what if park chung hee met yukio mishima during park's visit to japan

From my understanding of these 2 men, I noticed that they were both very similar like their love of Bushido values, fascination with traditional Japanese culture, and belief in will power, and etc

Lets say that park chung hee during his visit to japan during the 1960s, where he met his former classmates, and the prime minister of japan, discovered about mishima's reputation and decided to meet mishima

What would happen?
 
Well, they might have a nice little chat(in Japanese, unless Mishima spoke Korean) about their shared interests and values, and that might privately exert some minor influence on the way Park governs. However, any further involvement of Park Chung Hee with a guy who openly extolled Japanese militarism would probably do significant damage to Park's reputation. It was widely known that he had been in the Japanese Military, but I don't think that publically high-fiving a militarist would really help him win support(either from the establishment, or from the public when he was holding elections) on the home front.

The Korean government would probably have a bit of trouble promoting stuff like this at the same time that the president was collaborating politically with someone like Mishima.
 
Well, they might have a nice little chat(in Japanese, unless Mishima spoke Korean) about their shared interests and values, and that might privately exert some minor influence on the way Park governs. However, any further involvement of Park Chung Hee with a guy who openly extolled Japanese militarism would probably do significant damage to Park's reputation. It was widely known that he had been in the Japanese Military, but I don't think that publically high-fiving a militarist would really help him win support(either from the establishment, or from the public when he was holding elections) on the home front.

The Korean government would probably have a bit of trouble promoting stuff like this at the same time that the president was collaborating politically with someone like Mishima.


Yes and its important to note that with the urbanization of Korea, parks support slowly dropped throughout the 1960s because the urban dwelling people didn't support park as much as the agricultural people did. Hell, I recall that park almost lost the 1971 election to Kim Dae-jung, so if he did publicly collaborated with yukio mishima then park would have suffered a loss of reputation that might have made him lose the 1971 election.

So yeah hes most likely just going to have a private chat with mishima and that would be it
 
I read somewhere that after Park's wife died in that botched assassination attempt by an ethnically Korean resident of Japan, he summoned the Japanese ambassador and screamed at the man in Korean(even though Park spoke fluent Japanese), because he thought the Japanese government hadn't done enough to stop the assassin.

Imagine the screaming match that would go on the other way, if Mishima still goes through with his 1970 coup attempt, AFTER it's become known that he's BFFs with General Park! Bonus points if anyone not associated with Mishima gets killed in the coup.
 
How serious was Mishima's coup attempt? I got the impression that he just wanted an excuse to commit seppuku. He was That Kind of Guy if the books of his I've read are any indication...
 
Had they met, Park might have made him a Kissinger type informal advisor, He said, “the Japanese have the best intelligence on earth.”
 
How serious was Mishima's coup attempt? I got the impression that he just wanted an excuse to commit seppuku. He was That Kind of Guy if the books of his I've read are any indication...

Yeah, from my limited knowledge, it wasn't exactly the storming of the Winter Palace. I was thinking along the lines of one of the Japanese soldiers panics, fires a shot, the bullet ricochets and hits another soldier. Or one of the coup-plotters goes nuts with the sword and kills or at least seriously injures one of the soldiers.
 
How serious was Mishima's coup attempt? I got the impression that he just wanted an excuse to commit seppuku. He was That Kind of Guy if the books of his I've read are any indication...

I've always thought it was a bit of both. I think he knew Japan couldn't or wasn't ready for a return to Japanese traditionalism and wanted to make a statement in favor of that. Showing that you could still live by a traditional Bushido despite living in modern times. At least thatst my interpretation. I've not read all of his books, and am only half way through reading Spring Snow rn (it's very good and I ordered the rest of the tetralogy).

Perhaps meeting Park can convince Mishima to tone down his militaristic rhetoric, at least on other Asian states? It isn't really in Mishima's character, or even Japanese/East Asian character to acknowledge previous generations of having made mistakes or being dishonorable.
 
I've always thought it was a bit of both. I think he knew Japan couldn't or wasn't ready for a return to Japanese traditionalism and wanted to make a statement in favor of that. Showing that you could still live by a traditional Bushido despite living in modern times. At least thatst my interpretation. I've not read all of his books, and am only half way through reading Spring Snow rn (it's very good and I ordered the rest of the tetralogy).

Perhaps meeting Park can convince Mishima to tone down his militaristic rhetoric, at least on other Asian states? It isn't really in Mishima's character, or even Japanese/East Asian character to acknowledge previous generations of having made mistakes or being dishonorable.


Actually I disagree, yukio mishima did acknowledge previous generations of having made mistakes like the Japanese brutality of ww2





he just doesn't directly say it


0:00-1:40
 
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Thanks for sharing that! I didn't know about it, illI take a listen later but I'm really happy you corrected me.


Note you should know that in the video he never directly says that the Japanese made a mistake

However note that he makes a comparison between Japanese brutality and Nazism and while he says the motives and organization was different, the fact is that he still makes a comparison between the two does show that he is subtly acknowledging the severity of Japanese war crimes.


(this is just my intreperation of the video, so you might think differently)
 
Note you should know that in the video he never directly says that the Japanese made a mistake

However note that he makes a comparison between Japanese brutality and Nazism and while he says the motives and organization was different, the fact is that he still makes a comparison between the two does show that he is subtly acknowledging the severity of Japanese war crimes.


(this is just my intreperation of the video, so you might think differently)
Have there are been any TLs with a Prime Minister Yukio Mishima? He's the japanese Ernst Rohm of postwar ultranationalism, but I don't know a lot about Japanese attitudes toward homosexual politicians.
 
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