40th

On the morning of his suicide, Mishima carried out a second-to-last performatic event that must be taken into account: He took the last chapter of his final novel, The Decay of an Angel, to the publishers. Not only it is unlikely that he finished the novel on the previous day, but also it has been proved that by the summer of that very year a first draft of the novel’s ending was ready. There is, thus, no coincidence in his choosing the day the last chapter of his five-year project would come to and end as the day to carry out the grand finale of his tragedy-bound life.
Whether Mishima was purposefully indicating that a key for understanding his suicide was ciphered in his last novel or not, it is difficult to determine. However, during the five years that took Mishima to produce the four volumes on Matsugae Kiyoaki’s life and posterior reincarnations, several elements hinting towards this point can be found.
For instance, when the third volume of the novel, The Temple of Dawn, was published Mishima suddenly referred to this novel in his usually theoretical column “What is a novel?”. In it, and in a very confessional manner, Mishima reflected upon the feeling that finishing this novel would cause him. “There is still one volume left. The last volume. These words, “when this novel is over”, have become my biggest taboo. Since I cannot conceive of the world after this novel has finished I hate to imagine it as much as I am scared to”. To a certain extent, Mishima’s world reaches as far as the last volume of his last novel goes; the end of the novel must then necessarily mean the death of the author.
Now, Mishima’s conception of death was highly influenced by the classics, particularly by the Greek tragedy, therefore, Mishima’s notion of death was none other that the ideal of the tragic hero’s beautiful death.
However, for this beautiful, tragic death to be complete, a spectator was needed, someone who witnessed this spectacle and, much as in the Lacanian case of the child gazing at his reflection on the mirror, acknowledged that this action is valid. In Mishima’s case, however, this character who watches, this Other to whom death is offered, does not exist beforehand and must be constructed from scratch. A skilful and experimented playwright, Mishima wrote the scenario for his political play, trained the actors who were to play the secondary roles, and trained himself for the leading part. As a spectator he chose none other but a concept: that of the Emperor.
In regards to the Emperor as the addressee of his final act, Mishima seems to have carefully crafted a situation from which he could have no escape, and which had already been hinted at by Runaway Horses’s protagonist, Isao, when he refers to loyalty to the Emperor.