OUT NOW: Mishima’s Flame

Samurai Ethics in Art and Action

New book from Multipolar Press!

Dmitry Moiseev — Mishima's Flame: Samurai Ethics in Art and Action

Bushidō, the ethical tradition of the samurai, long ago transcended Japan’s feudal past to become a powerful element of cultural identity and an enduring presence in the global imagination. For Yukio Mishima (1925–1970), one of Japan’s most celebrated and controversial novelists and playwrights, a Nobel Prize nominee, actor, and public intellectual, bushidō was a living ideal. He sought to unite art, discipline, and action into a single way of life.

In Mishima’s Flame, Dmitry Moiseev explores how samurai virtues such as loyalty, honor, sincerity, and discipline shaped Mishima’s thought, prose, politics, and life. From his early literary triumphs to his right-wing activism and dramatic final act at Camp Ichigaya, Mishima sought to embody the ideals he admired. Blending literary analysis with intellectual history, Mishima’s Flame examines how the warrior ethics of traditional Japan were radically reinterpreted and lived in the modern age.

Get Mishima’s Flame here.