I don't know why, but I would like to tell you this story.

On February 28, 1936, on the third day after a group of young Japanese officers rebelled against the Japanese cabinet, Lieutenant Shinji Takeyama of the Guards Transport Battalion, shocked by the news that his closest friends were among the conspirators, unable to accept the order to suppress the rebellion, committed hara-kiri with his own saber in one of the rooms of his mansion; his wife Reiko followed her beloved husband's example and also took her own life. The lieutenant's farewell note contained only one phrase: "Long live the Imperial Army!" His wife also left a letter in which she apologized to her parents for leaving this life before them, and ended with the words: "The day has come for which an officer's wife must be prepared." The last minutes of the courageous couple's life were such that even the most stony heart would have trembled. The lieutenant was thirty-one years old, Reiko - twenty-three. Not even six months had passed since their wedding.

Based on this true story, which reflects all the honor, courage and will of the Japanese officer and his wife, who was not afraid to die with her husband, Yukio Mishima writes the story "Patriotism".

This story is a kind of manifesto and artistic and ideological justification for the creation of the "Shield Society" - a cultural military-patriotic organization founded by Yukio Mishima, in addition, in this story Yukio Mishima, as never before, came closer to the problem of "clean death" in the spirit of old samurai traditions.

A film "Patriotism or the Ceremony of Love and Death" was later filmed based on this story. The main role of Lieutenant Takeyama is played by Mishima himself, which became a fateful role for him, because the hero of the film itself is Mishima, who repeated the fate of the young officer, also with a group of his like-minded people speaking out against the Japanese government. Mishima seemed to predict the future fate, which would end extremely tragically and gracefully, as befits a true samurai.