Yukio Mishima used his own personal funds to establish the private militia known as the "Tatenokai" (Shield Society).
Warning: This article on novelist Yukio Mishima contains references to suicide.
2025 marks 55 years since Yukio Mishima, one of Japan's most celebrated writers, launched a dramatic uprising at the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force's Ichigaya Camp. He was 45 at the time and was accompanied by four members of the civilian defense organization he had founded, the Tatenokai (Shield Society).
When the call for action failed, Mishima took his own life in ritual suicide together with the group's student leader, Masakatsu Morita, then 25.
On November 25, a memorial commemorating the 55th anniversary was held at Tsurumi Shrine in Yokohama in memory of the two men. Organized by the Mishima-Morita Office, an association of Mishima's close disciples led by Taketoshi Katsumata, the ceremony drew 70 attendees, including 10 former members of the Tatenokai. Two days earlier, on November 23, 20 people visited Mishima's grave at Tama Cemetery.
I had long assumed that the events at Ichigaya involving Mishima and his companions were slowly receding into history, their significance fading from public memory. Yet, in 2025, coinciding with the 100th anniversary of Mishima's birth, I have heard that his words and actions are receiving renewed attention.
Why now? In recent years, the term "conservatism" has been invoked with growing frequency, often brandished as a kind of banner of legitimacy. Japan is clearly in the midst of a conservative boom. But what, precisely, did Mishima, who devoted himself to Japan's traditional culture, seek to communicate at the cost of his life? And how might he view today's conservatism?
The Formation of the Tatenokai
On October 5, 1968, Mishima used his own funds to form a militia of nationalist students, which he named the Tatenokai. Its stated purpose was to counter what he saw as left-wing revolutionary subversion and to support the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) in the event of a domestic security crisis.
Mishima called the Tatenokai "the smallest army in the world, without weapons," and "an army always on standby." Membership required a month of training with the Ground Self-Defense Force. Once accepted, members met monthly, operated in units of ten, and trained weekly in the martial arts iaido and kendo at the Imperial Palace's Saineikan. They then returned to the SDF for additional short-term training after one year.
The Meaning of Mishima's Final Appeal
After two years of political activism, Mishima launched his final action on November 25, 1970, together with Masakatsu Morita and three other members of the Tatenokai.
The group entered the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force's Ichigaya Camp and detained the commander of the Eastern Army, Kanetoshi Mashita. Mishima then addressed the assembled troops from the balcony of the Eastern Army headquarters and scattered a written manifesto. He warned that Japan had come to desecrate its own history and traditions, and that its military had abandoned its founding mission of defending a culture and history centered on the Emperor. When the appeal failed, Mishima and Morita committed ritual suicide.
What does it mean to protect Japan? Mishima addressed this question directly during his lifetime:
"To protect Japan is to protect Japanese culture. And to protect Japanese culture is to protect the Emperor, the irreplaceable embodiment of Japan's historical continuity, cultural unity, and ethnic identity."
Was the ritual suicide of Mishima and Morita an attempt to awaken the Japanese people to the importance of their own culture and the need for resolve? And if that resolve is lost, what becomes of Japan?
A Warning
Four months before his death, on July 7, 1970, Mishima wrote in an essay for The Sankei Shimbun titled "An Unfulfilled Promise — Twenty-Five Years Within Me":
"With each passing day, I grow more deeply uneasy that if things continue as they are, Japan will disappear. In its place will remain, in one corner of the Far East, an inorganic, empty, neutral, intermediate-colored, wealthy, and shrewd economic power."
Hiroyasu Koga, one of the participants in the uprising, testified at trial:
"Japan has become an economic power and achieved material prosperity, yet I believe it has suffered a spiritual decline. Amid ideological confusion, personal gratification and self-interest have come to dominate. And under the lofty banner of democracy, the Japanese spirit is being steadily eroded. It was from the conviction that Japan's culture, traditions, and history can only be protected through unity between body and action, words and belief, that I took part in this action."
A Growing Sense of Decline
Masayoshi Koga, another former Tatenokai member, echoed this sentiment, saying:
"When I look at society today, I see it filled with shallow words. I believed that by bringing the postwar system to an end, it might be possible to restore the Japanese soul."
Mishima's warnings about a Japan that pursues material wealth while neglecting its cultural inheritance still resonate, even after 80 postwar years spanning the Showa, Heisei, and Reiwa eras. If anything, the trend appears to be intensifying, and perhaps ordinary citizens, too, are beginning to sense it.
Professor Akinaka Senzaki of Nihon University, a specialist in Japanese intellectual history, once told The Sankei Shimbun:
"Mishima was both a prophet and a pioneer. Contemporary Japanese society can be described as 'nihilistic,' a theme that also lies at the heart of his novel, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. We live in an inorganic and hollow age. Without the accumulation of experience and achievement, opinions become interchangeable and banal. People seek to assert themselves, yet the self has thinned, making identity difficult to sustain. Mishima's foresight in identifying this era as one of nihilism was deeply significant."
How, then, can Japan be protected in a way that is authentically Japanese?
The life-and-death uprising of Mishima and Morita confronts those living in Japan today with a stark challenge, one that feels like a blade held at the nation's throat.
Pride as Men
Mishima left a final testament addressed to the members of the Tatenokai, in which he articulated the ideals that had driven the group from its inception. Among its passages were the following:
"The dream that occupied my mind was that all members of the Tatenokai would unite, rise in the cause of justice, and bring the organization's ideals to life.
"To restore Japan to its true form, the Tatenokai should have marshaled all its strength and acted.
"Rejecting the empty theorizing of revolutionary youths, we made action our guiding principle and devoted ourselves to the martial path. When the time came, the true worth of the Tatenokai was to be demonstrated before the eyes of the entire nation.
"Beneath the surface of stability, Japan reveals, day by day, the irreversible signs of a sickness consuming its very soul.
"I have never betrayed you. Though the Tatenokai comes to an end here, I could not have taken this step unless I believed that even a fragment of our minority ideals would one day bear fruit in your unfolding futures.
"Even if Japan sinks into the depths of decline, you remain the last young men who have learned the warrior's spirit and submitted yourselves to its discipline. The moment you abandon these ideals, Japan will truly fall."
"All I ever wished for was to teach you a man's pride. Having once belonged to the Tatenokai, never forget, throughout your lives, what it truly means to call yourself a Japanese man."
The Burden Carried by Surviving Tatenokai Members
The Mishima–Morita Office is made up largely of former members of the Tatenokai, the only men who trained under Mishima directly, who breathed the same air, and absorbed his ethos until it sank into their very bones.
Fifty-five years have passed since Mishima's uprising. In all that time, they have seldom appeared in public or spoken openly. They chose silence. I have known them for forty years, and no matter how often I tried to open a window into their hearts, many would offer only a single line: "There is nothing to say. To speak would be to betray Mishima-sensei."
And on the rare occasions when words came, they came under strict confidentiality. One could feel the weight they carried, the sense of having failed to meet Mishima's expectations. Deep within them, unresolved questions endure: Why didn't he take us with him? How are we meant to answer him now?
The struggle remains, even today.
Mishima and the Question of Conservatism
An early member remembers Mishima remarking, "Many years will pass before our intentions are understood."
If his intuition was right, that moment may finally be arriving.
Yoshio Ito, a first-generation member of the Tatenokai, recalls that Mishima often quoted a line written by Yoshida Shoin, a late–Edo period thinker. Yoshida was executed by the Tokugawa shogunate and later became an inspiration for the Meiji Restoration.
The line comes from a letter Shoin wrote while imprisoned, addressed to his disciple Takasugi Shinsaku, who would later emerge as a leading revolutionary figure. In the letter, Shoin wrote: "You will accomplish great deeds. I will fulfill loyalty and filial piety."
Mishima regarded this sentiment as a guiding ideal.
Ito elaborates on Mishima's view of the word "conservatism":
"Mishima disliked the term hoshu because it echoes koshu — rigid preservation. In particular, 'postwar conservatism' evoked the image of clinging to the postwar system and its vested interests."
How, then, will today's politicians and commentators, those who proudly call themselves conservatives, answer Mishima's challenge?
Perhaps the moment has come to rethink what conservatism truly signifies.
SEEKING HELP? If you are in Japan and having trouble with mental health due to suicidal thoughts, workplace harassment, bullying, or for any other reason, someone is ready to help you in English at TELL Japan. Telephone (free dial inside Japan) 0800-300-8355. If you are outside of Japan, please check your national health authorities for guidance in your country.
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(Read the article in Japanese.)
Author: Masafumi Miyamoto, The Sankei Shimbun
