[ur-whale]

> against a democratically elected government

I believe calling the Japanese government of that era "democratically elected" is a bit of a stretch if you consider that the exact same party stayed in power from the mid-fifties to the mid-nineties [1]

For a long while after the war, Japanese politics were essentially controlled by the west, something Mishima and many like him - quite understandbly - resented deeply.

[1] https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5gm0f2jf

[claudeganon]

Both you and the parent are correct however. The LDP was a wholesale construction by the US, including being proved massive financing and intelligence operations conducted against their opponents. But it was also comprised of former war criminals and members of the fascist regime that led the country into the war that Mishima glorified in the first place.

Having read most of his books and a few biographies, the animating factors behind his politics were a sadism derived from years of abuse at the hands of his family and a self-hatred driven by the homophobia of his time and his failure to be conscripted. There’s very little well-though out critique of any of Japan’s political circumstances in his work. Instead, it’s largely just an appeal to theatricism and violence that he thought would rid him of these feeling of shame.