An Imperial Sun Rises

Demonstration IV – the conclusion of a tetralogy. Goatowarex.
The Importance of Mishima:
When I think of Yukio Mishima, I think of one word: discipline. Here’s a man who never missed a deadline for his writing, or art. A man who identified the physical weakness within himself and sought to crush it.
In his short lifetime he left a body of work, a legacy that contained 35 novels, 25 plays, 200 short stories, and 8 volumes of essays. An amazing bibliography that assured him a place as Japan’s most celebrated author. An athlete who forged himself a new body from sun and steel. A pariah who disregarded the zeitgeist of his era – the erosion of Japanese tradition and the cultural pressures to transform the country into an emasculated leftist shadow of its former self. He contested his surroundings and matched his words with action, transforming his world to reflect his art. Training religiously, forming a militia, and ultimately immortalising himself through his work and through his death. Total commitment, total belief. Mishima had the drive and vision to make a poem out of his life. And in our contemporary era I think there is much to learn from him. To attempt to attain and exercise that same monastic drive in our own chosen paths. To have the sheer will and faith in ourselves to ignore all the ephemeral influences, distractions, and rabbit holes that are shoved down our throats, that obscure our focus, and derail our progress. To recognise and understand what it is we want and attain it, to attack it mercilessly until we are synonymous with it. How can we change the world if we can’t first change ourselves with discipline, determination and steadfast focus?
News, politics, social rhetoric and trends it’s all agenda and half-truths. Instead, we need the glorious sun, that defined our earliest incarnation of gods and goddesses. We need the steel to make us stronger and conquer. We need Mishima.