Representation of Death and Topoi in Mishima Yukio's Yûkoku (Patriotism)

International audienceGiven the centrality of death as a theme in cultural and literary practice, representations of death always contain specific cultural and literary codes. Authors can either free themselves from such representations or take comfort in them. Mishima Yukio’s stance in his novella Yūkoku in 1960 appears to be representative of the latter strategy, by referring to a series of literary topoi associated with suicide and violent death in Japan. The purpose of this article is to show precisely what these topoi are, what image of death they convey, and how they interact with one another. I will show that the text is combining three different images of death (monumental death, ghostly death and death alive) associated with three different images of the body (heroic body, vaporous body and fragmented body) and referring to three different genres (epic from medieval times, 18th century “lovers’ suicide” plays and 19th century “aesthetic of cruelty”). The confrontation between an abstract death, statuesque or vaporous, and a vivid and organic one results in a discrepancy that contributes to the literary relevance of this text whose epic framework seems to crumble under the violent representations it shelters. By creating this confrontation Mishima renews the literary conventions and stereotypical representations, thus challenging the reader