest, most metaphysical. He wrote this just before doing his Big Thing, and this does, really, feel like a manifesto of the sort popular among suicide bombers, Christian millenarians, militia leaders in the American Far West, and 4chan regulars turned school shooters. That last bit is especially noteworthy. If Mishima was alive today, giving his predilection for samurai ideology and whatnot, I can see his teenage self posting edgelord memes had he been alive today.
But, he was a brilliant writer, and thankfully he had the patience to channel his violent distaste for modern society into a refined, lyrical essay balancing Greek classicism, German romanticism (hey there, Holderlin!), Japanese perspective, and a peculiarly homoerotic taste in imagery, rather than bukkake'ing a Twitter feed as his current political descendants are wont to do.
But, he was a brilliant writer, and thankfully he had the patience to channel his violent distaste for modern society into a refined, lyrical essay balancing Greek classicism, German romanticism (hey there, Holderlin!), Japanese perspective, and a peculiarly homoerotic taste in imagery, rather than bukkake'ing a Twitter feed as his current political descendants are wont to do.
December 4, 2013
There is a canon of authors who are Metal.
H.P. Lovecraft is one of 'em. Tolkein, another. (To name but a couple.)
I would include Mishima in that almighty canon. Mishima was that kid growing up, but instead of being born in a place and time where Metal existed, he was born and raised in 20's Japan. Same impulse, though.
Mishima would be from one of the more ecstatic genres of extreme Metal. He'd be Black Metal.
H.P. Lovecraft is one of 'em. Tolkein, another. (To name but a couple.)
I would include Mishima in that almighty canon. Mishima was that kid growing up, but instead of being born in a place and time where Metal existed, he was born and raised in 20's Japan. Same impulse, though.
Mishima would be from one of the more ecstatic genres of extreme Metal. He'd be Black Metal.
May 12, 2022
what a fascinating guy... but no time to write a review. gotta hit the gym to make my body ready for the romantic release of death and ward off the dangers of words and imagination but also become one with them 😳😳😳
March 19, 2016
4.5 with the .5 being for "the blue sky was flecked with the semen-white of clouds"
January 8, 2019
2.5 stars.
A tough read, which I may try again once I’ve read a little more of his work. The main thing I’ll take away from it, for now, is that it doesn’t pay to neglect the body in favour of the mind, or to lose oneself to introspection, forgetting the importance of sensory experience and looking outward.
Yukio Mishima lived during a transformative time for the identity of Japan, and here we have a document of his own personal quest for purpose. It’s also, as others have stated, quite mad.
A tough read, which I may try again once I’ve read a little more of his work. The main thing I’ll take away from it, for now, is that it doesn’t pay to neglect the body in favour of the mind, or to lose oneself to introspection, forgetting the importance of sensory experience and looking outward.
Yukio Mishima lived during a transformative time for the identity of Japan, and here we have a document of his own personal quest for purpose. It’s also, as others have stated, quite mad.
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December 9, 2025100 pages of uninterrupted, dense, metaphysical introspection about the relationship between words, abstractions, symbols, and the body. Completely humorless, Mishima is a nerdy writer that discovered fitness later in life, compares airplanes to penises and clouds to sperm, and is absorbed by the concept of death, especially the "tragic" death that—in his opinion—can only be achieved by individuals with a chiseled hot bod. Insane and magnificent, I highlighted many passages but also had a hard time finishing it.
May 10, 2021
Google 'Sun and Steel' and the first book review will be titled 'In the Fascist Weight Room'.
Mishima, it seems, is one of those authors surrounded by Discourse, that there are problems concerning the Type of Guy (always men) who like his books. As a newfound Buddhist, I am eager to explore the extent to which my self doesn't exist, but though the fact that my ego is an illusion is one I've yet to fully accept, it is easier for me to see that this kind of secondhand cultural critique is a waste of the non-printed word. It's made up. There's no point to it.
Mishima is an infinitely fascinating figure, and I think, one very easy to admire, in the way we admire glorious failure a little bit more than the model of success. It's vital to his legacy he died as ineffectually as he did -- not only because his own work supported and established the path toward his crude exit, but because a Mishima who lived and breathed for another thirty or forty years would've ended up the exact kind of irrelevant, enfeebled, contrary old man he hated so much. He is not (and this is controversial, apparently) a figure easy to emulate or idolise. He is far too unique for that. No-one will go into this book because they heard it was an interesting argument for the bookish nerd to stop being a victim of ressentiment and become the kind of guy who used to beat him up -- and from this, become a St. Sebastian-worshipping neo-nazi.
That a lot of what this book has to say is so interesting, so wonderfully well-written, and inspiring, comes to nothing in the face of the ideological censor. One is reminded continually of how much puritanism has not gone away, especially inside those who do not realise their coercive intolerance inside themselves. But this space should be more than just a rant against a book review, one that, though it displayed a viewpoint I find, at best, meaningless, I can at least acknowledge was provocative and competently written.
I am a guy who reads more than one hundred books a year, and am, still by my current BMI, overweight, something I've been since I was at least 13. I am also healthier than ever in my diet and exercise routine. I live in Japan, the summer sun is coming, and I pump iron, if not steel. In a bodily sense, I've never been happier, and I enjoy the slow, steady crafting of a physique that Socrates would approve of -- after all, it is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable. I don't have to crave death in combat to think Mishima is largely right in this essay, that it is a powerful read, and that he is a great author, perhaps almost a genius. I'm not sure yet because he was so good at being himself and his writing so powerfully evocative of his strange, intense personality, I'm not sure how much his work says of anything outside of that, which must surely be a prerequisite of genius. I don't have to want to be like him to admire the way he was himself.
Mishima, it seems, is one of those authors surrounded by Discourse, that there are problems concerning the Type of Guy (always men) who like his books. As a newfound Buddhist, I am eager to explore the extent to which my self doesn't exist, but though the fact that my ego is an illusion is one I've yet to fully accept, it is easier for me to see that this kind of secondhand cultural critique is a waste of the non-printed word. It's made up. There's no point to it.
Mishima is an infinitely fascinating figure, and I think, one very easy to admire, in the way we admire glorious failure a little bit more than the model of success. It's vital to his legacy he died as ineffectually as he did -- not only because his own work supported and established the path toward his crude exit, but because a Mishima who lived and breathed for another thirty or forty years would've ended up the exact kind of irrelevant, enfeebled, contrary old man he hated so much. He is not (and this is controversial, apparently) a figure easy to emulate or idolise. He is far too unique for that. No-one will go into this book because they heard it was an interesting argument for the bookish nerd to stop being a victim of ressentiment and become the kind of guy who used to beat him up -- and from this, become a St. Sebastian-worshipping neo-nazi.
That a lot of what this book has to say is so interesting, so wonderfully well-written, and inspiring, comes to nothing in the face of the ideological censor. One is reminded continually of how much puritanism has not gone away, especially inside those who do not realise their coercive intolerance inside themselves. But this space should be more than just a rant against a book review, one that, though it displayed a viewpoint I find, at best, meaningless, I can at least acknowledge was provocative and competently written.
I am a guy who reads more than one hundred books a year, and am, still by my current BMI, overweight, something I've been since I was at least 13. I am also healthier than ever in my diet and exercise routine. I live in Japan, the summer sun is coming, and I pump iron, if not steel. In a bodily sense, I've never been happier, and I enjoy the slow, steady crafting of a physique that Socrates would approve of -- after all, it is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable. I don't have to crave death in combat to think Mishima is largely right in this essay, that it is a powerful read, and that he is a great author, perhaps almost a genius. I'm not sure yet because he was so good at being himself and his writing so powerfully evocative of his strange, intense personality, I'm not sure how much his work says of anything outside of that, which must surely be a prerequisite of genius. I don't have to want to be like him to admire the way he was himself.
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January 3, 2025RIP you would have loved the joe rogan experience
July 24, 2025
9/10 pero no sería justo darle solo las 4
Al final solo soy 1 xico con las tetas gordas y la cabeza más aún (literal y figuradamente) y Mishima sabe entenderme. Sólo él sabe hacer de ser fascista algo tan divertido. Mens insana en corpore insano (pero voluptuoso).
Viene de una idea muy profunda, un proverbio japonés "クソオタクが草に触る", o en español "putos frikis tocad césped". Está muy bien teorizar desde la nada y montar castillos en el aire, pero el ser capaz de mirar a un punto fijo y hacer esfuerzos hasta desmayarte con las voces de tu cabeza como capitán del galeón es una estadía superior de la conciencia. El "amanecer de la conciencia", que es el postnut clarity de los vigoréxicos, es un sentimiento muy concreto que mi pequeño escritor en el armario sabe describir como nadie.
Pero es una vigorexia distinta, no de la forma si no del fondo. A Mishima le da igual que sus músculos abulten, lo importante es ser capaz de estar enfadado con un ángulo recto y correr 2 horas seguidas persiguiendo solo el dolor. No tiene nada que ver con los estoicos, la intelectualidad es un fin en sí mismo, no un medio para no turbarse. La relación con el cuerpo es complementaria, es decir pienso mejor si me duelen las piernas. Es la gracia de tener un culo gigante aunque seas escritor, o periodista, o bibliotecario.
Sus ideas sobre la muerte heróica "ボールによる死" (muerte con cojones) también están relacionados: no puedes morirte grandiosamente si pareces el padre de Coraline tecleando, y no se puede decir que no sea consecuente con ello, morirse se murió. En resumen muy fresquito para el verano ahora entreno pensando que soy él (también me voy a atravesar el esternón con una katana)
Al final solo soy 1 xico con las tetas gordas y la cabeza más aún (literal y figuradamente) y Mishima sabe entenderme. Sólo él sabe hacer de ser fascista algo tan divertido. Mens insana en corpore insano (pero voluptuoso).
Viene de una idea muy profunda, un proverbio japonés "クソオタクが草に触る", o en español "putos frikis tocad césped". Está muy bien teorizar desde la nada y montar castillos en el aire, pero el ser capaz de mirar a un punto fijo y hacer esfuerzos hasta desmayarte con las voces de tu cabeza como capitán del galeón es una estadía superior de la conciencia. El "amanecer de la conciencia", que es el postnut clarity de los vigoréxicos, es un sentimiento muy concreto que mi pequeño escritor en el armario sabe describir como nadie.
Pero es una vigorexia distinta, no de la forma si no del fondo. A Mishima le da igual que sus músculos abulten, lo importante es ser capaz de estar enfadado con un ángulo recto y correr 2 horas seguidas persiguiendo solo el dolor. No tiene nada que ver con los estoicos, la intelectualidad es un fin en sí mismo, no un medio para no turbarse. La relación con el cuerpo es complementaria, es decir pienso mejor si me duelen las piernas. Es la gracia de tener un culo gigante aunque seas escritor, o periodista, o bibliotecario.
Sus ideas sobre la muerte heróica "ボールによる死" (muerte con cojones) también están relacionados: no puedes morirte grandiosamente si pareces el padre de Coraline tecleando, y no se puede decir que no sea consecuente con ello, morirse se murió. En resumen muy fresquito para el verano ahora entreno pensando que soy él (también me voy a atravesar el esternón con una katana)
May 19, 2022
Diciamo che è un NI (o un SO, in base ai punti di vista). Attratto dalla quarta di copertina, mi aspettavo quasi una sorta di autobiografia che ripercorresse i momenti in cui il buon Mishima giunse a scoprir se stesso. Non che quest'aspetto manchi, ma va estratto a viva forza da una prosa fortemente simbolica, complessa, a tratti involuto. In una parola difficile. In un certo senso vi si respira tutta la fatica che Mishima fece per trovar se stesso e un possibile equilibrio personale e spirituale. Insomma: ottime le premesse, forse un po' troppo criptico il testo.
November 24, 2024
- Wake up
- Workout
- Write an Essay
- Try to overthrow the government
- fail
- kill self
- Workout
- Write an Essay
- Try to overthrow the government
- fail
- kill self
April 7, 2020
Delom motivaciona knjiga o metafizici teretane, delom idejno pismo o planovima za sopstveno samoubistvo; jedan od važnijih tekstova u poslednjoj fazi Mišiminog književnog stvaralaštva i važna cigla u građenju mitologije vezane za njegov sepuku u zgradi Ministarstva odbrane.
„Sunce i čelik” je žanrovski najbliži eseju, ali sa jasnom strukturom autobiografije, te se između ideja jasno prostire narativ o senzibilnom mladiću, ljubitelju Novalisovih „Himni noći”, koji vremenom otkriva sunce i tegove, shvativši da će ga oni dovesti do onoga što svaki dečak želi – herojske smrti. Esej može i da se čita kao predstavljanje idejne niti kako preći put od individualiste, do tipskog kolektiviste ili, možda, tačnije kako spojiti ove dve najoprečnije težnje čovečanstva u jednom tj. usvojiti dvostruku polarnost i prihvatiti kontradikciju spajajući „umetnost i delanje”. Ponajviše ovo jeste fantazija o smrti, i to istinska fantazija, jer su samo pravi snovi opasni.
Što bi Bouvi otpevao: Fa-Fa-Fa-fashion - i fašizam i briga da ti uniforma stoji kao salivena kada rezbariš po svojim trbušnjacima.
„Sunce i čelik” je žanrovski najbliži eseju, ali sa jasnom strukturom autobiografije, te se između ideja jasno prostire narativ o senzibilnom mladiću, ljubitelju Novalisovih „Himni noći”, koji vremenom otkriva sunce i tegove, shvativši da će ga oni dovesti do onoga što svaki dečak želi – herojske smrti. Esej može i da se čita kao predstavljanje idejne niti kako preći put od individualiste, do tipskog kolektiviste ili, možda, tačnije kako spojiti ove dve najoprečnije težnje čovečanstva u jednom tj. usvojiti dvostruku polarnost i prihvatiti kontradikciju spajajući „umetnost i delanje”. Ponajviše ovo jeste fantazija o smrti, i to istinska fantazija, jer su samo pravi snovi opasni.
Što bi Bouvi otpevao: Fa-Fa-Fa-fashion - i fašizam i briga da ti uniforma stoji kao salivena kada rezbariš po svojim trbušnjacima.
March 1, 2020
"It is a rather risky matter to discuss a happiness that has no need of words."
July 10, 2023
Mishima’s writing is extremely compelling and fascinatingly crafted yet at times he is wrestling with concepts between the body and the spirit and it makes it hard to grasp exactly what he saying. I would liken Mishima to a sort of Mystic Samurai who hopes to find true peace in body, spirit, and mind in action. This book is relatable to anyone who has neglected their body in favor of something else, whether that is mind, spirit, or both. Mishima puts on display through his glittering prose the importance of the body and how it works together with the mind, in unifying us to the world around us, better grounding us to reality, and helping us to transcend to new spiritual heights. As someone who neglected my body through the majority of my 20s, I too have been on a journey of joining body, mind, and spirit, and I find Mishima’s thoughts to shadow my own. I have found in my life as I get older that many things in life come down to a balance. Working and resting, thinking and silencing my mind, spending time in isolation and socializing, prosperity and loss, joy and suffering, sickness and health, life and death, etc. These balances teeter and totter back and forth and all have their time and place in our existence, and man likewise is made up of Body, Mind, and Spirit. To neglect any one of those things would wreak havoc on a person, and to be truly healthy as a person would be to seek a balance that kept those three things in equal proportion to each other.
March 12, 2024
Aufgrund einer Unzufriedenheit des Autors zu seinem Körper sucht er die Verbesserung in Bodybuilding und Kampfkunst. Schmerz muss dabei akzeptiert werden. Er philosophiert über Literatur, Geist und den rituellen Tod. Leicht zu lesen, ich identifiziere mich mit seinen Aussagen allerdings nicht.
August 24, 2009
Yukio Mishima, in his enigmatic work Sun and Steel, reveals his inner most contemplations of life, death, and beyond. This work, the elucidations of a literary genius and modern day samurai, is not easy to comprehend, especially if one has not read some of his previous novels, short stories, or plays. He uses the motif of the sun and steel as metaphors to represent enlightenment and body in a particularly personal way. This writing, by throwing light into the recesses of his mind and soul, helps us gain a clearer understanding of who Mishima was as a writer, thinker, and man, with an unique vision of himself in the world. Mishima wanted to affirm life in death; he wanted to affirm existence through its negation; he wanted to affirm the awareness of the body by the blade of a sword. For what purpose? To transcend the body through death for the immortality of the spirit. He was a man of action and purpose. He came to disdain those intellectuals who indulged in lofty ideas without the courage to act in one way or another. With the death of Mishima Yukio has come the end of the long and glorious tradition of "Bushido," and the last samurai of Japan.
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December 13, 2024This text is beautiful and dangerous, like staring too long at the sun. The same sun that bathes Mishima with power.
His philosophy of breaking away with a world of words and intellectualism that are able to fly high but incapable of expressing anything meaningful while disconnected from bodily experience is strong and impactful. The way he talks about strengthening the body, the sensual pain and pleasure of exercising is not only beautiful but motivating. It makes me want to go to the gym and double the weights I lift, it makes me want to pick up a bamboo sword and learn kendo. It makes me question idle literature and transcendent mysticism that ignore the power of the body.
On the other hand, his obsession with death is ultimately the negation of life. For the majority of the text, Mishima sounds like the closest a person could get to a Nietzschean ubermensch. He carves his own values, he disregards idle intellectual search for a transcendent truth. He faces death in the eyes and strengthens his body to be ready for the final showdown. But that becomes his obsession. The body towards death. The Other is always an opponent in a bodily struggle. The collective only comes up as the army, it exists to fight external threats. An old body incapable of fight is better suited to harakiri than to a continued bodily existence.
And that's a shame. It misses the Nietzschean life affirmation. It reduced the body to its strength and its capability of endure pain. Pleasure is only ever the release from suffering. Mishima's views could be greatly expanded into a mysticism of the flesh that embraces pleasure for pleasure's sake. An enjoyment of touch, of hugs and kisses and loving, of the moderate intoxication of delicious food and drink. Of getting old and learning the new capabilities and limitations of your body, and understanding how experience can multiply the sensuous perceptions. Life affirmation should embrace the pain, suffering and terrible things that come out away, but not at the cost of denying the simple pleasures that were always there. Community should come out of struggle but also out of communal enjoyment. We should not be focused only in being brothers in arms but also in breaking bread.
His philosophy of breaking away with a world of words and intellectualism that are able to fly high but incapable of expressing anything meaningful while disconnected from bodily experience is strong and impactful. The way he talks about strengthening the body, the sensual pain and pleasure of exercising is not only beautiful but motivating. It makes me want to go to the gym and double the weights I lift, it makes me want to pick up a bamboo sword and learn kendo. It makes me question idle literature and transcendent mysticism that ignore the power of the body.
On the other hand, his obsession with death is ultimately the negation of life. For the majority of the text, Mishima sounds like the closest a person could get to a Nietzschean ubermensch. He carves his own values, he disregards idle intellectual search for a transcendent truth. He faces death in the eyes and strengthens his body to be ready for the final showdown. But that becomes his obsession. The body towards death. The Other is always an opponent in a bodily struggle. The collective only comes up as the army, it exists to fight external threats. An old body incapable of fight is better suited to harakiri than to a continued bodily existence.
And that's a shame. It misses the Nietzschean life affirmation. It reduced the body to its strength and its capability of endure pain. Pleasure is only ever the release from suffering. Mishima's views could be greatly expanded into a mysticism of the flesh that embraces pleasure for pleasure's sake. An enjoyment of touch, of hugs and kisses and loving, of the moderate intoxication of delicious food and drink. Of getting old and learning the new capabilities and limitations of your body, and understanding how experience can multiply the sensuous perceptions. Life affirmation should embrace the pain, suffering and terrible things that come out away, but not at the cost of denying the simple pleasures that were always there. Community should come out of struggle but also out of communal enjoyment. We should not be focused only in being brothers in arms but also in breaking bread.
August 6, 2024
If I examine this book without considering the author's life, it becomes a different review. If I examine this book in the context of the author's death it explains certain things and also complicates my eventual review of it. I like it, mostly. But clearly, this wasn't an abstract philosophy or ideology for Mishima. The book didn't end with the last four lines of the poem Icarus at the end of the essay/memoir:
"For wanting to fly off
to the unknown
Or the known:
Both of them a single, blue speck of an idea?"
No. In man ways this book theme, ideas, ideology ended on 25 November 1970 when Mishima committed seppuku after a failed nationalist coup. The final act. The final sad, red period/speck/stain on his philosophy.
"For wanting to fly off
to the unknown
Or the known:
Both of them a single, blue speck of an idea?"
No. In man ways this book theme, ideas, ideology ended on 25 November 1970 when Mishima committed seppuku after a failed nationalist coup. The final act. The final sad, red period/speck/stain on his philosophy.
November 26, 2020
"Oh, the fierce longing simply to see, without words"
First, this book recently has gained popularity within certain political fringe groups on the internet, I do inhabit those digital spaces, but politically I'm on the other side of the spectrum.
It's no surprise that this happened, besides these groups political leanings matching with Mishima's - also, I don't think anyone left leaning would write something like this - the right seems to be more concerned with aesthetics than the left. Right wing accounts will have busts of roman emperors as profile pictures and will talk of the decay of Western ™ Civilization™. They will associate soy boys and blue haired woman as proof of the corruption that leftist thought can do to someone - think ugly thoughts and you will become ugly; their appearance will be proof of their ideals. As Mishima writes: "Steel faithfully taught me the correspondence between the spirit and the body: thus feeble emotions, it seemed to me, corresponded to flaccid muscles, sentimentality to a sagging stomach, and over impressionability to an oversensitive, white skin."
There's also a focus, on the right, that a persons failures are completely their own and not of the system they live in. As Jordan Peterson, the lobster man and my favorite opiate addict, would say: "How dare you complain about the inequalities of the system you live in if you are fat, ugly and have no money? First, fix your life, and then you can fix society." (Goes without saying that I disagree completely with this.) How does this relate to Sun & Steel? "I have yet to hear hero worship mocked by a man endowed with what might justly be called heroic physical attributes". The fetishization of hard physical labor, the sun, and of course, transforming yourself. Anyways, no more politics.
I first read this book 4 years ago, a lot of it went over head and still did now, but one particular idea has stuck with me: the failure of words. How can we be able to even communicate anything seems like a miracle. "Such success is a phenomenon that occurs when a subtle arrangement of words excites the reader’s imagination to an extreme degree; at that moment, author and reader become accomplices in a crime of the imagination". Words will always be a projection of ideas; they will always twist, distort and simplify ideas - "Can the blue sky that we all see, the mysterious blue sky that is seen identically by all the bearers of the festival shrine, ever be given verbal expression?"
One thing I find fascinating about Mishima's works are how much his life is merged with his fiction, of course, this book is somewhat autobiographical, but it is interesting to see how these ideas did influence some of his later actions. So read the following quotes knowing that Mishima was one of the last persons to commit seppuku after a failed coup d'état.
"Muscles have gradually become something akin to classical Greek. To revive the dead language, the discipline of the steel was required; to change the silence of death into the eloquence of life, the aid of steel was essential."
"The romantic impulse that had formed an undercurrent in me from boyhood on, and that made sense only as the destruction of classical perfection, lay waiting within me."
"(...) powerful, tragic frame and sculptures-que muscles were indispensable in a romantically noble death."
"The sense of surrendering one’s body to a cause gave new life to the muscles. We were united in seeking death and glory; it was not merely my personal quest."
Anyways, I can go on and on about this book, and that's why it's a 5/5, but I will leave you with some more quotes, that I like.
"I believe that just as physical training will transform supposedly involuntary muscles into voluntary ones, so a similar transformation can be achieved through training the mind."
"This slow development, I found, was remarkably similar to the process of education, which remodels the brain intellectually by feeding it with progressively more difficult matter. And since there was always the vision of a classical ideal of the body to serve as a model and an ultimate goal, the process closely resembled the classical ideal of education."
"The acceptance of suffering as a proof of courage was the theme of primitive initiation rites in the distant past, and all such rites were at the same time ceremonies of death and resurrection. "
"—in the small rebirths that occurred immediately after exercise. Ceaseless motion, ceaseless violent deaths, ceaseless escape from cold objectivity—by now, I could no longer live without such mysteries. And—needless to say—within each mystery there lay a small imitation of death."
January 1, 2023
"I cherished a romantic relationship with death..." (pg 38)
From SUN AND STEEL by Yukio Mishima, translated by John Bester, 1968/1970.
Mishima's 1968 personal essay is a challenge. It is not long and dense, but the challenge comes in the subject matter and the insight into Mishima's way of looking at the world.
In 108 pages, he writes a beautifully constructed essay on physical training and the aesthetics of the human form - most specifically building muscle towards an absolute, devotion to a task, and reaching the pinnacle of that form and devotion with a noble death.
The specter of that death hangs heavy, knowing of Mishima's own ritualised, dramatic, and controversial suicide that occurred only 2 years after this essay's publication.
In this essay, death is mentioned no less than 100 times. Mishima describes his cultic obsession with death in romantic and erotic terms, with diversions and dialectics into philosophy and literature, and then back to martial training and bodybuilding. He has an extended passage describing the facial expressions of Shinto devotees looking into the blue heavens; another long passage discusses an apple being pierced and sliced, and how this relates to word and action.
I saw some other reviewers refer to the essay as "quite mad" or "batshit crazy", and while they arent too far off, this was quite a revelatory read for me. I was struck again by the imagery and the fluidity of description, and just how different his perceptions of the world are from my own.
Imagine an extreme right-wing Oath Keeper type - storming the gates (that's what he did with his own militia!) YET this person is also a stunning poet, a recognized literary genius, and cultural icon...
It challenges the mind and the notions of society, and just scratches the surface of the mystery and mythos of Yukio Mishima.
From SUN AND STEEL by Yukio Mishima, translated by John Bester, 1968/1970.
Mishima's 1968 personal essay is a challenge. It is not long and dense, but the challenge comes in the subject matter and the insight into Mishima's way of looking at the world.
In 108 pages, he writes a beautifully constructed essay on physical training and the aesthetics of the human form - most specifically building muscle towards an absolute, devotion to a task, and reaching the pinnacle of that form and devotion with a noble death.
The specter of that death hangs heavy, knowing of Mishima's own ritualised, dramatic, and controversial suicide that occurred only 2 years after this essay's publication.
In this essay, death is mentioned no less than 100 times. Mishima describes his cultic obsession with death in romantic and erotic terms, with diversions and dialectics into philosophy and literature, and then back to martial training and bodybuilding. He has an extended passage describing the facial expressions of Shinto devotees looking into the blue heavens; another long passage discusses an apple being pierced and sliced, and how this relates to word and action.
I saw some other reviewers refer to the essay as "quite mad" or "batshit crazy", and while they arent too far off, this was quite a revelatory read for me. I was struck again by the imagery and the fluidity of description, and just how different his perceptions of the world are from my own.
Imagine an extreme right-wing Oath Keeper type - storming the gates (that's what he did with his own militia!) YET this person is also a stunning poet, a recognized literary genius, and cultural icon...
It challenges the mind and the notions of society, and just scratches the surface of the mystery and mythos of Yukio Mishima.
February 13, 2023
Anyone wanting to understand the philosophy and death of Mishima will want to read this book. Haunting and poetic; while searching for the connection between his soul and his need to follow traditional ways something very tragic happened. I often wonder what books we will never see from him due to his tragic early death by suicide.
February 27, 2021
Ήλιος κι ατσάλι. Η φύση κι �� πειθαρχεία, η ανθρώπινη υπόσταση που αποζητά την ευδαιμονία σε αντιπαράθεση με τον πόνο που χαρίζει βαθιά γνώση. Η υπαρξιακή αναζήτηση, το τραγικό και το απόλυτο.
Πρώτη μου επαφή με τον αμφιλεγόμενο Ιάπωνα συγγραφέα, ένα εγχειρίδιο της προσωπικής του διαδρομής και ωρίμανσης με έκδηλα αρκετά από τα στοιχεία που θα τον οδηγήσουν μερικά χρόνια αργότερα στον τελετουργικό θάνατο από το ίδιο του το χέρι. Δεν ξέρω αν ήταν το κατάλληλο βιβλίο για τη γνωριμία μου με το έργο του· ενώ αναγνωρίζω την ποιότητα της γραφής, έχω ένα όριο στις φορές που μπορώ να αντέξω την επανάληψη της λέξης "muscles". Κοιτάζοντας τις διαφορετικές εκδόσεις, δυσκολεύτηκα να βρω εξώφυλλο χωρίς φωτογραφία μ' όλη τη νεφραμιά όξω αλλά φαίνεται να είναι απαραίτητη στο κεντρικό κόνσεπτ. Στις 115 αυτές σελίδες του βιβλίου του, μού δόθηκε η εντύπωση πως αν ζούσε σήμερα ο Mishima θα ήταν social influencer με το instagram γεμάτο φώτο κάτω απ'τον ήλιο (sun), βίντεο με ασκήσεις στο γυμναστήριο (steel), τσιτσίδι εννοείται, κι από κάτω τα βαθιά και τα περισπούδαστα. Ας είναι.
Από την άλλη, μου εξήψε το αναγνωστικό ενδιαφέρον με φράσεις όπως η παρακάτω που με κάνει περίεργο να ασχοληθώ μαζί του στο μέλλον.
“For me, beauty is always retreating from one's grasp: the only thing I consider important is what existed once, or ought to have existed. By its subtle, infinitely varied operation, the steel restored the classical balance that the body had begun to lose, reinstating it in its natural form, the form that it should have had all along.”
3/5 (2.5 κανονικά αλλά του δίνω το ελαφρυντικό της αμφιβολίας)
Πρώτη μου επαφή με τον αμφιλεγόμενο Ιάπωνα συγγραφέα, ένα εγχειρίδιο της προσωπικής του διαδρομής και ωρίμανσης με έκδηλα αρκετά από τα στοιχεία που θα τον οδηγήσουν μερικά χρόνια αργότερα στον τελετουργικό θάνατο από το ίδιο του το χέρι. Δεν ξέρω αν ήταν το κατάλληλο βιβλίο για τη γνωριμία μου με το έργο του· ενώ αναγνωρίζω την ποιότητα της γραφής, έχω ένα όριο στις φορές που μπορώ να αντέξω την επανάληψη της λέξης "muscles". Κοιτάζοντας τις διαφορετικές εκδόσεις, δυσκολεύτηκα να βρω εξώφυλλο χωρίς φωτογραφία μ' όλη τη νεφραμιά όξω αλλά φαίνεται να είναι απαραίτητη στο κεντρικό κόνσεπτ. Στις 115 αυτές σελίδες του βιβλίου του, μού δόθηκε η εντύπωση πως αν ζούσε σήμερα ο Mishima θα ήταν social influencer με το instagram γεμάτο φώτο κάτω απ'τον ήλιο (sun), βίντεο με ασκήσεις στο γυμναστήριο (steel), τσιτσίδι εννοείται, κι από κάτω τα βαθιά και τα περισπούδαστα. Ας είναι.
Από την άλλη, μου εξήψε το αναγνωστικό ενδιαφέρον με φράσεις όπως η παρακάτω που με κάνει περίεργο να ασχοληθώ μαζί του στο μέλλον.
“For me, beauty is always retreating from one's grasp: the only thing I consider important is what existed once, or ought to have existed. By its subtle, infinitely varied operation, the steel restored the classical balance that the body had begun to lose, reinstating it in its natural form, the form that it should have had all along.”
3/5 (2.5 κανονικά αλλά του δίνω το ελαφρυντικό της αμφιβολίας)
June 10, 2011
He's never going to get over that he wasn't the biggest, most popular boy in middle school, is he? But then, who does?
I enjoyed the epilogue much more than the rest. I loved the Mishima / semen bit:
"Erect-angled, the F104, a sharp silver phallus, pointed into the sky. Solitary, spermatozoon-like, I was installed within. Soon, I should know how the spermatozoon felt at the instant of ejaculation."
I enjoyed the epilogue much more than the rest. I loved the Mishima / semen bit:
"Erect-angled, the F104, a sharp silver phallus, pointed into the sky. Solitary, spermatozoon-like, I was installed within. Soon, I should know how the spermatozoon felt at the instant of ejaculation."
April 28, 2011
I really struggled to finish this book. I found it far too abstract and metaphysical for my liking. The only thing that I got out of this book was the fascinating glimpse that it gave of the mind of Yukio Mishima. It also has the virtue of being brief.
June 6, 2017
Wooaaaahhhhh! The power of words and the strength of the body, beauty, philosophy, budō, death, tragedy, and madness - love it. Free insight, though: Stay away from ideology, kids, it can distort the sight and numb the senses of even the best and bravest minds.
July 3, 2023
Wymagająca i niestety nie w moim guście.
May 28, 2017
"To continue the metaphor, let us picture a single, healthy apple. This apple was not called into existence by words, nor is it possible that the core should be completely visible from the outside like Amiel’s peculiar fruit. The inside of the apple is naturally quite invisible. Thus at the heart of that apple, shut up within the flesh of the fruit, the core lurks in its wan darkness, tremblingly anxious to find some way to reassure itself that it is a perfect apple. The apple certainly exists, but to the core this existence as yet seems inadequate; if words cannot endorse it, then the only way to endorse it is with the eyes. Indeed, for the core the only sure mode of existence is to exist and to see at the same time. There is only one method of solving this contradiction. It is for a knife to be plunged deep into the apple so that it is split open and the core is exposed to the light—to the same light, that is, as the surface skin. Yet then the existence of the cut apple falls into fragments; the core of the apple sacrifices existence for the sake of seeing.
[...]
Oh, the fierce longing simply to see, without words!
[...]
Blood flows, existence is destroyed, and the shattered senses give existence as a whole its first endorsement, closing the logical gap between seeing and existing. … And this is death.
In this way I learned that the momentary, happy sense of existence that I had experienced that summer sunset during my life with the army could be finally endorsed only by death."
[...]
Oh, the fierce longing simply to see, without words!
[...]
Blood flows, existence is destroyed, and the shattered senses give existence as a whole its first endorsement, closing the logical gap between seeing and existing. … And this is death.
In this way I learned that the momentary, happy sense of existence that I had experienced that summer sunset during my life with the army could be finally endorsed only by death."
December 20, 2019
As someone who trains and teaches Kung Fu, who loves reading AND likes Mishima, this was a good book for me. I didn't think I would get chance to read it, with so few editions online and very pricey considering the size of the book, but my local library had it cooped up in the special edition section downstairs. It's easy reading, though I've seen some say it isn't. I didn't find it heavy at all. Mishima talks about literature, partly, the body and the mind, the imagination, building muscle and ritual death - which is fascinating to hear him speak about knowing how he dies.
Just some quotes:
'Longing at eighteen for an early demise, I felt myself unfitted for it. I lacked, in short, the muscles suitable for a dramatic death.'
'Pain, I came to feel, might well prove to be the sole proof of the persistence of consciousness within the flesh, the sole physical expression of consciousness. As my body acquired muscle, and in turn, strength, there was gradually born within me a tendency towards the positive acceptance of pain, and my interest in physical suffering deepened.'
Just some quotes:
'Longing at eighteen for an early demise, I felt myself unfitted for it. I lacked, in short, the muscles suitable for a dramatic death.'
'Pain, I came to feel, might well prove to be the sole proof of the persistence of consciousness within the flesh, the sole physical expression of consciousness. As my body acquired muscle, and in turn, strength, there was gradually born within me a tendency towards the positive acceptance of pain, and my interest in physical suffering deepened.'
Read
April 3, 2023There was a dumb reddit or Twitter post a few months back that went viral. In it, some boy (always a boy) starts spouting off about the wasted hours people spend at the gym, unreading poems, unwriting songs, and the like. People were dunking on him left and right of course, and I kept thinking about how much I listen to audiobooks while I do chores or go for runs. You can do both buddy.
What you can also do is dedicate your life to the complete and total control of turning your muscles into steel, you body into a machine, and your brain into a steel trap through which to face the alienation of the world and the fallen patriarchal empire you’ve carved your identity out of you. You COULD do that, and plenty of people do versions of this, but it’s as likely to help you as it did Yukio Mishima, which who knows.
What you can also do is dedicate your life to the complete and total control of turning your muscles into steel, you body into a machine, and your brain into a steel trap through which to face the alienation of the world and the fallen patriarchal empire you’ve carved your identity out of you. You COULD do that, and plenty of people do versions of this, but it’s as likely to help you as it did Yukio Mishima, which who knows.
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