Borin Van Loon: Mishima suffering

Domestic interior (oil on canvass): private collection

Novelist Yukio Mishima bound to a light fitting, enacting the torment of Saint Sebastian in a western living-room which has been flooded to waist level, while a toxophilist practises with a bow and target in the rear garden visible through the open window and over a terrace balustrade. I hope that's clear. The flying swallows on the wall belonged to my wif'e's grandmother and were painted from life. Similarly the top of the drowned rocking chair - which we still own - and the bookcase were part of my surroundings. Mishima himself got a bit fed up with standing in my lounge waiting for the water to rise to his sacrum and said that the arrows hurt quite a bit, but I think all the hours posing paid off. It's all true apart from the last bit. This must be Mishima Year. Having started this painting in our bedsit in Balham, South London in 1975, then completed it during a period of unemployment in Leiston, Suffolk later that year, it seems to have come into its own after nearly thirty years.

Here is a thumbnail of a new Icon Books title, utilising part of the image: 'Yukio Mishima: terror and postmodern Japan' (published October, '02). The same author, my old friend and editor, Richard Appignanesi, wrote a comparative study about Fassbinder, Pasolini and Mishima about ten years ago. Much to his publisher's chagrin, the Mishima part of the book took on a life of its own and became a novel which has finally found a physical form. The cover is shown above; details of its publication:
'Yukio Mishma's Message To the Emperor' by Richard Appignanesi
Published 6 June, 2002 by Sinclair-Stevenson, London (ISBN 0954047664) £16.99
The official launch of the novel took place at the London Office of the Government of Quebec in Pall Mall on Wednesday 10 July, 2002, attended by the publisher, John Sinclair-Stevenson, and a plethora of illustrious alumni (that's quite enough of that); the artist wore the image proudly on his tee-shirt. Slightly tacky, but there you are. In attendance, Zia Sardar, who has worked with Borin on four 'Introducing' titles for Icon Books and whose new title for that imprint is 'Why do people hate America?' - a book co-written by Meryl Wynn-Davies which challenges the complacency and ignorance of world affairs thrown into sharp relief by the disasters of September 11, 2002 in New York and Washington.