Barakei, sometimes translated as ‘Ordeal by Roses’, is an extended photographic portrait created by Hosoe in collaboration with the author Yukio Mishima. As a series, it would prove to be a breakthrough in Hosoe’s career, and as one of the last projects which Mishima chose to undertake before his sensationalist suicide in 1969, it illustrates the writer’s final vision of how he wished to be understood. Mishima’s compelling performance for Hosoe’s lens is displayed in narrative sequence, which develops over the course of the book.
Hosoe first caught Mishima’s eye with his charged photographs of experimental butō dancer Tatsumi Hijikata, (see also Kinjiki, 1960, and Kamaitachi, 1969), and the young photographer was originally commissioned to shoot Mishima’s portrait for a new book of critical essays. Hosoe was immediately struck by the strange and ostentatious style of Mishima’s home, shortly followed by his surprise at the famous writer’s appearance: “On the veranda, Mishima, half-naked and wearing dark glasses, was sunbathing in a white garden chair.”
Mishima invited Hosoe to photograph him however he pleased, and Hosoe returned many times over the coming months to work with Mishima on this complex and ornately stylised portrait. Hosoe’s impression of Mishima used the baroque aesthetics of the writer’s home and incorporated imagery from Botticelli and Dali to create a densely imaginative, subjective reflection of the author. The creative equilibrium established between these two artists, with both equally committed to drawing out a performance staged for the camera, is perhaps Barakei’s most radical and influential legacy to the photographic community.
In 1970, Mishima shocked the world with his dramatic ritual suicide. After a failed coup, in which Mishima led a private militia to Tokyo’s military headquarters, the writer publicly disembowelled himself in the ultimate sacrifice to his nationalistic ideals. In the months running up to this, Mishima had worked closely with Hosoe and the designer-illustrator Tadanoori Yokoo to produce a completely redesigned ‘international’ second edition of Barakei. Mishima’s inclusion of a new final section to the book entitled ‘Death’ suggested to Hosoe that Mishima intended this publication as a kind of requiem. In his closing comments to the book, Hosoe celebrates Mishima’s spectacular idealism even as he admits the fatal role it played in the life of his long-term collaborator: “Here is the perfect body of Mishima, who never admitted the decay of the flesh.”
Hardcover bound in black velvet, with a white slipcase and cardboard box. Designed and illustrated by Tadanori Yokoo. 38 x 52.5 cm.
