Quelle: Sun and Steel (1968), p. 9.
Kontext: Words are a medium that reduces reality to abstraction for transmission to our reason, and in their power to corrode reality inevitably lurks the danger that the words will be corroded too. It might be more appropriate, in fact, to liken their action to excessive stomach fluids that digest and gradually eat away the stomach itself.
Many people will express disbelief that such a process could already be at work in a person's earliest years. But that, beyond doubt, is what happened to me personally, thereby laying the ground for two contradictory tendencies within myself. One was the determination to press ahead loyally with the corrosive function of words, and to make that my life's work. The other was the desire to encounter reality in some field where words should play no part at all.
Mishima Yukio: Zitate auf Englisch
Quelle: Confessions of a Mask (1949), p. 153.
Kontext: My "act" has ended by becoming an integral part of my nature, I told myself. It's no longer an act. My knowledge that I am masquerading as a normal person has even corroded whatever of normality I originally possessed, ending by making me tell myself over and over again that it too was nothing but a pretense of normality. To say it another way, I'm becoming the sort of person who can't believe in anything except the counterfeit.
Quelle: The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
“Anything can become excusable when seen from the standpoint of the result”
Quelle: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
Quelle: Confessions of a Mask (1949), p. 208.
Kontext: I received an impassioned letter from Sonoko. There was no doubt that she was truly in love. I felt jealous. Mine was the unbearable jealousy a cultured pearl must feel toward a genuine one. Or can there be such a thing in this world as a man who is jealous of the woman who loves him, precisely because of her love?
Quelle: The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
“I had no taste for defeat — much less victory — without a fight.”
Quelle: Sun and Steel (1968), p. 49.
“Is there not a sort of remorse that precedes sin? Was it remorse at the very fact that I existed?”
Quelle: Confessions of a Mask (1949), p. 144.
Ryuji, the sailor in The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea (1965), p. 38.
Yukio Mishima on Hagakure : The Samurai Ethic and Modern Japan (1977) as translated by Kathryn Sparling, p. 105; Mishima's commentary on the sayings of Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
“As he saw it, there was only one choice — to be strong and upright, or to commit suicide.”
"Sword" ("Ken"), quoted in 三島由紀夫短編集: Seven Stories, translated by John Bester (2002), p. 46.
"Sword" ("Ken"), quoted in 三島由紀夫短編集: Seven Stories, translated by John Bester (2002), p. 67.
"Raisin Bread", quoted in 三島由紀夫短編集: Seven Stories, translated by John Bester (2002), p. 21.
"Cigarette" ("Ta- bako") story, quoted in 三島由紀夫短編集: Seven Stories, translated by John Bester (2002), p. 110.
"The Priest of Shiga Temple and His Love" in Death in Midsummer, and Other Stories (1966), p. 59.
"Cigarette" ("Ta- bako") story, quoted in 三島由紀夫短編集: Seven Stories, translated by John Bester (2002), p. 110.
[At the movie's ending, speaking to the soldiers]
Final address (1970)
