My Friend Hitler and Other Plays of Yukio Mishima

by Yukio Mishima, Hiroaki Sato (Translator)

Acclaimed Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima (1925­-1970) was also a prolific playwright, penning more than sixty plays, nearly all of which were produced in his lifetime. Hiroaki Sato is the first to translate these plays into English. For this collection he has selected five major plays and three essays Mishima wrote about drama. The title play is a satire that follows the breakdown of friendship between Adolf Hitler and two Nazi officials who were ultimately assassinated under orders from Hitler.

Genres: Japan, Plays, Japanese Literature, Theatre, Drama, Literature, Fiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Yukio 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.

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Product placement works! I've owned a Mont Blanc pen for years and had been feeling down about it, since Mont Blanc is a bit of a naff 'airport' brand nowadays.

But then I read "The Decline and Fall of the Suzaku", where it is revealed that the boy used a Mont Blanc pen at the Peers School! The only brand of fountain pen mentioned in a work by Yukio Mishima gets my vote. I'm happy now.

"The Rokumeikan": It's "Lady Windermere's Fan" meets a Japanese episode of "Dallas". I remember my English teacher saying that the funny thing about Shakespeare is that, for all the shit that goes down, no one's ever too mind fucked to stop talking. Mishima's plays are similar in this. "I'm now rationalising the shooting I have just witnessed of someone I love."

"The Decline and Fall of the Suzaku": I think that this was my favourite. There's a good bit where a teenager goes nuts at everyone. I think you could do this as am. dram. in the UK and your audience wouldn't hate it.

"My Friend Hitler": Probably the most popular with Western am. dram. stage managers, if nobody else, as this takes place in one room. All of the other plays call for things like staircases in the middle of the stage, or people throwing themselves into fires, or huge statues, or flying temples, or roasted peacocks being brought to the dinner table ... nightmare.

"The Terrace of the Leper King": All of the characters were always looking at something offstage, which is a bit naff and gets boring.

It's very over the top. During a wedding ceremony:
"(Suddenly a young soldier [who we haven't met before] bursts in. He is wounded and bloodied)
Soldier: (Panting) Sir! All your soldiers have deserted! I resisted, and see what happened! If it goes on like this, your country will perish!
King: Don’t worry. We don't need a single soldier. Avalokitesvara will protect this country with his compassion.
Soldier: Long live the King! (He dies.)"

"A Wonder Tale: The Moonbow": It's back to kabuki, where overly elaborate settings (there are boats sailing at sea in a storm in this) and high drama are par for the course.

[Veronika KaoruSaionji · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is about deep friendship/love/adoration of Ernest Röhm (who was gay) for "his friend" Adolf Hitler. Röhm was repeatedly warned that Hitler will betray him, but he did not believe it. So was betrayed and executed. But he still believed in "his friend Adolf" until his death. And what was his main "crime"? Hitler said that Röhm was too demanding. Maybe he was true friend, maybe he was in platonic love with him, but Hitler was not his possesion - or "friend". Hitler hated him because it, because Röhm´s foolish platonic love for him. Very sad story!
I did not like nacism but Mishima´s "Röhm" is great person. I wept because him.
It would be better if it could be finctional, not "historical" story. I mean the real Röhm was not that great and tragical hero. But this person in that book (play), this touching story was very great for me. I was very moved!
I mean this was kind of inspiration for Osamu Tezuka´s manga "Adolf". And very strong inspiration for BL stories by mangaka INARIYA Fusanosuke (author of scifi Maiden Rose), some situated in German, too (Netsuno Ori, Zion no Koeda). I am very glad that I can read it!

[Erik · Rating 5 out of 5]

I never knew I'm into reading plays before I tried out Madame de Sade and My friend Hitler, simply because I was convinced Mishima can't produce a bad piece. Thanks to the blind adoration, I'm now open to a whole new genre that seemed rather unappealing before.

My Friend Hitler is delightfully apolitical in its sharp political aspects. Offers a real fresh perspective and shines a new light onto the most stiffly established historical characters.

and Madame de Sade - what can I say about it? brilliant! on every level a majestic play. should be read right after de Sade's biography for an elegant, fittingly cynic conclusion. curtains down.

[Zach · Rating 4 out of 5]

did not realize it took me three weeks to get through these several plays but it makes sense in hindsight -- mishima's theatre is as dense and overwhelming as his fiction. each play has its own meticulously realized orbit of gravitas, tradition and uncapped emotionality. mishima writes in the "Kabuki: Flower of Evil" speech that traditional japanese drama is a heinous staging of humanity's most perverse wills in a titillating decadence, he proves that to be so with both his shingeki and neo-kogeki efforts here.

i especially loved the aspirationally shakesperean hyper drama of "TERRACE OF THE LEPER KING" where a man so lavished with praise for his beauty begins to degrade and must push against the inevitable through the preservation of his soul, image and art. the stage direction here is so romantic i would do literally anything to see mishima's imagination of mongolia in a real theater, beautiful warrior kings and all. meanwhile, "DECLINE AND FALL OF THE SUZAKU" and the eponymous hitler reflection are both incredible tragedies over time, rich for their simplicity in form as well as their complexity in history and character.....

"every age had a number of factors that could kill kabuki, as this one does. you are all young, but have decided to enter kabuki. that means you have pledged your loyalty to something that is about to die. you have in front of you all sorts of much newer things. you can work with computers. you can work with videocassettes. in japan today all sorts of jobs are demanding your attention. going into something that is bound to die requires a great deal of determination. kabuki is something of which everybody says it was good in the old days but is no good today. but you can approach something that used to be good and lose yourself in it... that's what's mysterious about human beings...."

thank you my dearest josh for sending this all the way to nippon <3

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mishima is the man and it proves it time and time again. "My Friend Hitler" was not my favorite play of this collection but still by the end, the drama he created with (well at least to me) such an unconvetional story line and jockeying for power/delusions between archetypal male characters was oh god amazing. It's like a sensual erotic experience any time I read Mishima. And The Terrace of the Leper when at the end it's a friggin dialogue between the Body and Soul oh my GOD. He kills me. I don't like reading plays but Mishima didn't even give me a choice he got me IN IT. Frankly i haven't finished the kabuki play yet but after reading Mishima's lecture, he kinda said the words don't even matter it's how the characters embody them and what patterns they attach to them. And frankly reading an English translation of something so tied to Japanese (language, culture, performance, etc) that is supposed to be performed...I'm not sure if it's even worth my time beyond getting the synopsis and maybe some of the ideas. It's even worse than translated poetry. I think more importantly the essay got me stoked to get into watching kabuki plays (which is apparently more difficult than I thought). Also, considering the dark evil soil/backstage that must exist to nurture such an exotic beautiful flower as kabuki....there should be an anime just saying. And I've been hating on beauty recently but Mishima convinces me there's more to beauty and even less of it than commercial culture sputters out.

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 między nami, ale większość mi się serio podobała

[Nermine Tadross · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished My Friend Hitler and Other Plays; a collection of plays and articles by great Japanese author Yukio Mishima, translated, with excellent preface and footnotes (for each work), by Hiroaki Sato.
The plays are long and read more like novellas and they're a prove that Mishima was great as a playwright (he wrote 60 plays) as a novelist. Also, his 3 articles about Japanese theater are very enjoyable and informative to anyone who's interested in the Kabuki theater and drama in general. The plays have Mishima's subtle touch of surrealism that also marks his other Noh plays.
The first play (and one of Japan's most successful plays till now) is The Rokumeikan (1956); a costume early play that's influenced by Oscar Wilde's melodramas. It takes place in the backstage of a dancing party in 1886 during the Meiji Period. It's now been turned into an opera.
The Decline and Fall of the Suzaku (1967) is based on Euripides's Heracles. It depicts the reaction of an old man, who's working closely with the emperor, to Japan's defeat in WWII and the death of his son in the war.It offers an analysis of loyalty and how it can become a cause of destruction.
My Friend Hitler (1968) is a satire that depicts the old friendship between Hitler, Gregor Strasser and Ernest Röhm, who was openly gay which explains Mishima's interest in the story, that ended with the execution of Strasser and Röhm among more than 1000 of the German SA "storm troopers" in what is called Night of the Long Knives. Mishima wrote the play after reading Alan Bullock's 1958 book Hitler: A Study in Tyranny.
In the play, Mishima is experimenting with an all-male cast as he experimented before with an all-female cast in his famous play Madame de Sade (staged by Ingmar Bergman and others).
The Terrace of the Leper King (1969) is inspired by a Cambodian myth. It is, for me, the best in this great collection; a metaphor for the "life of an artist who transfuses a work of art with his entire existence and then perishes" as Mishima explains. He said that his tetralogy The Sea of Fertility is this work of art.
The play ends with a very strange dialogue between the soul and the body after the king dies and we're left with the idea that it's the body that will remain immortal not the soul!
I recommend this collection to anyone who's interested in discovering Japanese theater. The three articles can also help to give any reader the necessary background.

[Smiley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This paperback entitled “My Friend Hitler and Other Plays of Yukio Mishima” was not as readable as his “Five Modern No Plays” (Vintage, 2009) due to its different Japanese play genres, that is, Kabuki vs. No Plays; the first having the characters dressed based on the emotional roles acting and script speaking on stage while the second having the masked puppets narrated by their players. Eventually, I soon found reading this collection of its five plays with an essay and a talk so lengthy and tedious that I sometime could not focus on the story, thus, I kept telling myself the Kabuki plays have primarily been intended for watching, not for reading.

One of the plays, “The Terrace of the Leper King” is amazingly interesting because Mishima wrote from his inspiration when he saw the King’s statue in Ankor Thom (p. 162); this implies his unique imagination as well as crucial research for the foundation to write such an innovative and historic play on a king in ancient Cambodia. However, we need to keep in mind that this play is for entertainment since its introduction warns, “The play appears to have a few other matters contrary to history, although it also seems to incorporate a number of things written about Cambodia at the time and before.” (p. 161) A reason is that its audience with some knowledge on the king or his reign would, I think, enjoy watching more than those who know all.

However, there is something worth pondering since it is contrary to nature in Ankor Thom or the Cambodian context; I don't mean any correction but let it be as we can see from this excerpt:

...
KING: Make no excuses. Just say it was because you are heartless, that you have a heart of ice.
FIRST QUEEN: I will say it. Yes, indeed, it was because I am heartless, that I have a heart of ice. Because I loved nothing but beautiful things, and because you are now ...
... (p. 200)

There would of course be no problem if the scene were set in Japan, in other words, it is unnatural to have ice acquired from falling/melted snow in Cambodia or Ankor Thom since it has long been situated near the tropics, the climate is hot and snow never falls there as well as in Thailand or in other Southeast Asian nations. Thus, the word 'ice' should be read as 'stone' in mind.

[Dani · Rating 4 out of 5]

In am glad I read this book, but some books don't look as good one your bedsaide table as others.

[Павел Качнов]

My Friend Hitler feels Nietzschean not because Mishima quotes philosophy, but because multiple traditions collide on the same fault line. Strasser’s talk of staleness and lost inner fire frames the moment a revolution betrays its own becoming, while blind loyalty curdles into tragic irrationality. Somewhere between Nietzsche’s will to power and Plato’s tyrant, Hitler crosses the Rubicon quietly—choosing survival over truth, order over fire. Mishima doesn’t judge; he stages the point of no return and lets the philosophies recognize each other in silence.

[strategian]

The Kabuki play at the end is introduced with a speech by Mishima in which he explains that the visual elements are the most important aspect of Kabuki and that everything else is trivial. Saved me some time.

[Xumepa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Послушала в виде пьесы. Музыка японских тамтамов. Это действительно антифашистская пьеса, Крупп с его властью, Гитлер с его желанием власти, Рем старый вояка, Штрассер (не знаю про него ничего). В семеновской Альтернативе подручные Гитлера тоже убирают старых подельников.

[Zoe · Rating 4 out of 5]

长刀之夜和萨德侯爵夫人是一对作品，前者4个角色均为男人，后者6个角色均为女人。
“《萨德侯爵夫人》一剧上场人物全是女人，以法国洛可可一副十足的道具、十八世纪的怪物萨德为中心；《长刀之夜》上场人物全是男人、以德国洛可可一副十足的道具、二十世纪的怪物希特勒为中心。两作很相似，分别以法兰西革命和纳粹革命为背景。”
二者相比，我更喜欢《长刀之夜》，因其讨论了“中间路线政治”的话题，并且具有一丝悲剧色彩。当然《萨》也具有一定程度的女性悲剧主义色彩，只是对于我的触动实在有限。

[Svetlana Kva · Rating 3 out of 5]

Чтение вызывает приблизительно те же чувства, что и само название произведения

[Taras · Rating 4 out of 5]

А ти точно Місіма…? Невелика книга японця, де він старається пентірувати Гітлера, як політичного діяча і Гітлера, як далбайоба.

[Madeleine Tassin · Rating 3 out of 5]

only read my friend hitler
not that into plays. but i enjoyed this. fascist homoeroticism, i guess

[Beepman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Moderately devastating.

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

yukio mishima is like when gay guys go down the body fascist right wing rabbit hole thing

[dudu · Rating 5 out of 5]

男同大點兵

[Lyta Li · Rating 4 out of 5]

从政治和文学的角度都很喜欢，计划的成功是建立在罗姆对希特勒的爱之上，这点连希特勒自己也很清楚，而且镇定地利用了这份爱意

[Maria Filippova · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Rokumeikan
Backstage essays
The decline and fall of the Suzaku
My friend Hitler
The terrace of the leper King
The flower of evil: kabuki
A wonder tale: the moonbow.