Yukio Mishima
“Mishima had chronicled,with protean skill and Nabokovian complexity, the social and moral dilemmas of his nation.”
— Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
“The most brilliant of the Japanese writers who were all for sharpness, direct and lucid statement, and brevity.”
— The New Yorker
“Mishima is like Stendhal in his precise psychological analyses, like Dostoevsky in his explorations of darkly destructive personalities.” — The Christian Science Monitor
Yukio Mishima (1925–1970) was an author, poet, playwright, director, and actor. His book Confessions of a Mask catapulted him to stardom at the age of twenty-four. His other literary works include The Temple of the Golden Pavilion and Death in Midsummer. Near the end of his life, Mishima created the Tatenokai, a private right-wing army. On November 25, 1970, Mishima and a close circle of his followers broke into a Japan Self-Defense Force compound hoping to arouse mutiny among the JSDF soldiers. When this failed, Mishima took his own life by seppuku, and then was beheaded by members of the Tatenokai.
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