The Japan Speaker Series: Dr. Kristen Cather
The Japan Speaker Series: Dr. Kristen Cather
Mishima Yukio is a man who just won't die. Despite, or perhaps more accurately, because of his spectacular hari-kiri over 35 years ago, Mishima lives on, engendering countless fictional meditations and adaptations in both Japan and the west. Not just his gory suicide, but also his well-known status as a closeted homosexual have ensured he remain a tantalizing spectacle that weds taboos surrounding death and sex. At the root of this sensation is Mishima's 1961 story "Patriotism"("Yukoku") and especially his 1966 film version which he directed and starred in as a Lieutenant involved in a failed coup d'etat who commits seppuku after a torrid final sexual encounter with his adoring faithful wife. The sensationalist potential of hte film, titled The Rite of Love and Death in English, was only heightened by its self-censorship by Mishima's widow, who refused to give permission to screen it until after her death in 2008. This talk considers the ways Mishima's suicide has been scripted by various parties in Japan and abroad. By tracing Mishima's various suicidal scripts over the past half century, we can explore the complexity of the relationship between art and suicide.
Kirsten Cather is Associate Professor of Japanese literature at the University of Texas, Austin whose intellectual interests include the censorship of literature and film in modern Japan, modern adaptations of pre-modern Japanese literature, and suicide and death in modern Japan.
Sponsored by the Japanese Program of the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures and the Center for East Asian Studies