Mishima Yukios Yūkoku (Patriotismus) – Performativität im Text und Textualität im Film

Abstract

Because Mishima Yukio anticipates his own suicide in this short story from 1960, Yūkoku has always had a special position within his œuvre. By comparing the prose text with the  movie Yūkoku released in 1966, which Mishima himself directed, staged and played the main character in, I will show how the narrative differs within the two types of media and how each piece functions. I argue that the text’s performativity and the film’s textuality are the reason why it was possible for Mishima to address such an anachronistic topic in the 1960s without provoking negative responses. Furthermore, I will show that Mishima’s own suicide is part of the text’s performativity and has influenced the reception of the text to an extent that makes it impossible for readers to differentiate between text, film and author.