Geki (Mishima)


Geki is a last manifesto by the Japanese author Yukio Mishima. It was his written appeal, which many copies were scattered before Mishima gave a speech from the balcony after occupied the Eastern Army Commander's office at the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force Camp Ichigaya on November 25, 1970. The gist of the manifesto is almost the same as that of the balcony speech.
Geki is a 10-paragraph piece of text, converting it into about nine pages long in manuscript paper, densely written in Mishima's own handwriting across two sheets of B4 paper. The signature reads "Captain of the Tatenokai, Yukio Mishima."
After the Mishima Incident, the entire text of Geki was published in the evening editions or next day's morning editions of almost Japanese newspapers, except for the Asahi Shimbun, which was cut out some parts of it. The first magazine that published the entire text immediately after the incident was the weekly magazine Sunday Mainichi. The manifesto has often been quoted in various books and research papers on Mishima, and biographies of him, after his death.
Geki was translated into English by Harris I. Martin as An appeal, and published in Solidarity and Japan Interpreter.

Contents

Geki is considered to be the conclusion of Mishima's life as a warrior, and if his posthumous novel The Sea of Fertility is the culmination of his aesthetics as a literary figure, then with "Geki" subsumes those essences, and also the aggregation of Mishima's mental structure as a warrior who aspired to be both literary and martial.
It is also a document that can be considered the aggregation or essence of Mishima's criticism of postwar Japan, the evaluation of the contents has elements that determined by the annual rings of Japanese long history. The entire text is almost used the pronoun "we," and it has expressed a feeling of hopelessness and pessimistic anger to the fate of the Japan Self-Defense Forces, just are keeping without utilizing their skills and talents, in the forlorn reality that Article 9 of the Constitution cannot be amended.
In Geki, Mishima looked back on his approximately four years of trial enlistment in the JSDF, and explained why he and his Tatenokai comrades committed action what for JSDF might be considered an "ungrateful action", because of "our love for the JSDF". He then stated that they had been dreamed about JSDF of preserving "the real Japanese, the true spirit of the samurai," but JSDF was legally "unconstitutional" under the now constitution imposed on them by the GHQ after the war, and had been continued to bear "the dishonorable cross of the nation after defeat," and that JSDF only given a status like that of a huge police force, and the "object of its loyalty has not been made clear." And he reached out that "Defense, that should be a fundamental issue for the nation, has been obscured by convenient legal interpretations, and as an army which does not use the name of a national army, which has been the fundamental cause of the corruption of the Japanese soul and the decadence of morals."
He said that "the original purpose of the establishment of Japan's military is exist to 'protecting Japan's history, culture, and traditions centered on the Emperor'." And he argued that it was difficult to revise the constitution under the current system, but if the government had requested the JSDF to be deployed for Public Security Operation to suppress the New Left demonstrations on October 21, 1969, which was only perfect opportunity to revise the constitution. He also criticized the government that had suppressing the demonstrators with police force alone, by which gained confidence that it could maintain the political system without "picking up the hot chestnuts out of the fire named 'constitutional amendment'".
He then criticized that the Liberal Democratic Party, which had been "continued to turn a blind eye to the country's fundamental issues", felt relieved along with the Communist Party, and since that day, LDP had permanently excluded constitutional amendment from its political program, and that Japan would continue to be a country that protects the constitution in the future, and that the JSDF, which are supposed to protect the nation, had been deceived by politicians and would forever be trapped in the humiliating paradox of being a "constitutional protection army" that denies itself.
Furthermore, Mishima lamented the fact that the JSDF personnel have remained silent and are just like "canaries whose voices have been taken away," reaching out, "Sadly, in the end, the missions that are given to you will not come from Japan," he also mentioned the "Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons" that unequal treaty disadvantageous to Japan and affecting the nation's long-term plans, and he lamented the fact that not a single general had committed seppuku in protest against it, and, in the end, he touched on the inside of the Reversion of Okinawa.
The words "within the next two years" he said, has understood as a signal of the "US-China Reconciliation" and the "Okinawa Reversion" in 1972, and it has considered that Mishima was concerned about the form in which Okinawa would be returned, and predicted a permanent American occupation that would continue indefinitely.

Letters entrusted to two journalists

In the each letters entrusting the original papers of this Geki to the weekly magazine Sunday Mainichi reporter Takao Tokuoka and NHK reporter Munekatsu Date, via Kenichi Tanaka and Kenji Kurata, respectively, of the Tatenokai members who were close friends of Masakatsu Morita. In the letters Mishima wrote as follows, strongly expressed his desire for the entire text of Geki to be made public.

Evaluation

In 1997, when a magazine article mentioned a plan to create a "Declaration of Independence of Japan," Takeshi Kitano has cited a paragraph from Mishima's "Geki" that begins, "We have watched postwar Japan become obsessed with economic prosperity, forget the country's roots, lose its national spirit, pursue ends without correcting the roots, fall into makeshift measures and hypocrisy, and sink into an emptiness of the spirit. Politics became devoted to covering up contradictions, self-preservation, lust for power, and hypocrisy,..." And Kitano has praised the manifesto, saying, "This is exactly what Japan is like now. I thought I should start by placing these sentences at the beginning of a declaration of independence for Japan."

Voice recordings of his final speech related to the ''Geki''

In December 1970 after the Mishima's death, Pony Canyon released the EP record and LP record containing recordings of Mishima's voice of final speech, and Asahi Sonorama and Weekly Sankei released the Flexi disc, and Apollon released the cassette tape.
All of these recordings were based on audio recorded by journalists from Nippon Cultural Broadcasting and Fuji Television who were at the scene of the incident. Only the Nippon Cultural Broadcasting recording is available for the opening part of the speech, but the Fuji Television recording gives a clearer sound to the latter half of the speech.
The Apollon cassette tape and the Weekly Sankei flexi disc contain not only Mishima's voice, but also the voice of Masakatsu Morita saying, "Everyone, please listen."