What is the influence of Yukio Mishima?
The Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, version 6.0.2: The novelist and playwright Mishima Yukio, b. Hiraoka Kimitake, Jan. 14, 1925, d. Nov. 25, 1970, was the best-known Japanese writer to Western readers. A flamboyant figure in life, he has become a legend after his suicide following an unsuccessful attempt to foment rebellion among the ranks of his country’s Self Defense Force. Eroticism, particularly homosexual eroticism, martyrdom, and conservative politics pervade even his first novel, Confessions of a Mask (1949; Eng. trans., 1958); but in his later works such concerns pale before his burning obsession: when and how to die. Many of his heroes act out his own formulas for death: ritual disembowelment at the prime of life. An extremely precocious but sickly youth, Mishima was drafted into the army in 1945 but failed to pass the physical examination. His relief at the war’s end turned into guilt at having survived. In novels such as The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (1956; Eng. trans.
