a samurai is a total human being, whereas a man who is completely absorbed in his technical skill has degenerated into a ‘function’, one cog in a machine.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of being a well-rounded individual rather than just a specialist in a single skill.
Yukio Mishima's quote highlights the distinction between a samurai, who embodies a complete and holistic approach to life, and a person who solely focuses on technical skills, thus reducing themselves to a mere function within a larger system. It suggests that true humanity involves depth, character, and the integration of various aspects of life, rather than being limited to a narrow set of abilities.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a motivational speech about the importance of personal development.
What I wanted was to die among strangers, untroubled, beneath a cloudless sky. And yet my desire differed from the sentiments of that ancient Greek who wanted to die under the brilliant sun. What I wanted was some natural, spontaneous suicide. I wanted a death like that of a fox, not yet well versed in cunning, that walks carelessly along a mountain path and is shot by a hunter because of its own stupidity.
When a captive lion steps out of his cage, he comes into a wider world than the lion who has known only the wilds. While he was in captivity, there were only two worlds for him - the world of the cage, and the world outside the cage. Now he is free. He roars. He attacks people. He eats them. Yet he is not satisfied, for there is no third world that is neither the world of the cage nor the world outside the cage.
…the samurai ethic is a political science of the heart, designed to control such discouragement and fatigue in order to avoid showing them to others. It was thought more important to look healthy than to be healthy, and more important to seem bold and daring than to be so. This view of morality, since it is physiologically based on the special vanity peculiar to men, is perhaps the supreme male view of morality.
Young people get the foolish idea that what is new for them must be new for everybody else too. No matter how unconventional they get, they're just repeating what others before them have done.
Is there not a sort of remorse that precedes sin? Was it remorse at the very fact that I existed?
Anything can become excusable when seen from the standpoint of the result
When liberty destroys order the hunger for order will destroy liberty.
My books are elegiac in the sense that they're odes to a nation that even I sometimes think may not exist anymore except in my memory and my imagination.
Reason is our soul's left hand, Faith her right, By these we reach divinity
Evil people naturally assume that you will use that power exactly as they would use it.
Science never cheered up anyone. The truth about the human situation is just too awful.
Amid the turmoil and tumult of battle, there may be seeming disorder and yet no real disorder at all.
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