I just finished reading Mishima's Sword by Christopher Ross.
It's an engrossing piece of research concerning Yukio Mishima, the Japanese writer who famously (or, more accurately, infamously) killed himself in the "traditional" manner of seppuku in 1970. The book loosely takes the form of a journal of Ross's progress as he attempts to track down the sword that was used to decapitate Mishima, but it's also an account of Mishima's last day, and a scattered collection of analyses of both Mishima's motivation and others' reaction to what he did. Ross points out that in many ways Mishima was a combination of several taboos that, individually, Japanese society prefers not to confront; so altogether this makes him a fascinating and awkward figure. Despite the uneasiness or even dismissal with which many modern Japanese react to what he represented, Mishima's work is still widely read in Japan.
Ross's book, like Fudebakudo, quotes a line from the Hagakure (one of a few classic texts on the so-called code of the samurai) regarding the dangers of studying an art and merely becoming an "artist." Although Mishima was undeniably a literary artist, was he ever a warrior, a martial artist — or was he just playing the part? Despite adopting the forms of war in life (he had his own militia, and was graded in several martial arts) and especially in death, was he ever doing more than just bizarrely aping them? It's a provocative question, because it raises the issue of what anyone practicing a martial art in times of peace — let alone in a foreign culture — can do to be anything other than an actor, or, as Hagakure puts it, just an "artist."
By the way, I had previously enjoyed Ross's entertaining Tunnel Visions (which, whilst explicitly consisting of insightful anecdotes and philosophical musing, delightfully carries the implicit message that a great many employees of London Underground are simply having a doss). Incidentally, aikido readers who are familiar with Robert Twigger's well-known book Angry White Pyjamas may also be entertained to discover that Ross is one of Twigger's flat-mates at the start of that book.