Mishima: The Last Debate (2020, Toyoshima Keisuke)

On May 13, 1969, 1,000 students from Tokyo University await Yukio Mishima. The air in the auditorium is taut with tension. The invitation inciting students belonging to radical movements by the right-wing nationalist writer Mishima was a challenge for a revolution. At that time, the students were unaware that Mishima’s private army had infiltrated the auditorium in case of assassination attempts by extremists. It was the “political season,” and the debate between them was talked about for a long time as the peak of that fierce period. Mishima: The Last Debate is a piece restored and reconstructed from TBS’s film footage found 50 years after the fact. It is rare to see such a confrontation between two bodies that, despite extreme differences, do not lose respect for each other.