Yukio Mishima

Yukio Mishima was a Japanese novelist, playwright and essayist whose major works include Confessions of a Mask, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion and the four novels of The Sea of Fertility. His writing explored desire, beauty, violence and conflicts between modern life and inherited ideals.

His later public life was bound to militant nationalism and the private group he formed, the Shield Society. He died by suicide in 1970 after an attempted intervention at a military headquarters. His life and fiction have continued to attract interpretation, including Paul Schrader’s film Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, with production design by Eiko Ishioka and music by Philip Glass.