Back to the book / Back to the author
Keep in mind these are my interpretations of this work as I read it.
1: Fear of the Sun.
How dearly, indeed, I loved my pit, my dusky room, the area of my desk with its piles of books!
How I enjoyed introspection, shrouded myself in cogitation; with what rapture did I listen for the rustling of frail insects in the thickets of my nerves!
A hostility towards the sun was my only rebelion against the spirit of the age.
...
However from the time the war ended, I gradually sensed that an era was approaching in which to treat the sun as an enemy would be tantamount to following the herd.
This passage reflects the author's in regards to the current era that we live in, post-World War II, in relation to his personal lifestyle at the transition between the two ages. He confesses that he used to take pride in hiding from the sun, from the world of action, vitality and exposure, that which the sun stands as a symbol for. His pit, dusky room represented a refuge from reality.
During prewar and wartime Japan, the spririt of the age exalted physical vigor, heroism, nationalism and a cult of the body, so his retreat into language and intelectualism was an act of rebelion against the militarist mindset.
See, after the war, the context of Japanese society as the country became a pacified, modern, consumerist society: one that worshipped comfort, intellect and safety. Suddenly, rejecting the sun was no longer a rebellion, it became conformity, as hiding from reality itself became a norm.
Hiding indoors, behind screens or books, is no longer the symbol of rebellion, of the "nerds", as it once used to be; it became the default mode of existence.
Mishima predicted that people would forbid living in the real world through the experiences of the flesh, choosing instead to live in the abstractions that words provide, as he once did. He understood that detachment from the physical, from the sunlight of existence, produces a collective sterility, a world of comfort without vitality, intellect without courage, progress without soul.
In that sense, this book is not only autobiographical, it is prophetic. It warns that every civilization that loses contact with the flesh eventually collapses inward, suffocating under its own abstractions.
Let us keep in mind that the same thing, the same transition, has been occuring ever since the COVID pandemic. People have replaced the real world with its representations yet again. It is not the first, nor the last transition of this kind, and each of the previous shifts has had significant effects on society as a whole.
From the discovery of agriculture, to the end of the stone, bronze, iron ages, to the industrial revolution, to the creation of computers, and now the AI revolution; people have been stepping further and further away from the reality of the flesh, from the real world itself, as now even meaning itself is threatened to be split from human origin as AI takes over in being the main way in which humans will process their thoughts: passing them through a silicon filter.
Heck, even I use AI, as much as I may dislike it, to transform my raw thoughts into mere symbols of what they used to be, so that I may be able to transmit them in a more natural and pleasurable manner. Even so, it remains still impossible for a third party to percieve exactly what goes on in my head, or yours. Perhaps worse, my use of AI in this way may abstract the main idea of this discourse even more.
It is up to you.