Who is Yukio Mishima?

Yukio Mishima was born on January 14, 1925. He is a Japanese author and playwright, famous for both his nihilistic post-war writing and the circumstances of his ritual suicide in public in the traditional seppuku style. Mishima’s decision to use a pseudonym may have been prompted by the subject matter of his first, and very successful, novel, Kamen no kokuhaku, an autobiographical tale of a shy, sensitive young man who is wrestling with his homosexual and sadomasochistic impulses.  Throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s, Mishima produced a succession of critically acclaimed novels, including Shiosai , Kinkakuji , Utage no ato, and Gogo no eikō. On November 25, 1970, after haranguing an assembly of self-defense personnel on imperial loyalty and military discipline, Mishima disemboweled himself with a sword, exactly as a samurai warrior in medieval Japan might have done. Yukio Mishima was the first Japanese writer of the postwar generation to attain international fame.

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