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Yukio Mishima[ a ] (三島 由紀夫, Mishima Yukio), born Kimitake Hiraoka (平岡 公威, Hiraoka Kimitake, 14 January 1925 – 25 November 1970), was a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor, model, Shintoist, nationalist, and founder of the Tatenokai. Mishima is considered one of the most important post-war stylists of the ...
He was Japan’s most famous living novelist when, on 25 November 1970, he went to an army base in Tokyo, kidnapped the commander, had him assemble the garrison, then tried to...
Aug 2, 2024 · Mishima Yukio (born January 14, 1925, Tokyo, Japan—died November 25, 1970, Tokyo) was a prolific writer who is regarded by many critics as the most important Japanese novelist of the 20th century.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Right-Wing Renaissance Man
- Trying to Explain The Inexplicable
- Death That Deadens in Its Repetition
- A Careful Orchestration
- Our Longing For Preservation
Mishima came early to fame as a literary writer, publishing his first stories as a precocious teenager in 1941 and catapulting to fame with the 1949 semi-autobiographical novel “Confessions of a Mask.” Considered the main contender to become the first Japanese author to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, he was beaten out in 1968 by his mentor, Yas...
Mishima’s decision to commit suicide in this way has fueled speculation over his motives. Like a Rorschach test, the incident offers limitless interpretations that can suit almost any agenda. On and on goes the search for a reason that might explain this inexplicable act. Seppuku had long been an exclusive right of the samurai warrior caste, but bo...
What gets buried in these many theories is the profusion of art that Mishima produced as the date of his suicide approached, knowing full well that these works would be consumed in its aftermath. In “The Savage God,” Al Alvarez’s canonical work about the relationship between suicide and the arts in Western society, he points out how the logic of su...
This collection of photos didn’t constitute Mishima’s first death in art. As lead actor in the self-directed 1966 short film adaptation of his story “Yūkoku,” he performs a grueling seppuku. In Yasuzō Masumura’s 1960 feature film “Afraid to Die,” he plays a punk yakuza gangster who’s shot in the back, and he performs another seppuku as a samurai in...
Clearly, Mishima was obsessed with exploring death in art, in politics and in the bedroom. But his impulse – though extreme – represents something universal. When facing death, whether it is our own or another’s, we confront the question of how – or if – the dead will be remembered. In our own case, we cannot help but imagine and perhaps even try t...
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- November 25, 1970
- January 14, 1925
- The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima, John Nathan (Translator)
- Confessions of a Mask.
- Spring Snow (The Sea of Fertility, #1)
- The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima, Ivan Morris (Translation)
Nov 20, 2020 · Yukio Mishima is interviewed at his home in Tokyo's Minamimagome district in this December 1968 file photo. (Mainichi) Nietzsche. By Damian Flanagan. Toward the end of the World War II, a...
Oct 2, 2020 · Fifty years ago, Mishima Yukio died dramatically, killing himself by after his calls to reform Japan’s postwar Constitution failed to inspire Self-Defense Forces to rise up at a base in Tokyo.
