We tend to suffer from the illusion that we are capable of dying for a belief or theory. What Hagakure is insisting is that even in merciless death, a futile death that knows neither flower nor fruit has dignity as the death of a human being. If we value so highly the dignity of life, how can we not also value the dignity of death? No death may be called futile.
Yukio MishimaThe instant that the blade tore open his flesh, the bright disk of the sun soared up and exploded behind his eyelids.
Yukio MishimaIs there not a sort of remorse that precedes sin? Was it remorse at the very fact that I existed?
Yukio MishimaAn ugliness unfurled in the moonlight and soft shadow and suffused the whole world. If I were an amoeba, he thought, with an infinitesimal body, I could defeat ugliness. A man isnโt tiny or giant enough to defeat anything.
Yukio MishimaSuddenly the full long wail of a ship's horn surged through the open window and flooded the dim roomโa cry of boundless, dark, demanding grief; pitch-black and glabrous as a whale's back and burdened with all the passions of the tides, the memory of voyages beyond counting, the joys, the humiliations: the sea was screaming.
Yukio Mishima