/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.22337016]

have ANY of you read even ONE PAGE of this book? when i see mishima discissed here you all treat his sexuality like it's a mystery. some of you say he was bi and some of you even say he was straight. those of you who say he was gay don't always seem to be 100% of your posistion. he spells it out as plainly as he possibly could in this book which is mentioned here almost every day. so many lines of this are just him restating that he is exclusively attracted to men and not women. i know he had kids. gay men can have kids. they just don't enjoy making them.

[Anonymous No.22337020]

>>22337016
It's not so simple

[Anonymous No.22337023]

>>22337016
He had a fetish for masculinity, but he wasn't gay. He never had any interest in having sex with men, and you will find as much in Confessions of a mask.

[Anonymous No.22337025]

>>22337016
beasts clawing at straws

[Anonymous No.22337031]

>>22337023
>he's in the thread already

[Anonymous No.22337034]

No, bro. A book that has almost 30,000 reads on goodreads alone means no one here has read it

[Anonymous No.22337037]

>>22337023
show me an quote from the text that supports this.

[Anonymous No.22337065]

>>22337023
this

[Anonymous No.22337075]

>>22337016
It's naive to simply equate the narrator with Mishima. Reading the book, it's clear that the narrator is a stylized creation, often written so as to appear somewhat ridiculous and comical. I thought he might have partly been modeled on Dostoevsky's Underground Man. So yeah, it's a literary creation, not an autobiography. I often read comments on goodreads or other sites where people simply proclaim that "it's clearly autobiographical" without any justification for that statement.

[Anonymous No.22337079]

>>22337037
Look up that interview from one of his supposed lovers where he says he left Mishima because Mishima had no interest in having sex and only wanted to reenact seppuku rituals.

[Anonymous No.22337152]

>>22337025
it was 2021, not 2020.

[Anonymous No.22337267]

>>22337079
>"it says it in the book!"
>show me where in the book
>"it says it in an interview!"
lol, sure.

[Anonymous No.22337359]

>>22337267
>it says it in the book!
He actually said the opposite, that you won't find it in the book. He offered you something from real life instead, but you're complaining he didn't show you something he said that wasn't in the book. Anon, are you slow?

[Anonymous No.22337377]

>>22337016
Just because a man fucks other men, doesn’t make him homosexual

[Anonymous No.22337396]

>>22337359
>you will find as much in Confessions of a mask.

[Anonymous No.22337460]

>>22337075
not saying this is the best evidence, but mishima's mom said some of the events with the protagonist's mom were word for word interactions she had with mishima in his adolescence

[Anonymous No.22337470]

>>22337023
>fetish for masculinity
If it wasn't a person you looked up to you would be condemning their degenerate behavior but because you must repsect some of Mishima's works you use ridiculous copes like this.

[Anonymous No.22337503]

>>22337075
it is clearly autobiographical. events like his grandfather going into debt, mishima's being disqualified from military service, having a history of illness as a child and going to lawschool are documented facts and they appear in the book. mishima's obsession with saint sebastian is evident from the pictures he had taken of himself in the same pose. the goodreads comments don't provide justification because this is common knowledge. it would be like providing justification that moby-dick contains boats.

[Anonymous No.22337536]

>>22337016
Not listening to you Redditor He wasn't gay

[Anonymous No.22337561]

>>22337460
I'm not saying there's no biographical component. There most pobably is to a high degree. I'm saying it's fictionalized fact and factualized fiction to the point where it's basically impossible to tell where one begins and the other ends.
>>22337503
You basically just repeated "it is clearly autobiographical" with no proof. You also said "other people said so" or "it's common knowledge", which is equally weak as logical foundation for a literary analysis.

[Anonymous No.22337599]

>>22337561
here, read this part again, chucklehead.
>events like his grandfather going into debt, mishima's being disqualified from military service, having a history of illness as a child and going to lawschool are documented facts and they appear in the book. mishima's obsession with saint sebastian is evident from the pictures he had taken of himself in the same pose.

[Anonymous No.22337644]

>>22337599
>events like his grandfather going into debt, mishima's being disqualified from military service, having a history of illness as a child and going to lawschool are documented facts and they appear in the book.
These are trivial circumstantial facts that are covered by a Wikipedia entry. The actual core themes of the book are the narrator's ambigious sexuality, his death wish, the relationship with Satoko, his sadomasochist fantasies - do you have any documentation for these? Are they fact or fiction?
>mishima's obsession with saint sebastian is evident from the pictures he had taken of himself in the same pose.
That was after the publication of the novel. That doesn't prove at all that the scene in the book was autobiographical. Scholars actually have proposed that Mishima copied the Saint Sebastian stuff from Thomas Mann.

[Anonymous No.22337661]

>>22337023
this is correct. homosexuality isn't even real—there is only homosexual phenomena existing in a variety of contexts. It's a category that's been demonstrated so flawed through contemporary discourse it's not even worth using.

[Anonymous No.22337677]

>>22337644
if the other details are trivial why include them in the book about the exploration of a ficticious characters "ambiguous" sexuality? (which is not even a little ambiguous as he states clearly thoughout that he is attracted to men and not even a little attracted to women)
>do you have any documentation for these?
>his death wish
yeah, idiot. stupid question.

[Anonymous No.22337701]

>>22337644
>ambigious sexuality
Have you even read the book? Or did you just read a bunch of reviews of those "scholars"? lmao

[Anonymous No.22337713]

>>22337677
So you got nothing? What's your evidence for the Saint Sebastian scene being autobiographical?
>if the other details are trivial why include them in the book about the exploration of a ficticious characters "ambiguous" sexuality?
Because he combines biographical fact with fiction. It's one of the oldest literary games writers like to play. He also called his book a novel btw.
>(which is not even a little ambiguous as he states clearly thoughout that he is attracted to men and not even a little attracted to women)
Why would it follow that this is true for Mishima himself? Because the narrator said so? Still no evidence.
>yeah, idiot. stupid question.
So Mishima committing seppuku in 1970 proves that he had a death wish in the 1940's? That's some sloppy thinking. I'm starting to see a trend here.

[Anonymous No.22337730]

>>22337701
So you haven't read the book? If you didn't notice any ambiguity you might be braindead, lol.

[Anonymous No.22337769]

>>22337661
copest cope ever seen

[Anonymous No.22337772]

>>22337730
>"Have you ever had the slightest desire to see a woman naked? Have you ever once imagined Sonoko naked? You, with your special knack at drawing analogies - surely you must have guessed a thing as obvious as the fact that a boy your age is never able to look at a young girl without imagining how she'd look naked. Ask yourself honestly why I tell you this. Go ahead, use your analogies - you'll have to change only one small detail to understand how other boys feel. Just last night didn't you indulge in your little habit before you went to sleep? Call it something like praying if you want. Say it's just a tiny pagan ceremony that everybody performs - all right. Even a substitute is not unpleasant once you get used to it, especially when you find it to be such an instantly effective sleeping draught. But remember that it wasn't a picture of Sonoko that arose in your mind last night. Whatever it was, your fantasy was strange and unnatural enough to amaze even me who have become so accustomed to watching by your side. During the day you walk down the street and see no one but the sailors and soldiers. They're the youths for you - just the age you like, well tanned by the sun, unsophisticated lips, and not a trace of the intellectual about them. Whenever you see one you immediately take his measure with your eye. Apparently you intend to become something like a tailor when you graduate from law school - is that it? You have a great fondness for the lithe body of a simple young man of around twenty, a body like that of a lion cub, don't you? How many such young men didn't you mentally strip of their clothes yesterday? Your imagination is like one of those kits used for collecting plant specimens. Into it you gather the naked bodies of all these ephebes seen during the day, and then when you're home and in bed you select from your collection the ritual sacrifice for your pagan ceremony, singling out one who has caught your particular fancy."
yeah, real ambiguous. you seem to be unfamilier with the text as well as a bit soft minded so to be clear, the above quote is from the book.

[Anonymous No.22337779]

>>22337016
there's no reason to believe he was homosexual whatsoever other than you wanting it to be true. homosexuality is a clear cut thing, it's not any association or characteristic.

[Anonymous No.22337803]

>>22337713
at this point this is just willful ignorance. why on earth would an author take a picture reflecting the fantasies only of one of his fictional characters?
>Why would it follow that this is true for Mishima himself?
didn't say it did in that post. only that the claim that the character's sexuality is amibiguous is idiotic.
>So Mishima committing seppuku in 1970 proves that he had a death wish in the 1940's?
it strongly suggests it when taken with the fact that the character in his book from that time, a character whose life is, as any sane person can see, identical to his own, masturbated to images of samuri commiting seppuku. he also did a book and film that he starred in (patriotism) centered around the performance of the same act. this is clearly an obsession of his..

[Anonymous No.22337807]

>>22337037
I'd say a good example is the whole knight tale. If memory serves he jacks off to it a few times because of the heroics of it. The traditional idea of a handsome, physically strong knight in shining armor defeating the dragon is what appeals to him. The idea masculinity that comes from stories like that. When he finds out it's a chick, that mirage is ruined and he detests the story, iirc. Of course this can also be used as evidence for the story being strictly homosexual and not about fetishizing masculinity
Then again early on he describes cross dressing but is met with a negative reaction by his family. I'd say his more traditionally masculine interests are met with a more positive reaction from his family and friends (the knight story, working for the war effort). I can't recall everything from it but I think there's something there more to that. What that is I don't know, if anything

[Anonymous No.22337827]

>>22337807
you do remember correctly but i cannot for the life of me see how any of this could be construed as a "masculity fetish" and not homosexuality. if he had been straight but had a fetish for masculinity a woman doing masculine things would be the very thing, no? i also can't align cossdressing with a straight man's masculinity fetish as it is obviously a sexual practice centered around non-masculinity in a man.

[Anonymous No.22337845]

>Was Mishima exaggerating or in some way faking his homosexual tendencies? Mitani Kuniko was convinced he was. Asked what she thought of Confessions when she read it, she said, “Mr. Mishima was a very sincere, serious person. He just feigned ‘sexual perversion,’ I thought.” Among those who have written about Mishima, Muramatsu Takeshi, for one, forcefully argued that Mishima decided to emphasize homosexual interests in Confessions because he had to give up on his love for Mitani Kuniko. Muramatsu, a student of French literature who observed the Eichmann Trial in Jerusalem, and, in the following year, the Algerian War of Independence from the Algerian side, knew Mishima’s family very well. Muramatsu knew there were some discrepancies between reality and fiction in Mishima. To start, Mishima wrote, in the novel, “After my sister’s death, [Sonoko] was soon married. Shall I call it the feeling of a heavy burden taken off my shoulders? I made myself merry. I boasted to myself that it was the natural consequence of not her having abandoned me, but my having abandoned her.” In truth, Mishima became hopelessly drunk on the night Kuniko married. He, still a student, was not known to have had many opportunities to consume alcohol, but he became dead drunk “for the first time since he was born,” Muramatsu recalled Shizue telling him. As he saw it, all the homosexual talk in the first half of was fiction, although that would deny even a common adolescent fascination with members of the same sex. It was necessary for Mishima to “put a mask of homosexuality on the protagonist,” Muramatsu judged, so as to “reverse the positions of man and woman in their mutual relationship.” For him to feel “a heavy burden taken off his shoulders” at the news of the marriage of someone with whom he was in love, he had to have the knowledge that he had homosexual tendencies, even if that was not known to anyone else.

[Anonymous No.22337857]

>>22337845
this is all stems from the opinion if a woman who has every reason to be in denial about the feelings mishima had towards her. what she says sound exactly like something Sonoko would say. as for him getting drunk that sounds like a celebration.

[Anonymous No.22337865]

>Mishima’s psychological turmoil may have been real, but his emphasis on sex was partly a response to the times. Open sexual expression was back in vogue. Previously, sex had blossomed as the subject of literature and entertainment during “the Taishō Democracy,” from the 1910s to the 1920s, when ero-guro nansensu, things “erotic, grotesque, nonsensical,” became popular. Academically, interest in sex was touched off by a translation in 1914 of Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis, which led to publication of a number of books dealing with “perverse sex,” “perverse psychology,” and the like. In 1917, Kawabata Yasunari, for instance, noted in his diary that he was reading On Perverse Lust (Hentai seiyoku-ron) by Sawada Junjirō. Ten a first-year student in Te First Higher School, Kawabata had also bought the English books, Sappho and Modern Man’s Confession. He was thinking of writing a story to be titled “Bestialism” (Chikushōdō).
>Expectations for Confessions were that what purported to be a frank account of adolescent sex and how a young man failed in his first heterosexual act should sell. Perverse sex, assuming it was that, would be even better. It did not work out that way, at least initially. Perhaps the glut of books on sex had an opposite effect.

[Anonymous No.22337901]

>>22337827
>how any of this could be construed as a "masculity fetish" and not homosexuality
he goes on and on about the knight dying, even to the point that he rewrites part of the story so that the gallant, strong knight is constantly killed, eaten, and reborn over and over. Traditionally, a man would do that in society, not a woman. To have a woman do it, in his eyes, wouldn't be real. He's getting off on a strong, masculine man doing something honorable (Mishima had a thing with honor=death).
Later in the book he says he was 'waiting for something to do him the favor of keeping him alive just as he was waiting for something to kill him'. The narrator has an insane inferiority complex. Instead of being this strong honorable man which he either can't (his illness) or chooses not to (faking illness for the war, iirc), he simultaneously fetishizes it and hates it (his fantasies of killing as those guys he falls in love with). The inferiority complex is at the heart of this fetishizing. He felt like shit because he got made fun of for cross dressing but he knows he can never actually be the man he wants to be or idolizes. His power fantasies that go on throughout the book show this. He doesn't want to dominate men in a sexual way but in a power way. So he feels bigger. At the same time he hates himself for not being a man which is why he chastises himself for jacking off. One of his idols wouldn't be so base as to lonely jack off to the image of being a man, he would be one.

[Anonymous No.22337987]

Quick everyone!
Point out whose the person standing next to mishima is!

[Anonymous No.22338424]

>>22337865
this just states the conditions were good for mishima's confession to be well received. i don't consider that evidence one way or the other as to how closely the events of the book corrospond to mishima's real life.

[Anonymous No.22338531]

>>22337016
He was a heteroromantic androphile with necrophilic fetishes. All his "gay" relationships were based on eroticism, not love. He might have repressed his homoromantic feelings though. We can't know for sure.

[Anonymous No.22338643]

>>22337987
That's Miwa and she denies Mishima was really gay.

[Anonymous No.22338675]

>>22337016
nah I haven't read it because nigga seems gay

[Anonymous No.22338755]

>>22338643
>she

[Anonymous No.22338812]

He was a straight man who really loved Catholic Art. 'Nuff said.

[Anonymous No.22339031]

>>22337901
how can you reconcile that with quotes denying his attraction to women? seems that homosexuality itself is the simplest answer. his inferiority complex is not incompatible with being gay.

[Anonymous No.22339039]

anyone ITT read this one? does it make things clearer?

[Anonymous No.22339476]

>>22337730
The book has pages dedicated to how horny MC is about his male classmate and the second half of the book is based entirely around how he feels absolutely nothing towards his "gf" and women in general. What's so ambiguous about that?

[Anonymous No.22339608]

If he was gay he would have had to been molested as a child

[Anonymous No.22339646]

>>22339031
did you ever read Fountainhead?
In it, Dominique described her love for the protagonist as burning hatred. She described their first sexual encounter as a rape.
Likewise, as most intelligent men come to do, Mishima seemingly had contempt for women, and his desire of them.
As it turns out, the most feminine thing a man can do is ingratiate himself to a woman. Women have more in common with gay men than straight, masculine men. His aspiration to greek status in Sun and Steel made this more apparent to me. Drooling over the male form is less about getting hard and fantasizing about getting dicked down than it is bathing in asceticism, or at least the aspiration to it. After all, a man appreciating male beauty is far less indulgent and base than attempting to do the same with pictures of women.
At least that's how I see it anyways. Maybe when I read forbidden colours I'll change my mind.

[Anonymous No.22339667]

>>22338643
>denies mishima was really gay
Not even cope at this point just straight up denial.

[Anonymous No.22340774]

>>22337016
I read most of it but I just couldn't finish it. It's horrible, how was he not ashamed of writing this and getting it published?

[Anonymous No.22340783]

>>22340774
It's amazing how some people cannot see the comedy and literary playfulness at work

[Anonymous No.22340795]

>>22340783
Comedy? It was pretty miserable.

[Anonymous No.22340963]

>>22337016
Mishima was the typical gay asian guy who secretly dreams about being fucked by a white man.
I've seen many of this type. He really wasn't that special.

[Anonymous No.22340975]

>>22337079
>Mishima had no interest in having sex and only wanted to reenact seppuku rituals.
Absolutely based autist

[Anonymous No.22340990]

>>22339646
>and his desire of them
but he states multiple times that he is not attracted to women. this is mental gymnastics. drooling over the male form actually IS gay. it is QUITE gay. it is, in fact, the whole of what it means to be gay.

[Anonymous No.22341005]

>>22340990
gay is an arbitrary category.

touching cocks is gay, therefore if you've ever masturbated, you're a homo. QED
Corollary 1: unless you've always peed hands-free your entire life, you're a homo, too.
Corollary 2: if you've ever washed your dick you're a homo.

[Anonymous No.22341041]

>>22341005
nope. it's not. it's not gay for a doctor to touch a cock. what is gay is what mishima does which is to be attracted to men and not women. you go to extreme lengths to create alternative explanations but occams razor says he's gay.

[Anonymous No.22341052]

>>22337016
no one reads anything besides the books plot summaries in wikipedia/goodreads
Forbidden Colors has plenty of shitposting material that goes unnoticed bevause the plot summary doesn't mentions anything about it

[Anonymous No.22341062]

>>22337016
Based Jew autismo was right
>https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-KmuF45Jc-0&pp=ygUXYm9iYnkgZmlzY2hlciBqYXBhbiBnYXk%3D

[Anonymous No.22341115]

>>22341041
occam's razor means nothing, just like 80/20 rule, pascal's wager and all the other popsci bullshit rattling around your skull

[Anonymous No.22341133]

>>22341062
fucking lol

[Anonymous No.22341145]

>>22337016
all fascists are gay. FACT!!!

[Anonymous No.22341630]

>>22341115
let's say i give you a drink, you pass out and wake up in my bed with cum dripping out of your sore ass. let's look at some possibilites
>you have recently been struck with a helath condition previously unknown to medical science, symptoms include: soreness of the anus, fainting spells, and cum seeping out of the prostate through the colon
>you got raped
according to you there's no way to assess which of these is more likely.

[Anonymous No.22342406]

>>22341630
there's no way to know. Shut up about likely. Likely means nothing.

[Anonymous No.22342418]

>>22342406
wanna drink?

[Anonymous No.22342426]

>>22337016
You are on /lit/
Nobody reads here.
Everyone pretends.
When we disagree, we call each other "fucking pseuds" and move on.
This board exists for the catharsis of once-gifted children who are no longer.

[Anonymous No.22342440]

>>22342426
i am found out

[Anonymous No.22342463]

>>22342426
>This board exists for the catharsis of once-gifted children who are no longer.
sure thing, James

[Anonymous No.22343067]

>>22342426
>for the catharsis of once-gifted children who are no longer

[Anonymous No.22343135]

>>22339646
Can you reconcile the desire to see Omi's "big thing" with this bathing in asceticism? If wanting to see a man's penis isn't gay then it is very difficult to be gay.

[Anonymous No.22343153]

>>22337023
>fetish for masculinity
Got it, Mishima was a cis trans man.

[Anonymous No.22343156]

>>22337845
>To start, Mishima wrote, in the novel, “After my sister’s death, [Sonoko] was soon married. Shall I call it the feeling of a heavy burden taken off my shoulders? I made myself merry. I boasted to myself that it was the natural consequence of not her having abandoned me, but my having abandoned her.”
that's not what my copy says. mine says,
>"I PRETENDED [emphasis added] to myself that I was pleased. I boasted to myself that this was only natural since it was I who had done the jilting and not she. I had long insisted upon interpreting the things that fate forced me to do as victories of my own will and intelligence, and now this bad habit had grown into a frenzied arrogance. In the nature of what I was calling my intelligence there was a touch of something illigtimate, a touch of the sham pretender who has been placed on the throne by some freak chance. This dolt of a usurper could not foresee the revenge that would inevitably be wreaked upon his despotism."
From which it follows that even if we choose to ascribe Mishima's drunkeness to misery instead of celebration it does not conflict with the claims of the novel. If we accept that Mishima's drunkeness does not conflict with the novel then we have no reason to suppose that the claims he makes about his sexuality in the novel are untrue. Furthermore, in the time and place that those statements were made by those who knew him, it would be quite easy to see how they might think themselves as doing him a kindness by making him SEEM straight.

[Anonymous No.22343182]

obviously mish is gay. the real questio is... bottom, top, or vers?

[Anonymous No.22343186]

>>22337016
>hurr hurr he had kids but he didnt like doing it :(
What a load of shit. You dont hear about straight people sucking cock but then saying they felt pressured into it or whatever. Its almost like homosexuality is a sexual deviancy that breeds through molestation.

[Anonymous No.22343209]

>>22343186
no one presuures straight people into gay relationships and last point does not in any way connect to your first.

[Anonymous No.22343214]

>>22343186

[Anonymous No.22343364]

>>22337661
This. Dragging any kind of sexual attraction to the same sex over the same line is retarded.

For example:
Guy 1 only wants to fuck passing traps (Not even letting them fuck him back or sucking them off)
Guy 2 only wants to fuck fat bearded men (Both ways)
Guy 3 only wants to fuck twinks (In their ass)
Guy 4 only wants to have his dick sucked by other guys (Because he finds it exciting to humiliate other men)
Guy 5 only wants to roleplay samurai suicide with his bros and jerk off to it

>Yeah bro its all the same

[Anonymous No.22343393]

> i know he had kids. gay men can have kids. they just don't enjoy making them.

[Anonymous No.22344501]

>>22343364
okay, so a guy that wants to make women wear shock collars and to beat them until they cry, a guy that wants loving, reproductive sex, a guy that wants to get pegged and a guy that wants to build a haram of the conquored women of his enemies can't possibly all have the same sexuality, right?

[Anonymous No.22344543]

>>22337377
As long as the balls don't touch

[Anonymous No.22344855]

>>22344501
correct—there's no such thing as sexuality. there is only plain, procreative sex and every else is a shade of paraphilia.

[Anonymous No.22344868]

>>22344855
>only one race, the human race.

[Anonymous No.22344890]

>>22344868
yes and no depending on whatever language game you want to play

[Anonymous No.22344889]

>>22337016
Where do I buy this cover? This one is really good.

[Anonymous No.22344894]

>>22344889
just make a meringue pie

[Anonymous No.22344898]

Why should anyone care either way?

[Anonymous No.22344902]

>>22344898
i have a time machine and he's hot.

[Anonymous No.22344908]

>>22344890
ok so why not say that there is such a thing as sexuality depending on the language game you want to play? and why not play the same game as pretty much every other english speaker?

[Anonymous No.22345036]

>My idol couldn't be gay because if he was gay, that means I'm gay by association!

[Anonymous No.22345316]

>>22345036
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2kCrH32ByU

[Anonymous No.22345350]

Every thread on Mishima is full of people who have skimmed his wikipedia and feel ready to make confident assertions so i usually avoid these but seeing as you can barely discuss Confessions of a Mask here this will be an authoratitative Basic Mishima Information Post

Mishima was known to have sex with men by his western and japanese associates. Direct documentable examples are from MacArthurs gay cultural aide Faubion Bowers and the editor he traveled to Brazil with from the biography. Theres also the letters his children sued over, his frequenting of gay clubs and general knowledge among many of his japanese associates but these two are direct anecdotes with zero ambiguity.
As a side note whether he was ever on the receiving end of homosex or enjoyed having sex with his wife is both irrelevant and unknowable although most people in the know consider both unlikely.

Regarding his wife it was an arranged marriage for social/family duty reasons, he only spent a couple of hours a week with his wife and kids, preferring to spend time with his mother, whom he had living in an annex on his property, when he was at home and not working.

These threads are always the same with some guy showing up to say the fetish for masculinity line like its a sutra that will retroactively make him slightly less gay everytime its uttered and someone posting the as he died he came gay seppuku roleplay story as proof that he wasnt gay. Its so predictable and samey its like these threads are ai generated. Its hard to tell if posts like >>22337023
>>22337075 are an attempt at meta satire just false boomer confidence from people who should know they have no idea what theyre talking about because they choose not to read about it and instead prefer to discuss something they think based on skimming something one time. Threads about his suicide and politics are similar with the confident lack of knowledge but they are at least less abundant with the "I cant hear you lalala" posts these threads have.

An essential truth about Mishima is that he carefully curated his personality/mask depending on who he was talking to and what aspect of his life they belonged to, making him appear very different to most people he knew, this was noted both by his closest japanese associates and by Nathan in the biography aswell as Schrader when researching him for the movie. That he was simultaneously more of a trad family man than many trad family men and more of a gay pervert than many gay perverts makes perfect sense once you see how fragmented and seemingly contradictory his private life was.

If you want to know the basics about Mishima as a person, read Confessions and follow it up with the Nathan biography, theres also his translated articles and interviews but keep in mind that he was a very read between the lines kind of man, much like his books. But if you truly want to understand him as a person and as an artist you have to read pretty much every major work and the Nathan biography.

[Anonymous No.22345352]

I'm not gay, I just have a fetish for men

[Anonymous No.22345395]

>>22345352
Nuance is lost on the normalmaggot. Atale as old as time

[Anonymous No.22345456]

>>22344889
I still don't have a physical copy of Confessions because all 4 covers currently in print are terrible. The one in the OP is from 1958

[Anonymous No.22345468]

>>22345350
u write like shit

[Anonymous No.22345486]

>>22345395
...said the man fetishist.

[Anonymous No.22345594]

>>22345468
u are feminine and petite

[Anonymous No.22345683]

>>22345350
It's curious how everyone who insists Mishima was gay is a westerner, while his japanese biographer, Inose, is more nuanced about it and puts it in doubt, and even confirms Mishima had a girlfriend with whom he had sex before getting married. But, of course, as all redditor midwits do, you prefer to believe the westerners who paint him as a flamboyant faggot. It's true he liked to go to gay bars, but so what. That doesn't prove anything. Westerners like Nathan try to use it to prove that Mishima was not only gay, but openly so, but if he was so open about it, why did he always deny it and even wrote an essay about what made women attractive? Not to mention his gay acquaintances like Akihiro Miwa have denied he was gay as well. You also bring up his correspondence with Fukushima, but even if the letters are legit and that they had a romance, show me where it says they had sex.

[Anonymous No.22345684]

>>22337016
One word: fiction.

[Anonymous No.22345712]

>>22345684
>"I got two words for NBC: ROLE PLAYING CHATROOM"

[Anonymous No.22345859]

>>22345683
Gay men exactly like Mishima are a dime a dozen, any wealthy high-IQ gay has all those "trad" and "aesthetic" ambitions (that they are actually more open about like Mishima because they arent simp normalfaggots), usually their childhood is very similar to mishima with all the books to tend to and develop those intellecrual and artistic views but lots of sheltering leading to few male friends.
Westerners say he is gay confidently because they know of the inherent nuance and conciliation of many personality sides, formative windows and "masks" of gay men that arent pride-leather-bondage bears, its the japanese that come with this "fake nuance" that just tries to be deep everywhere.

[Anonymous No.22345869]

>>22345350
>false boomer confidence
>an essential truth about Mishima is

[Anonymous No.22346893]

>>22345683
I preempted every argument you made and cited sources which you, unsurprisingly, was unaware of and unwilling to read up on for yourself when informed of them.
There is no doubt you have never read Nathan or attempted to research this for yourself.
This link and my pic (as mentioned in my post) are direct statements from primary sources, one western and one japanese both of whom were friendly with him. https://www.villagevoice.com/i-knew-mishima-yukio-very-well/

It would be interesting if you could tell me where my post paints him as a flamboyant and open fag when I never labeled him as anything in my post, Nathan also never claims he was open in public, but that he was in some private circles.

Im interested in Mishima because I love his work, if the only proof of him having sex with men was in Confessions and Forbidden Colors it with no real life corroboration it would indeed be too tenuous and it would remain a theory.

But thats not the case.
The only reason anyone even bothers protesting this is because hes featured on trvd reading lists for people who think finding homosex icky is a revolutionary act and people who dont really know anything about him thinking this is a case of retroactively declaring someone to be gay because fags are trendier than ever, like you.

>>22345869
It is considered to be so among Mishima scholars and enthusiasts alike, but perhaps you know better? In that case youre able to argue for why its not?

[Anonymous No.22347128]

>>22337023
>I'm not gay bro, I just have a penis fetish

[Anonymous No.22347773]

>>22347128
this but unironically

[Anonymous No.22348746]

>>22344889
this one and the other design with the same picture has been out of print for a long time, so unless youre willing to pay at least 200 theyre unavailable

[Anonymous No.22348755]

Mishima wrote shit for women and gay men

[Anonymous No.22349873]

>>22337016
how can a mask confess
its just a mask innit

[Anonymous No.22349928]

Bisexuality exists, just saying.

[Anonymous No.22349951]

>>22337016
Why yes, I have. Mishima's sexuality goes so far beyond a pedestrian case of "being gay". The man was aroused by the idea of masculine martyrdom, of a man dying violently for a cause or emotion.

[Anonymous No.22351580]

>>22349928
i'm bi and i made the thread