Mishima. Part 2.
How did things get that crazy?
Trigger alert: More personal injury and violence from the very start.
To return to 25th November 1970 and the Ichigaya base of the Jieitai in the middle of Tokyo.
Mishima and his followers; Chibi-Koga, Furu-Koga, Ogawa and Morita, in their mustard yellow Tatenokai uniforms basically blagged their way into General Mashita’s office.
The general was a fifty-seven-year-old dignified senior military man who had served in the Pacific War. Mishima had cooked up an excuse to introduce the students to Mashita, although the general did wonder why Mishima was carrying a sword, as his officers were never seen with the katana as part of their uniform. After some fluffery from Mishima about the sword being an antique, a code word was dropped to which Chibi-Koga was supposed to have tackled and gagged the general, but things didn’t go to plan. This was to be the pattern for the rest of the day – it was not looking good.
Finally, Chibi-Koga managed to sneak himself behind the general and grab him by the neck. The other students produced ropes and a gag and general Mashita was eventually tied to a chair. At first the general thought that this was some kind of crazy commando exercise that he’d been a victim of; but very quickly the penny dropped.
The Tatenokai students did a botched job of fastening the two office doors and putting up an ineffective barricade – they really hadn’t thought this through. Also, they had failed to notice that there was a kind of ‘spy-hole’ in the opaque glass of general Mashita’s office. Soon enough the game was up.
A Major Sawamoto looked through the spy-hole and at first he thought that one of the students was giving the general a shoulder massage (as might happen in the military) but then he spotted the bindings.
It all got very fraught as reinforcements arrived, in the form of three colonels, five regular soldiers and two master sergeants. They rushed the doors, the barricades collapsed and they found themselves facing a very determined Mishima with a sword in his hands.
Fortunately, colonel Hara had the foresight to grab an old wooden sword (bokken), but the rest were unarmed. (A fat lot of good it did him). A clumsy stand-off occurred and then they tried to rush him… Mishima’s sword went into action; one of the colonels was slashed across the back and a sergeant was struck on the wrist, which nearly severed his hand. Only two of the ten soldiers were uninjured and they had to beat a hasty retreat – what a mess.
They had another attempt at taking the office by force and this failed as well, resulting in more injury.
The stand-off continued until they finally gave Mishima what he wanted, that the garrison troops be assembled in the courtyard outside the building – around 1000 men in all. This came to pass, but not as Mishima hoped.
Mishima on the balcony giving his speech.
Source: By ANP scans 8ANP 222) - http://www.gahetna.nl/en/collectie/afbeeldingen/fotocollectie/zoeken/weergave/detail/start/1/tstart/0/q/zoekterm/Mishima/q/commentaar/1, CC BY-SA 3.0 nl, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37489837
The patriotic rant he delivered from the balcony outside the general’s office was partly drowned out by circling helicopters and police sirens, and what could be heard was greeted by catcalls and insults from the soldiers. I suspect, although he knew it would fail, and probably was aware of the overall trajectory, he was ill-prepared for this scrappy, bad-tempered exchange. For Mishima it was about to get worse.
As described in part one; the seppuku was partially botched, but ultimately achieved, evidenced by the blood-soaked carpet and the two separated heads, placed neatly and respectably on the floor of the general’s office.1
Rewind – Mishima and the Shield Society.