Besides, like a man who knows he is dying, he felt a need to be equally tender to all. - Yukio Mishima

It is a wretched affair for one to speak to Jietai men in circumstances like these. I thought that the Jietai was the last hope of Nippon, the last stronghold of the Japanese soul. But Japanese people today think of money, just money. Where is our national spirit today? The politicians care nothing for Japan. They are greedy for power. ... Japan is reveling in economic prosperity and has become spiritually empty. ... If the Japanese do not rise up, if the Jietai does not rise up, don't you understand that there will be no such thing as an amendment to the constitution? Don't you realize that if there is no amendment you will merely be American mercenaries? ... Is there not one person among you who will rise with me now? ... I know now for certain that no one else will rise for the constitutional amendment. My dream for the Jietai is gone. ... Long live the emperor!

When a boy… discovers that he is more given into introspection and consciousness of self than other boys his age, he easily falls into the error of believing it is because he is more mature than they. This was certainly a mistake in my case. Rather, it was because the other boys had no such need of understanding themselves as I had: they could be their natural selves, whereas I was to play a part, a fact that would require considerable understanding and study. So it was not my maturity but my sense of uneasiness, my uncertainty that was forcing me to gain control over my consciousness. Because such consciousness was simply a steppingstone to aberration and my present thinking was nothing but uncertain and haphazard guesswork.

Man always finds the omens he wants.