Didn’t know how else to contact you – but I wanted to ask, do you have an email contact address at all?

Basically I have just started a life experiment, inspired by your writings about Marcus Aurelius in Tunnel Visions – it’s called ‘Diaries of Preparing for Death’ and I’d really like to bounce some ideas some more.

I will be featuring each day up on my blog, but seeing as I’m trying to live each day as my last, I thought today I would make my epitaph getting in touch with the very person who inspired me to do this experiment.

Hopefully will hear from you,

Blessings,

Hazardous

As for your second point. I speak Japanese. Clubs of this nature have barred foreigners who cannot communicate. I have often been blocked in Shinjuku clubs only to talk my way past the gruff would-be yakuza on the door. Its all about charm.

Barbara -

What makes you think I am idealising Mishima? Really? I respect him as an extraordinarily disciplined artist. As a bushi? No, not at all. To have taken the harder path would, in his case, to have determined to live. Bushido is not easy, not obvious. I hope your spleen feels better.

Regards,

Christopher

1) I thought you might have discussed or at least commented on certain points where a reader unfamiliar with Japan might easily have got a false impression, and where important questions suggest themselves. For example, at one point you say,

“Mishima claimed that the feminine side of Japan, displayed in the arts of ikebana and tea ceremony, in kimono design and the institution of geisha, in haiku and ceramics, had been deliberately stressed since the American occupation.”

What you don’t point out is that all of these — with the obvious exception of geisha and with the possible exception of kimono design (I just don’t happen to know enough about that) were, until modern times, the exclusive preserve of males (it is true that Japanese women have written poetry since the earliest times, but the famous “masters of haiku” were all men). This raises an interesting question: how exactly did Mishima distinguish masculine from feminine characteristics? He seems simply to define masculine characteristics as violent ones — and that rather assumes what he’s trying to justify.

Nowadays, all the activities in the above list HAVE become “women’s thing”, but might that not be the (regrettable) result of importing Western prejudices? When Hideyoshi Toyotomi successfully performed an important military task for Oda Nobunaga, he was delighted to be rewarded with the gift of a rare tea-caddy. I actually suspect that Mishima’s understanding of masuline and feminine may not be Japanese in origin at all, but may even betray Western influence on his thinking.

2) I find your account of your visit to the Red & White Club hard to believe. As I’m sure you’re aware, foreigners are not generally welcome in sex clubs in Japan, and especially not in gay ones (due to an irrational fear that foreigners = AIDS); while such establishments have become a tad more welcoming recently, I find it incredible that you casually strolled into an S&M club in the manner you decribed. Was it really like that, or have you edited your account to make it more interesting or economical for publication?