|
KMID : 0385320010120020276
|
|
Journal of Korean Psychoanalytic Society
2001 Volume.12 No. 2 p.276 ~ p.282
|
|
|
On the Death of Mishima and Kawabata
|
|
Lee Byung-Wook
|
|
|
Abstract
|
|
|
|
Yukio Mishima and Yasunari Kawabata were the best known writers of post World War II Japan. But both suddenly committed suicide at the peak of a brilliant literary career. At the time, Mishima was a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature, and Kawabata was already an honored Nobel laureate. They seem to have been the final Japanese romanticists, compared to the realist Oe Kenzaburo. Although the sudden death of the two writers was an irreparable loss to Japanese literature, my interest was captured primarily by the meaning of their deaths, their personalities and their inner worlds. At first, both writers could simply appear to be enigmatic and unusual figures, but I was able to understand their final choice and resolutions. In my study on their life history and works, including Mishima’s Kinkakuji and Kawabata’s Snow Country, through the psychoanalytic lens, I reached several conclusions. They had in common some unresolved problems in their lives, including overt narcissism and covert sexual problems, affect hunger and hidden destructive wishes. Both writers were preoccupied with the symbols of fire and death, which is vividly revealed in their masterpieces. Their own deaths were neither tragic nor comic. Indeed, I believe that the life and death of both writers was almost fateful. Popular or not, they were right in their own way in terms of Japanese lifestyle.
|
|
|
KEYWORD
|
|
|
Mishima, Kawabata, Death, Narcissism
|
|
|
FullTexts / Linksout information
|
|
|
|
|
|
Listed journal information
|
|
  
|
|