Abstract

While utopia implies an ideal space, and dystopia a site of dysfunction, Michel Foucault coined the word heterotopia to depict a space containing multiple, overlapping and sometimes conflicting layers of meaning. This article first considers Mishima Yukio (1925–1970) himself as a heterotopian body, both physical and textual, and then goes on to examine how his novel, Inochi urimasu (Life for Sale, 1968), employs a range of heterotopian tropes as a means to critique post-war Japanese society. The novel, which was first serialized in the Japanese Weekly Playboy Magazine, is one of Mishima’s many popular novels that have not attracted much attention to date because it was not considered ‘serious’ enough: it may be described as trashy, kitsch, camp, shallow and sexy. However, I argue that Inochi urimasu conveys a serious intent by employing those very qualities in order to analyse critically a breakdown in human relations that emerged from the ashes of Japan’s wartime defeat. Moreover, beneath the novel’s fast-paced and humorous veneer, there lurks a bleak nihilism – represented through themes such as prostitution, vampirism, violence, and sadomasochism – that provided Mishima with the opportunity to construct alternative and what he considered to be more positive paradigms in the face of an unbearably bourgeois and anodyne lived experience in post-war consumerist Japan.

摘要

乌托邦意味着理想的空间，而反乌托邦则意味着功能障碍，而米歇尔•福柯（Michel Foucault）创造了“异位症”一词来描述一个包含多个，重叠且有时相互冲突的含义层的空间。本文首先将三岛由纪夫（1925–1970年）本人视为异物的身体，无论是身体还是文本，然后继续研究其小说《井上urimasu》（《生命的出售》，1968年）如何将一系列异物的比喻用作“异物”。批判战后日本社会的手段。这本小说首次在《日本花花公子》周刊上刊登，是三岛市众多受欢迎的小说之一，迄今尚未引起太多关注，因为它被认为不够“严肃”：可谓垃圾，媚俗，阵营，浅而性感。但是，我认为Inochi urimasu运用这些特质传达了一个认真的意图，以便对日本战时战败的灰烬造成的人际关系崩溃进行严格分析。此外，在小说快节奏而幽默的外表之下，隐隐隐约出现了虚幻的虚无主义（以卖淫，吸血鬼，暴力和施虐受虐狂等主题为代表），这为三岛提供了构建替代品的机会，他认为这是更积极的范式面对战后消费主义日本的资产阶级和anodyne难以忍受的生活。