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Yukio Mishima Biography

Yukio Mishima (三島由紀夫, Mishima Yukio) is the pen name of Kimitake Hiraoka (平岡公威, Hiraoka Kimitake, January 14, 1925 – November 25, 1970), a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor, model, film director, founder of the Tatenokai, and nationalist. Mishima is considered one of the most important Japanese authors of the 20th century. He was considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968 but the award went to his countryman Yasunari Kawabata. His works include the novels Confessions of a Mask and The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, and the autobiographical essay Sun and Steel. His avant-garde work displayed a blending of modern and traditional aesthetics that broke cultural boundaries, with a focus on sexuality, death, and political change.

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Yukio Mishima Quotes

Glory, as anyone knows, is bitter stuff.

Bitter, Glory, Knows, Stuff

I had long since insisted upon interpreting the things that Fate forced me to do as victories of my own will and intelligence, and now this bad habit had grown into a sort of frenzied arrogance. In the nature of what I was calling my intelligence there was a touch of something illegitimate, a touch of the sham pretender who has been placed on the throne by some freak chance. This dolt of a usurper could not foresee the revenge that would inevitably be wreaked upon his stupid despotism.

Fate, Insisted, Pretender, Revenge, Stupid, Things

I had no taste for defeat - much less victory - without a fight.

Fight, Fighting, Taste, Victory

The only people in this world I really trust are my fans - even if they do forget you so fast.

Fans, People, Trust, World

Perfect purity is possible if you turn your life into a line of poetry written with a splash of blood.

Blood, Line, Lines, Perfect, Turn, Written

Human life is limited but I would like to live forever.

Forever, Human, Human Life, Life Is, Live

All my life I have been acutely aware of a contradiction in the very nature of my existence. For forty-five years I struggled to resolve this dilemma by writing plays and novels. The more I wrote, the more I realized mere words were not enough. So I found another form of expression.

Existence, Expression, Play, Struggled, Writing

The past does not only draw us back to the past. There are certain memories of the past that have strong steel springs and, when we who live in the present touch them, they are suddenly stretched taut and then they propel us into the future.

Back, Future, Memories, Spring, Strong, Touch

For clearly it is impossible to touch eternity with one hand and life with the other.

Clearly, Eternity, Hand, Hands, Impossible

According to Eshin's Essentials of Salvation, the Ten Pleasures are but a drop in the ocean when compared to the joys of the Pure Land.

Joy, Land, Ocean, Salvation, Ten

His conviction of having no purpose in life other than to act as a distillation of poison was part of the ego of an eighteen-year-old. He had resolved that his beautiful white hands would never be soiled or calloused. He wanted to be like a pennant, dependent on each gusting wind. The only thing that seemed valid to him was to live for the emotions--gratuitous and unstable, dying only to quicken again, dwindling and flaring without direction or purpose.

Beautiful, Eighteen Years Old, Resolved, Soiled, Thing, White

Let us remember that the central reality must be sought in the writer's work: it is what the writer chose to write, or was compelled to write, that finally matters. And certainly Mishima's carefully premeditated death is part of his work.

Chose, Matter, Part, Reality, Writer, Writing

When silence is prolonged over a certain period of time, it takes on new meaning.

Certain, Periods, Prolonged, Silence, Takes

History knew the truth. History was the most inhuman product of humanity. It scooped up the whole of human will and, like the goddess Kali in Calcutta, dripped blood from its mouth as it bit and crunched.

Blood, Goddess, Human, Humanity, Mouths, Whole

Young people get the foolish idea that what is new for them must be new for everybody else too. No matter how unconventional they get, they're just repeating what others before them have done.

Done, Everybody, Ideas, Matter, People

The purest evil that human efforts could attain, in other words, was probably achieved by those men who made their wills the same and who made their eyes see the world in the same way, men who went against the pattern of life's diversity, men whose spirits shattered the natural wall of the individual body, making nothing of this barrier, set up to guard against mutual corrosion, men whose spirit accomplished what flesh could never accomplish.

Attain, Eye, Men, Mutual, Purest, Wall

Suddenly the full long wail of a ship's horn surged through the open window and flooded the dim room - a cry of boundless, dark, demanding grief; pitch-black and glabrous as a whale's back and burdened with all the passions of the tides, the memory of voyages beyond counting, the joys, the humiliations: the sea was screaming. Full of the glitter and the frenzy of night, the horn thundered in, conveying from the distant offing, from the dead center of the sea, a thirst for the dark nectar in the little room.

Counting, Distant, Grief, Memories, Night, Passion

An ugliness unfurled in the moonlight and soft shadow and suffused the whole world. If I were an amoeba, he thought, with an infinitesimal body, I could defeat ugliness. A man isn’t tiny or giant enough to defeat anything.

Body, Giants, Men, Shadow, Thought, Unfurled

When a captive lion steps out of his cage, he comes into a wider world than the lion who has known only the wilds. While he was in captivity, there were only two worlds for him - the world of the cage, and the world outside the cage. Now he is free. He roars. He attacks people. He eats them. Yet he is not satisfied, for there is no third world that is neither the world of the cage nor the world outside the cage.

Cage, Captivity, People, Satisfied, Two, World

The period of childhood is a stage on which time and space become entangled.

Childhood, Entangled, Space, Stage, Time

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