Sun and Steel

1. Words vs. Flesh: Mishima's Early Antinomy

In the average person, I imagine, the body precedes language. In my case, words came first of all; then—belatedly, with every appearance of extreme reluctance, and already clothed in concepts—came the flesh.

Words First, Flesh Later. Mishima describes a childhood where language and intellect preceded physical experience. This is contrary to the typical human development where the body and its sensations come first. For Mishima, words acted as a filter, shaping and even distorting his perception of the physical world.

Corrosive Power of Words. He likens words to white ants, eating away at the pillar of plain wood, or stomach fluids digesting the stomach itself. This suggests that words, while essential for art, can also erode reality and the purity of experience. This early reliance on words created a fundamental split within him, a tension between the intellectual and the physical.

Fetish for Reality. This led to a desire to encounter reality in a realm untouched by language, making the body synonymous with reality. This became a kind of fetishism, a deliberate setting of reality, the flesh, and action on the other side of himself. This antinomy rested on the assumption that he himself from the outset was devoid of the flesh, of reality, of action.

2. The Language of the Flesh: A Second Tongue

Later, much later, thanks to the sun and the steel, I was to learn the language of the flesh, much as one might learn a foreign language.

Spiritual Development. Mishima views learning the "language of the flesh" as a crucial aspect of his spiritual development. This is not merely about physical fitness, but about understanding the body's own form of expression and knowledge. It's a journey to bridge the gap between his intellect and his physicality.

The Shrine Festival. He recounts watching young men carrying a portable shrine, their faces filled with an indescribable abandon. Initially, he couldn't understand their expressions, but later, after learning the language of the flesh, he realized they were simply looking at the sky. This experience taught him that shared physical experiences could transcend individual sensibilities.

Tragedy and Physical Courage. Mishima defines tragedy as born when an average sensibility momentarily takes on a privileged nobility based on physical courage. He emphasizes that those who merely dabble in words can create tragedy but cannot truly participate in it. This participation requires an anti-tragic vitality, ignorance, and a certain "inappropriateness."

3. Sun and Steel: Cultivating the Orchard of the Body

One day, it occurred to me to set about cultivating my orchard for all I was worth. For my purpose, I used sun and steel.

Husbandry of the Body. Mishima uses the metaphor of an orchard to describe his body, suggesting that it can be cultivated and improved through deliberate effort. The "sun" represents the life-giving force of nature, while "steel" symbolizes the tools and discipline required for physical training. This cultivation is a conscious choice, a rejection of the idea that the body is simply "destiny."

Reversing the Process. He proposes reversing the process by extending an idea from the spirit to the flesh until the whole physical being becomes a suit of armor forged from the metal of that concept. This involves "intellectualizing" the flesh to a higher degree, achieving a closer intimacy with ideas than the spirit itself.

Harmony and Balance. Mishima acknowledges the limitations of the flesh, emphasizing the importance of harmony and balance. The body insists on these qualities, providing beauty of the most average kind and the physical qualifications necessary for viewing that swaying sky of the shrine-bearers. They also, it seems, fulfill the function of taking revenge on, and correcting, any excessively eccentric idea.

4. Muscles as Art: Form Enfolding Strength

Muscles, I found, were strength as well as form, and each complex of muscles was subtly responsible for the direction in which its own strength was exerted, much as though they were rays of light given the form of flesh.

Steel as Teacher. Mishima describes his relationship with steel as a close and enduring one, lasting for ten years. He found that as he increased the weight of the steel, his muscles increased proportionately, as though the steel had a duty to maintain a strict balance between the two. This process was similar to education, remodeling the brain intellectually by feeding it progressively more difficult matter.

Correspondence Between Spirit and Body. The steel taught him the correspondence between the spirit and the body: feeble emotions corresponded to flaccid muscles, sentimentality to a sagging stomach, and overimpressionability to an oversensitive, white skin. He reasoned that bulging muscles, a taut stomach, and a tough skin would correspond respectively to an intrepid fighting spirit, the power of dispassionate intellectual judgement, and a robust disposition.

Romantic Impulse Towards Death. Beyond the educative process, there also lurked another, romantic design. The romantic impulse that had formed an undercurrent in him from boyhood on, and that made sense only as the destruction of classical perfection, lay waiting within him. Like a theme in an operatic overture that is later destined to occur throughout the whole work, it laid down a definitive pattern for him before he had achieved anything in practice.

5. Beyond Expression: The Opponent and the Essence of Action

The opponent and I dwelt in the same world. When I looked, the opponent was seen; when the opponent looked, I was seen; we faced each other, moreover, without any intermediary imagination, both belonging to the same world of action and strength—the world, that is, of “being seen.”

Dubious Nature of Expression. Mishima questions the desire to express things that cannot be said, suggesting that such success occurs when a subtle arrangement of words excites the reader's imagination to an extreme degree. This makes author and reader accomplices in a crime of the imagination, creating a fictional "thing" that perverts and alters reality.

The Opponent as Reality. He argues that the essence of action and power lies beyond verbal expression, in something extremely concrete, the essence of reality itself. This reality is "the opponent," who dwells in the same world, returning one's gaze without any intermediary imagination. Ideas do not stare back; things do.

Suffering as Proof of Consciousness. Mishima believes that the only physical proof of the existence of consciousness is suffering. He sees a certain splendor in pain, which bears a deep affinity to the splendor that lies hidden within strength. This leads him to a positive acceptance of pain and a deepening interest in physical suffering.

6. Style as Armor: Defending Against Sensibility

As guard and weapon against imagination and its henchman sensibility, I had style.

Style as Restraint. Mishima views style as similar to muscles and patterns of behavior, its function being to restrain the wayward imagination. He is not concerned with overlooking certain truths as a result, nor does he care that the fear and horror of confusion and ambiguity elude his style. He has made up his mind that he will select only one particular truth, and avoid aiming at any all-inclusive truth.

All-Night Watch. He sought after the tension of the all-night watch, whether by land or by sea, in his style. More than anything, he detested defeat. Can there be any worse defeat than when one is corroded and seared from within by the acid secretions of sensibility until finally one loses one’s outline, dissolves, liquefies; or when the same thing happens to the society about one, and one alters one’s own style to match it?

Sturdy Defender. Mishima sought the struggle itself, whichever way it might go. He had no taste for defeat—much less victory—without a fight. At the same time, he knew only too well the deceitful nature of any kind of conflict in art. If he must have a struggle, he felt he should take the offensive in fields outside art; in art, he should defend his citadel.

7. The Duality of Art and Action: A Warrior's Path

The goal of my life was to acquire all the various attributes of the warrior.

Letters and Martial Arts. Mishima often thought and remarked to others that now if ever was the time for reviving the old Japanese ideal of a combination of letters and the martial arts, of art and action. As he gradually learned from the sun and the steel the secret of how to pursue words with the body (and not merely pursue the body with words), the two poles within him began to maintain a balance.

Alternating Current. His mind devised a system that by installing within the self two mutually antipathetic elements—two elements that flowed alternately in opposite directions—gave the appearance of inducing an ever wider split in the personality, yet in practice created at each moment a living balance that was constantly being destroyed and brought back to life again. The embracing of a dual polarity within the self and the acceptance of contradiction and collision—such was his own blend of “art and action.”

Destruction of Ultimate Dreams. To be utterly familiar with the essence of these two things—of which one must be false if the other is true— and to know completely their sources and partake of their mysteries, is secretly to destroy the ultimate dreams of one concerning the other. When action views itself as reality and art as falsehood, it entrusts this falsehood with authority for giving final endorsement to its own truth and, hoping to take advantage of the falsehood, sets it in charge of its dreams.

8. The Tragic World: Qualifications for Existence

Quite possibly, what I call happiness may coincide with what others call the moment of imminent danger.

Happiness and Imminent Danger. Mishima suggests that what he calls happiness may coincide with what others call the moment of imminent danger. The world into which he blended without the medium of words, filling himself thereby with a sense of happiness, was none other than the tragic world. The tragedy, of course, was at that moment still unfulfilled; yet all the seeds of tragedy were within it; ruin was implicit in it; it lacked entirely any “future.”

Phantom of the Past. The basis of his happiness lay in his having transformed himself, albeit for only a moment, into a phantom formed by the shadows cast by fat-off, moldering words from the past. By now, though, it was not words that endorsed his existence. This type of existence that derived from rejecting the endorsement of existence by words, had to be endorsed by something different. That “something different” was muscle.

Endorsement by Death. In this way he learned that the momentary, happy sense of existence that he had experienced that summer sunset during his life with the army could be finally endorsed only by death. All these things, of course, had been foreseen, and he knew too that the basic conditions for this made-to-order type of existence were none other than the “absolute” and the “tragic.”

9. The Group and Shared Suffering: Dissolving Individuality

Only through the group, I realized—through sharing the suffering of the group—could the body reach that height of existence that the individual alone could never attain.

Language of the Group. Mishima notes that there is such a thing as the language of the group, but it is in no sense a self- sufficient language. A speech, a slogan, and the words of a play all depend on the physical presence of the public speaker, the campaigner, the actor. Whether it is written down on paper or shouted aloud, the language of the group resolves itself ultimately into physical expression.

Shared Suffering. For shared suffering, more than anything else, is the ultimate opponent of verbal expression. Not even the mightiest Weltschmerz in the heart of the solitary writer, billowing upwards to the starry heavens like some great circus tent, can create a community of shared suffering. For though verbal expression may convey pleasure or grief, it cannot convey shared pain; though pleasure may be readily fired by ideas, only bodies, placed under the same circumstances, can experience a common suffering.

Bridge to a Far Land. In this way, the group for him had come to represent a bridge, a bridge that, once crossed, left no means of return. He had a vision where something that, if he were alone, would have resolved back into muscles and words, was held fast by the power of the group and led him away to a far land, whence there would be no return. It was, perhaps, the beginning of his placing reliance on others, a reliance that was mutual; and each of us, by committing himself to this immeasurable power, belonged to the whole.

10. The Unifying Principle: Death and the F104

That principle, it occurred to me, was death.

Giant Snake. Before his eyes, there slowly emerged a giant snake coiled about the earth; a snake that by constantly swallowing its own tail vanquished all polarities; the ultimate, huge snake that mocks all opposites. Opposites carried to extremes come to resemble each other; and tilings that are farthest removed from each other, by increasing the distance between them, come closer together.

Outer Edges. Mishima states that he is one who has always been interested only in the edges of the body and the spirit, the outlying regions of the body and the outlying regions of the spirit. The depths hold no interest for him; he leaves them to others, for they are shallow, commonplace. What is there, then, at the outermost edge? Nothing, perhaps, save a few ribbons, dangling down into the void.

Unifying Principle. Somewhere, there must be a realm between, a realm akin to that ultimate realm where motion becomes rest and rest motion. That principle, it occurred to him, was death. Unless body and spirit come together, the principle will have nothing to do with them.

Last updated: March 30, 2025