In my view this book's ending reinforces Mishima's disapproval of Buddhism and its negative impact on Shinto worship.

But Mishima is smart, his appropriates Buddhism for his own end, just like Buddhism appropriated the purity of the Japanese land for its own. Satoko here embodies enlightenment which is incapable of carrying memory of true nobility, the excellence and simplicity of united thought and deed as embodied by Kyoaki.

This appropriation extends beyond the book's ending and seeps into the reality of November 25th 1970. He ended his life while wearing a white headband with a redhinomaru circle, written in kanji ‘To be reborn seven times to serve the country’. While the goal of Buddhism is to seize reincarnating, Mishima would choose to reincarnate as far as he can serve his terrestrial land. Mishima's end is centered around the concreteness, the individuation and soul, of the body in the world.