Yukio Mishima on his writing style:
"My ideal style would have had the grave beauty of polished wood in the entrance hall of a samurai mansion on a winter's day."
Dude was really messed up. This is how you end up committing seppuku and inspiring generations of malcontents into general dickishness.
Me, I want my writing to have the low-gravitas feel of a McMansion.
The point about postures and truths is an interesting insight though. I’m content to leave truths requiring a disciplined military bearing to others. The truths that concern me are the ones that can only be glimpsed when you’re slouching about mediocrely, whining and complaining
Gravitas inhibits your ability to see more than undignified weakness though
He walked in beauty, of the might
of faultless poise, and sightless eyes;
And the cutting edge of endless night,
met his belly — now dead he lies
With apologies to Lord Byron
Have you actually read with serious attention any of his novels? Or stories? Pontificating tweetstorms and parodic verse don't really cut it. Even biographers who don't buy into his beliefs have no trouble admitting he had a keen sensibility. His eyes were anything but sightless.
I’m sure he was a remarkable writer given he was in contention for a Nobel, though not to my taste. I’m not commenting on his literary work but his life history, and politics, which are of a very familiar type.
So that would be a no, then.
Tbh I'm glad he's still such a flashpoint for debate. I'm currently writing an essay about him. One of the things that my editor and I discussed at the pitching stage was the ongoing relevance of Mishima's life and work.
FWIW, Mishima was in fact slated to win the Nobel in 1968, according to reports, but in the end the committee swerved to an older Japanese writer, Kawabata, reasoning that Mishima (then in his early forties) was young enough to wait a few more years. Little did they know.