The mask and the hammer : nihilism in the novels of Mishima Yukio
Creators: name: Starrs, Roy
Publisher: name: University of British Columbia
Year: 2010

description: This thesis offers an analysis of some of the major novels of Mishima Yukio in the light of their underlying nihilist world-view. There are primarily three different levels to the analysis: philosophical, psychological and moral/political, to each of which a chapter is devoted. In the treatment of each of these "levels" the focus is not merely on the nihilism per se but on the aesthetic consequences of the nihilism in Mishima's art of fiction. An attempt is also made to place Mishima, as a "nihilist writer", within the international context of the nihilist literary/philosophical tradition, a tradition whose origins may be traced back to mid-nineteenth-century Europe. The analysis centres on what are, in the writer's view, Mishima's three major works—which also represent, coincidentally, the three separate decades of his literary career: Confessions of a Mask (Kamen no kokuhaku, 1949), The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (Kinkakuji, 1956) and The Sea of Fertility (Ho jo no umi, 1965-70), a total of six novels, since the latter work is a tetralogy. The study aims not to provide an all-inclusive survey of Mishima's career but to penetrate to the very core of his inspiration through an in-depth study of his most important works. Chapter One, "The Tragic Mask", begins with a general consideration of the relation between philosophy and the novel, or ideas and the novel, and offers a brief taxonomy of the "philosophical novel". Using this taxonomy, a description is then given of Mishima as a philosophic novelist whose central philosophy is nihilism. The main body of the chapter then offers an analysis of each of his three main works in terms of their nihilist philosophy, paying particular attention to its expression in "experiences of nothingness" which form the climaxes of the novels, and to the structural discipline which his use of this philosophy confers on the novels. Chapter Two, "The Void Behind the Mask", opens with a general discussion of the relation between nihilism and psychology, and then proceeds to a consideration of Mishima's own "nihilist psychology" and the "nihilist psychology" of his novels. Each of his major novels, whether explicitly "autobiographical" or more apparently "fictional", is found to be primarily an expression of the author's own "nihilist psychology". The active/passive tensions which characterize this psychology are analysed in Freudian, Adlerian and peculiarly Japanese terms. Chapter Three, "Hammer to Mask", opens with a general consideration of nihilist morality and politics, especially in terms of the "active nihilist" tradition which may be traced from Nietzsche down to 20th century fascism and terrorism. Mishima's own right-wing extremism and his glorification of terrorist violence place him squarely in this "active nihilist" moral/political tradition. But his "active nihilist" side was also continually in danger of being undermined by his "passive nihilist" side, his sense of the futility of all action. The resultant tensions are found to form the basis of the moral/political dialectic of his major novels.