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The Madness and Perversion of Yukio Mishima
This psychological study focuses on one of Japan's most prolific writers, Yukio Mishima, whose fiction was suffused with images of sadomasochism, homosexual rape, hatred of women, vengeance, rage, and humiliation. Mishima's violent homoerotic imagery and fascistic politics have aroused a range of reactions―from hostile criticism to idealizing fantasies and even militant devotion. Still, he has been called an extraordinary talent and compared to Hemingway, Proust, and Joyce. Here we venture deep into the mind and personal history of Mishima, who was also an eccentric exhibitionist, posed nude for surreal photographs, acted in gangster films, and played the part of a Hollywood celebrity. Amid his flamboyance, Mishima's sexual perversity and right-wing militant politics have also aroused trepidation in many readers and critics, especially in light of his ritual suicide by disembowelment.
Piven gives us a psychological understanding of the life, fantasies, and obsessions of Mishima, as all followed early trauma, severe conflict, narcissistic injury and an ensuing fixation on death. We see, for example, how Mishima's psychotic and authoritarian grandmother suffocated him emotionally by sequestering him from his mother and the outside world for the first 12 years of his life. Unlike other works that explain and amplify his philosophy, The Madness and Perversion of Yukio Mishima deconstructs his philosophy, removing his masks, pretenses, and disguises.
Piven gives us a psychological understanding of the life, fantasies, and obsessions of Mishima, as all followed early trauma, severe conflict, narcissistic injury and an ensuing fixation on death. We see, for example, how Mishima's psychotic and authoritarian grandmother suffocated him emotionally by sequestering him from his mother and the outside world for the first 12 years of his life. Unlike other works that explain and amplify his philosophy, The Madness and Perversion of Yukio Mishima deconstructs his philosophy, removing his masks, pretenses, and disguises.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2004
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December 29, 2011
Q: Was he a gay man pretending to be straight, or a straight man pretending to be gay? A: Yes!
Q: Omi's armpits: vagina or anus? A: Yes!
Q: Mizoguchi's cigarette, smoked as Kinkakuji burns, nipple or phallus? A: Yes!
Which is great, and he's probably right, but it also seems like everything is the same. Mishima's raping men to kill them, or killing women to rape them. He's raping things because he loves them, raping things because he wants to be them, raping things because he hates them. And, of course, it's always a little bit of all three.
Where do we go from here? Well, you definitely need to read this if you are a right-wing nutjob and Mishima is your hero because he was really heroic. But if you suspect that he hated himself and wished he was dead, then you're fine.
Piven includes a great chapter with some real don-on-don hatred. I haven't read Napier's "Escape from the wasteland: Romanticism and realism in the fiction of Mishima Yukio and Oe Kenaburo" but, if Piven is fair in his representation, Napier sounds a little bit nuts. But I doubt he's being fair. They can probably agree to disagree on a fundamental: how do books get written? Piven thinks that they bubble out of people; Napier is more that someone sits down and represents the world they see around them. Piven needs to remember that the expression of Mishima's sexual perversion was literary not literal (for the most part). He didn't rape anyone in real life, Jerry!
"Penises are valuable because they allow escape from the enveloping threat of the pre-oedipal mother. The classical concept of castration anxiety is thus most deeply understood not as a dread of losing the organ itself, but of succumbing to engulfment". Castration anxiety? I remain more anxious about psychoanalysts using "castration" in relation to anything other than the testicles. Don't they need a new term? It seems strange to be so vague. Piven talks about castrating an erect penis at one point, and I wasn't sure what we were chopping off / "succumbing to engulfment".
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I forgot to mention that Piven makes a mistake on page 75, in his notes to chapter 2: Meredith Weatherby was a man! I checked, and there's a photo of him in a Donald Richie book. This is quite interesting: http://5magazine.wordpress.com/2011/0...
Q: Omi's armpits: vagina or anus? A: Yes!
Q: Mizoguchi's cigarette, smoked as Kinkakuji burns, nipple or phallus? A: Yes!
Which is great, and he's probably right, but it also seems like everything is the same. Mishima's raping men to kill them, or killing women to rape them. He's raping things because he loves them, raping things because he wants to be them, raping things because he hates them. And, of course, it's always a little bit of all three.
Where do we go from here? Well, you definitely need to read this if you are a right-wing nutjob and Mishima is your hero because he was really heroic. But if you suspect that he hated himself and wished he was dead, then you're fine.
Piven includes a great chapter with some real don-on-don hatred. I haven't read Napier's "Escape from the wasteland: Romanticism and realism in the fiction of Mishima Yukio and Oe Kenaburo" but, if Piven is fair in his representation, Napier sounds a little bit nuts. But I doubt he's being fair. They can probably agree to disagree on a fundamental: how do books get written? Piven thinks that they bubble out of people; Napier is more that someone sits down and represents the world they see around them. Piven needs to remember that the expression of Mishima's sexual perversion was literary not literal (for the most part). He didn't rape anyone in real life, Jerry!
"Penises are valuable because they allow escape from the enveloping threat of the pre-oedipal mother. The classical concept of castration anxiety is thus most deeply understood not as a dread of losing the organ itself, but of succumbing to engulfment". Castration anxiety? I remain more anxious about psychoanalysts using "castration" in relation to anything other than the testicles. Don't they need a new term? It seems strange to be so vague. Piven talks about castrating an erect penis at one point, and I wasn't sure what we were chopping off / "succumbing to engulfment".
====================
I forgot to mention that Piven makes a mistake on page 75, in his notes to chapter 2: Meredith Weatherby was a man! I checked, and there's a photo of him in a Donald Richie book. This is quite interesting: http://5magazine.wordpress.com/2011/0...
Displaying 1 of 1 review