Mishima's Last Stand

The liberal conception of the writer is essentially a lonely creature scribbling or tapping away on a computer now in a room whose products are sold and born as any other commodity by those in the cultural marketplace. But the Bardic tradition holds that the artist creates on behalf of the people and at least attempts to speak for large proportion to that people in key moments. Mishima's struggle with himself and with literature came to an end with the sea of fertility trilogy in the late 1960s, which talks a great deal about conspiratorial groups of small right-wingers trying to overthrow the business, corporate and political elite of liberal democratic Japan. In one of his essays, Mishima asks, why did the