#idk if this counts as anti but im tagging it just in case | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ninakaina · 1 day ago

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Hey man, wasn’t trying to be patronizing, just wanted to add a little bit of context for my followers (I have like 20 of them) who have not heard of Mishima and who wouldn’t be inclined to go googling. I can see how such a surface-level screenshot might have been grating to someone who’s neck-deep in Japanese politics, and for that I am sorry. About equating beauty, eroticism, and death though, this is a conclusion I reached while researching Nazi aesthetics; I wasn’t trying to derail the conversation, even if I had that ability. You mention wondering if Catholicism counted, and while I don’t know enough about it to say (not a historian), I do notice that many, many fundamentalist Catholics today are proud fascists. I am not married to this hypothesis, but it did come about through my own critical thinking so I’d be interested to know if you have a more detailed beef with it (if you’ve got the time/inclination to argue with me about art theory, just tell me to piss off if not).

i appreciate the apology i just as a member of the "do your own research" camp chose not to include any specific information on that post so that the curious could do actual non-wikipedia research and learn all about the situation and the incurious wouldnt walk away with a wikipedia blurb understanding of the situation - the point of the post wasnt even "heads up, mishima was an ultranationalist" but rather "mishima was completely insignificant to the history and politics of japan, an interesting case study in one crazy guy if you're into that, but do not let anything anyone tells you about him influence your idea of what it is to be japanese" because a lot of people in the west who ARE aware of who and what he was still discuss him as a cultural icon and a representative of Old Japan when that only gives power to his mythology by legitimizing both racism against japanese people and ultranationalism within japanese politics. the many tags where people are going "mishima was an idiot who killed himself moron style", while kind of annoying, are more in line with the message im trying to send here.

as an aside i don't use the term fascism to refer to the politics of mishima or the meiji restoration because i think it erases the salient differences between that ideology and say, nazism, (including that i'd argue japanese ultranationalism doesn't do away with noble class structure or imagine a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie in the way that is distinctive of fascism as opposed to other forms of ultranationalism) and kind of encourages people not to learn about the actual context or mechanics of japanese ultranationalism, so your tags also rubbed me the wrong way for that reason.

in general i think any claim that any type of imagery in art is inherently fascist (that isn't like, an explicit Fascist Agenda) is flawed and weirdly anti-art. eroticism/beauty/death is kind of one of the most classic combinations of themes which you can find throughout history and across the world, just because eroticism and beauty and death are like basically the most intense emotional concepts that can be represented in art. yeah catholic depictions of martyrdom come to mind bc they go crazy but like truly i would challenge you to find any "the death of ___" art from any era that doesnt invoke beauty and eroticism in some way depending on whos looking at it. like i dont know what kind of blogs you follow but all the talk of artistic/erotic cannibalism thats been popular on tumblr is an example of eroticism/beauty/death. idk its just everywhere and your thesis sounds like something that can be selectively/subjectively applied to call art you dont like fascist

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