Kamikaze Youth and the Revival of Myth

Towards a literature that lives, acts, and builds in the shadow of sacrifice.

Chōkōdō Shujin invokes the kamikaze’s poetic soul to call for a new literature of action, where myth and youth fuse into cultural renewal.

An inner surge of energy, a spirit that wells up from within, is an essential condition for a living, vital culture. This era is a tumultuous one, ripe for change. If a new culture is desired — and, more specifically, if a new literature is desired — then where should we look for the inner power, the inner spirit that will propel this construction forward? The place for this is already within the reality of the situation. One is the revival of youth. This is power. Another is the revival of myth. This is spirit.

Literature and art have, for the most part, only contemplated action, rather than participating in it. Writers such as Evola and Mishima are noteworthy exceptions. Contemplation is the attitude of observing from the outside. Increasingly, this attitude has been fostered by such things as excessive self-consciousness. These were largely transmitted from Victorian and Meiji literature well into the twentieth century, and later, encouraged by the postmodernism of Foucault and Sartre, and are also actively observed in our own intellects. In the meantime, the so-called proletarian literature was still exposing the remnants of its legalism; what could be called fugitive literature was consuming itself in foreign lands, and the so-called action-oriented literature was struggling with the confusion between action and execution. From all over the world came journalistic literature, especially from the battlefield.

Journalistic literature should not be underestimated. Gradually, both the East and the West seem poised to embark on a great action. What form this great action will take, no one can foresee. All great nations, and therefore each of us, should prepare to take action with our whole being. And now we stand on the precipice.

Entering into action, of course, does not mean going directly to the battlefield, nor does it mean directly participating in the literary home front movement. It is a question of survival, and, indeed, there is such a way of survival in which living itself constitutes action. It is a glorious time and era.

Such a time as this should be called the time of true youth. There are many ways to interpret youth. There are many ways for individuals, people, and nations. However, the only thing that I see as the essence of youth is the possibility of completely entering into action by giving one’s entire self to it — in the sense that living itself is in itself an action. I see this possibility as the essence of youth.

At present, the developed world as a whole is getting involved in action. Therefore, each and every citizen should be involved in action with his whole body. If there are men who are not, it is due to some kind of defect or weakness, and if we trust the concentration of blood in our various nations, they should not only be called unpatriotic, but also simply unyouthful. Beyond this, they are unmanly.

At such times, literature should naturally cease to merely observe action and immerse itself in action. The current suffering of literature — or more narrowly, the suffering of literature — is essentially due to the above one thing, rather than the lack of subject matter or other various aesthetic difficulties. No matter how much a literary man may be what I call a youth, literature is, after all, a world of shifting reality, and a world with deep-rooted traditions, so it is not easy to bring the innovative possibilities of youth into it.

To give one example, even if it is easy to accept that the synthesis of actions is character, it is not easy to shift in one leap from the viewpoint that actions emerge from character psychology to the viewpoint that psychology exists within actions. Moreover, one grasps the act itself, which contains a psychology within it, rather than the act itself being motivated by some psychology — one will not have truly entered into the action.

Putting aside such literary theory, the revival of youth should be advocated here in order to make literary artists themselves more youthful. The reason why I say “revival” is because the glorious periods or eras mentioned above have occurred several times in history. Let us revive them.

Immediately, my mind goes to the Man’yōshu, Japan’s ancient book of waka poetry. It is a compilation of some 4,500 poems composed by everyone from peasants to the highest echelons of nobility. In the twentieth century, there was a revival of the Man’yōshu, with the poems being especially favored among kamikaze pilots. There are many possible explanations for what is called the Man’yō spirit, but what strikes us most when we read those poems — at least I — is the youth that overflows in them. In this way, it is abundantly clear what is meant by the word “youth.” It is not something like the youth of adolescence. That freedom and liveliness, that dynamism of the soul, are things that come after one has been permeated with a kind of determination. It is not something that comes before one is about to move forward towards a determination, towards a great sacrifice, or towards a great deed, but something that comes after one has already progressed psychologically. In this state of mind, the construction of images through poetry, the creation of images, has a kind of brilliant and great constructiveness.

It is the privilege of youth that the creation of images has a constructive nature. How many images that are not constructive are overflowing in modern literature? Of course, the creation of some kind of image may be called constructive. However, it is important to note that in literature, the act of creating an image is itself a form of criticism. This critical function plays a decisive role. Therefore, an atrophied and exhausted image is an atrophied and exhausted creation, and a degenerate and non-constructive image is a degenerative and non-constructive creation. Literature must be truly responsible for the quality of its works, rather than for the quantity of its works.

If a kind of literary revival is possible in the great and ancient nations of the East and West, what expectations can we have at a time when its development and unification are required? We face it with the above-mentioned youth. Then, first, a part something like the Man’yōshu emerges. Next, a few poems and novels emerge from among many others. This number becomes even smaller when a kind of nostalgia is discarded. Then, a view of nature centered on the tradition and myth comes to the fore. It is a uniquely Eastern way of accepting the philosophical idea of nature. Russia, too, has such a nature, having not forsaken mysticism for materialism, as so many nations have. And what about the young America of today? Is it possible to infuse it with true youth? Here, too, lies one of the responsibilities of literature.

It was the writer Yojūrō Yasuda who wrote that the continent is old, but the islands are always young. Is it an exaggeration to say so? Regardless, my literary youth dreams of islands, because mythology has been revived. Japanese mythology is the mythology of islands. The stories in the Kojiki are the stories of islands. Mishima, too, often wrote of islands. Through this great operation, the revival of mythology — the revival of Japanese mythology as the mythology of islands — touches the depths of our hearts. Each nation has a duty to do so with its own particular topography and mythology. My youth, finding myself in the midst of this revival of myth, dreamed of the countless islands of the Pacific, large and small, as if they were my hometown. I shed tears as I dreamed, for the myth had been revived in my heart.

If I were to describe the revival of mythology in modern times in this way, “experts” would laugh at me for being too prosaic. However, it is from here that I first began to directly touch the heart of my youth. The lofty and deep expression of national spirit and its unfathomable power also spring forth from there. It is only after we have grasped the revival of mythology in its simplest form that various discussions can take place. However, it is not easy to manifest the revival of myth in literature, or even more narrowly in literature. This is because, after all, literature is always a transposition of reality.

Even in the world of transposition, the realistic matters dealt with always tend to be more concerned with the realistic phenomena, and it is difficult for them to rise to the spirit of reality. The revival of myth, then, is not the phenomenon of reality, but its spirit. In order to grasp this spirit as an objective figure, it is necessary to cast the subjective into the same body as the objective, and this is something that is difficult to do in the world of transposition.

Setting these practices aside, let us first of all advocate the revival of myth in literature. The revival of youth is power, and the revival of myth is spirit. This power must be permeated by this spirit. Power sometimes wants to crawl along the ground. The spirit sometimes wants to fly high into the sky. The two must be firmly connected. Just to present this concept as a sketch for a new culture and literature would be something glorious. It is not easy to describe it in detail, but we may take this brilliant thing within as a starting point.

Order Chōkōdō Shujin’s Finding Takashi, an exciting historical novel set amidst the carnage of the Pacific theater.