Thinking of Mishima
Mishima died on this day in 1970. I've been thinking of him. It seems there were some elements to his suicide that were related to Japanese politics, but more broadly, one can see it as a gesture of defiance against the soullessness of modern life. Here are some words from his last speech, in which he addressed the assembled garrison at a Self-Defence Force military base in Tokyo before committing seppuku:
No doubt Mishima would not have wished his death to be thought of as suicide in the usual way. Since he ritually disembowelled himself, with his head severed by his companion Morita, after an abortive military coup, it does, indeed, qualify as unusual. Still, thinking of Mishima's death now leads me on to think of suicide in general. I suspect there is often, in our age, as a significant part of the motivation for suicide, a general desire to defy or to escape the grinding soullessness that has come to dominate everything.
Having said that, I was struck a while back by the following short film about suicide, under the title, 'Men Are Dying and Nobody Cares', which presents suicide as far from a considered choice:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKcV6...
The basic thesis of the film is borrowed from David Foster Wallace, who wrote an arresting passage about the reasons why a depressed person will kill herself. I will paste here the passage in question. I don't know how well it is transcribed. It differs from the way the passage is quoted in the film. Notably, we find that DFW uses "herself", presumably as the now common alternative to the universalistic 'he/him', or perhaps there are other reasons that would be clear if we had more of the context of the passage:
This strikes me as very true. With many who are suicidal, asking them why they want to kill themselves is as nonsensical as asking someone who jumps from a building to escape fire why they want to jump from a building. It's hardly a matter of wanting.
"I don't want to kill myself," they might reply. "I am being forced."
Until you are in that position yourself, you might not be able to understand. Nonetheless, it is real.
David Foster Wallace, who wrote that passage, incidentally, or not so incidentally, killed himself in 2008. We must assume that the flames had become too close and too scorching.
Though Mishima's suicide was unusual, and we might suspect that his was a more willed and deliberate death, he nonetheless fits the demographic most vulnerable to suicide in the UK at present:
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/...
Most obviously, he was male.
"Suicide in England and Wales is three times more common among men than among women."
This is a figure I first read in a penetrating piece on suicide in the present age (called, in fact, 'Piece on Suicide') by Nina Power and Pierre d’Alancaisez:
https://ninapower.net/2023/12/02/piec...
Mishima was also in the right age group:
"The risk of suicide in England and Wales is usually highest among people aged between 45 and 54 ..."
Something not mentioned in the statistics linked to at the House of Commons Library, is another factor that may have been relevant in Mishima's case. Mishima was also a writer, and various sources tell us that writers are about twice as likely as the general population to kill themselves:
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/ar...
So, being a male writer in the age group between 45 and 54 is not a good combination, especially (going by the statistics) for those living in the UK and perhaps the Anglophone world generally right now.
There are many other relevant factors, of course.
The film, 'Men Are Dying and Nobody Cares', asks towards the end, "Does it have to be like this?" It then tells the story of Tim Ferriss, who was planning to kill himself but was caught off guard by a concerned phone call from his mother. (The film doesn't say this, but I believe that his mother had received a notice from the library that a book on how to commit suicide was overdue.) The point the filmmaker wishes to make is that suicide can be averted, if it is caught early enough, a point very much opposed to the received wisdom that a person talking about suicide will not do it. This received wisdom is emphatically not true. When I was a child, I walked into a room in my father's house where a man had hanged himself. (The police had woken me without telling me what was happening.) It transpired that the man in question had told a number of people he was going to kill himself. Indeed, it was not his first attempt.
The film ends with a message for those currently suffering:
"No darkness lasts forever."
I hope this is true. After a certain age, one is able to see all too closely that lives can run their course with no redemption, at least not in this world. Then we are faced with the question of the ultimate end of all things. (Could the the Lady Julian of Norwich be right?)
For my own part, I wish that no one felt forced into suicide. If there is an element in suicide of defying the hideous soullessness of this world, I hope we can do that by staying rather than by leaving. I know it's not easy.
Even unreasoningly (that is, I cannot fathom my reasons, but trust that they are deep), I am glad when suicide is averted, and, without knowing precisely how to counsel against suicide, I would, nonetheless, counsel against it. I have heard from more than one person that reading my 'Suicide Watch' kept them alive:
https://www.ligotti.net/showthread.ph...
I can only say, I was glad to hear this. Perhaps I felt that the soulless machine had been deprived of a victim. In any case, I was glad.
Where has the soul of the warrior gone? How will you go on, as nothing but a giant armory whose soul is dead?
No doubt Mishima would not have wished his death to be thought of as suicide in the usual way. Since he ritually disembowelled himself, with his head severed by his companion Morita, after an abortive military coup, it does, indeed, qualify as unusual. Still, thinking of Mishima's death now leads me on to think of suicide in general. I suspect there is often, in our age, as a significant part of the motivation for suicide, a general desire to defy or to escape the grinding soullessness that has come to dominate everything.
Having said that, I was struck a while back by the following short film about suicide, under the title, 'Men Are Dying and Nobody Cares', which presents suicide as far from a considered choice:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKcV6...
The basic thesis of the film is borrowed from David Foster Wallace, who wrote an arresting passage about the reasons why a depressed person will kill herself. I will paste here the passage in question. I don't know how well it is transcribed. It differs from the way the passage is quoted in the film. Notably, we find that DFW uses "herself", presumably as the now common alternative to the universalistic 'he/him', or perhaps there are other reasons that would be clear if we had more of the context of the passage:
The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.
This strikes me as very true. With many who are suicidal, asking them why they want to kill themselves is as nonsensical as asking someone who jumps from a building to escape fire why they want to jump from a building. It's hardly a matter of wanting.
"I don't want to kill myself," they might reply. "I am being forced."
Until you are in that position yourself, you might not be able to understand. Nonetheless, it is real.
David Foster Wallace, who wrote that passage, incidentally, or not so incidentally, killed himself in 2008. We must assume that the flames had become too close and too scorching.
Though Mishima's suicide was unusual, and we might suspect that his was a more willed and deliberate death, he nonetheless fits the demographic most vulnerable to suicide in the UK at present:
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/...
Most obviously, he was male.
"Suicide in England and Wales is three times more common among men than among women."
This is a figure I first read in a penetrating piece on suicide in the present age (called, in fact, 'Piece on Suicide') by Nina Power and Pierre d’Alancaisez:
https://ninapower.net/2023/12/02/piec...
Mishima was also in the right age group:
"The risk of suicide in England and Wales is usually highest among people aged between 45 and 54 ..."
Something not mentioned in the statistics linked to at the House of Commons Library, is another factor that may have been relevant in Mishima's case. Mishima was also a writer, and various sources tell us that writers are about twice as likely as the general population to kill themselves:
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/ar...
So, being a male writer in the age group between 45 and 54 is not a good combination, especially (going by the statistics) for those living in the UK and perhaps the Anglophone world generally right now.
There are many other relevant factors, of course.
The film, 'Men Are Dying and Nobody Cares', asks towards the end, "Does it have to be like this?" It then tells the story of Tim Ferriss, who was planning to kill himself but was caught off guard by a concerned phone call from his mother. (The film doesn't say this, but I believe that his mother had received a notice from the library that a book on how to commit suicide was overdue.) The point the filmmaker wishes to make is that suicide can be averted, if it is caught early enough, a point very much opposed to the received wisdom that a person talking about suicide will not do it. This received wisdom is emphatically not true. When I was a child, I walked into a room in my father's house where a man had hanged himself. (The police had woken me without telling me what was happening.) It transpired that the man in question had told a number of people he was going to kill himself. Indeed, it was not his first attempt.
The film ends with a message for those currently suffering:
"No darkness lasts forever."
I hope this is true. After a certain age, one is able to see all too closely that lives can run their course with no redemption, at least not in this world. Then we are faced with the question of the ultimate end of all things. (Could the the Lady Julian of Norwich be right?)
For my own part, I wish that no one felt forced into suicide. If there is an element in suicide of defying the hideous soullessness of this world, I hope we can do that by staying rather than by leaving. I know it's not easy.
Even unreasoningly (that is, I cannot fathom my reasons, but trust that they are deep), I am glad when suicide is averted, and, without knowing precisely how to counsel against suicide, I would, nonetheless, counsel against it. I have heard from more than one person that reading my 'Suicide Watch' kept them alive:
https://www.ligotti.net/showthread.ph...
I can only say, I was glad to hear this. Perhaps I felt that the soulless machine had been deprived of a victim. In any case, I was glad.
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