Suicide is time-honoured choreography.

The ritual of seppuku consists of three cuts: one cut to the belly with a short-sword, left to right; a second cut to the belly, if the samurai wishes to demonstrate extraordinary bravery and control; and then the kaishaku, the beheading by a samurai’s second.

Each cut requires skill, precision, and absolute commitment. A female from a samurai family assumes a dignified kneeling position and with a short-blade she slits her throat. Through discipline she wishes upon death to become statuesque in repose.

Three years after writing The Way of the Samurai, his commentary on the eighteenth century treatise, Hagakure, Yukio Mishima staged a coup d’etat in Tokyo.

Mishima was no mere mortal. He is considered one of the most vital post-War writers, helping Japan navigate through a new reality of tradition and modernity, occupation and rebuilding. He penned novels, short stories, essays, and plays. He was a charismatic film actor and model and a pioneer in bodybuilding, emphasizing physical health and masculinity in an emasculated society. He was thrice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

On November 25, 1970, Mishima emerged onto the balcony of a Ministry of Defense building he had occupied along with four members of his private militia, called the Tatenokai. He speechified to soldiers below, who heckled him in reply. He returned inside intending to seppuku.

Mishima completed the first two cuts. His work was done. However, the trembling second botched the third stroke, the beheading, the first time. The second tried again, botching it a second time. A second-second stepped in to deliver a third-third. Such was the ending of a poet-warrior. It is known as Mishima Jiken, the Mishima Incident, translated alternatively as, the Mishima Situation.

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