Yukio Mishima

Yukio Mishima (三島 由紀夫 Mishima Yukio) is the pen name of Kimitake Hiraoka (平岡 公威 Hiraoka Kimitake, January 14, 1925 – November 25, 1970), a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor, model, film director, nationalist, and founder of the Tatenokai. Mishima is considered one of the most important Japanese authors of the 20th century. He was considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968, but the award went to his countryman Yasunari Kawabata. 

His works include the novels Confessions of a Mask and The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, and the autobiographical essay Sun and Steel. Mishima’s work is characterized by its luxurious vocabulary and decadent metaphors, its fusion of traditional Japanese and modern Western literary styles, and its obsessive assertions of the unity of beauty, eroticism and death.

A fierce critic of Marxist ideologies, Mishima formed an unarmed civilian militia for the avowed purpose of defending the Japanese emperor in the event of a revolution by Japanese communists. On November 25, 1970, Mishima and four members of his militia entered a military base in central Tokyo, took the commandant hostage, and tried to persuade the soldiers at the base to join them in supporting the emperor and overturning Japan's pacifist Constitution. When this was unsuccessful, Mishima committed suicide by seppuku.

Works about Mishima

• Mishima, Aesthetic Terrorist: An Intellectual Portrait by Andrew Rankin (University of Hawaii Press, 2018, ISBN 0824873742)
• Ba-ra-kei: Ordeal by Roses by Eikō Hosoe and Mishima (photoerotic collection of images of Mishima, with his own commentary) (Aperture 2002 ISBN 0-89381-169-6)
• Deadly Dialectics: Sex, Violence, and Nihilism in the World of Yukio Mishima by Roy Starrs (University of HawaiiPress, 1994, ISBN 0-8248-1630-7 and ISBN 0-8248-1630-7)
• Escape from the Wasteland: Romanticism and Realism in the Fiction of Mishima Yukio and Oe Kenzaburo(Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series, No 33) by Susan J. Napier (Harvard University Press, 1995 ISBN 0-674-26181-X)
• Mishima: A Biography by John Nathan (Boston, Little, Brown and Company 1974, ISBN 0-316-59844-5)
• Mishima ou la vision du vide (Mishima : A Vision of the Void), essay by Marguerite Yourcenar trans. by Alberto Manguel 2001 ISBN 0-226-96532-5)
• Rogue Messiahs: Tales of Self-Proclaimed Saviors by Colin Wilson (Mishima profiled in context of phenomenon of various "outsider" Messiah types), (Hampton Roads Publishing Company 2000 ISBN 1-57174-175-5)
• The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima, by Henry Scott Stokes (London : Owen, 1975 ISBN 0-7206-0123-1)
• The Madness and Perversion of Yukio Mishima by Jerry S. Piven. (Westport, Connecticut, Praeger Publishers, 2004 ISBN 0-275-97985-7)
• Teito Monogatari (vol. 5–10) by Hiroshi Aramata (a historical fantasy novel featuring Mishima as a protagonist), (Kadokawa Shoten ISBN/ASIN 4041690056)
• Yukio Mishima by Peter Wolfe ("reviews Mishima's life and times, discusses, his major works, and looks at important themes in his novels," 1989, ISBN 0-8264-0443-X)
• "Portrait of the Author as a Historian" by Alexander Lee - an analysis of the central political and social threads in Mishima's novels (pages 54–55 "History Today" April 2017)
• Yukio Mishima, Terror and Postmodern Japan by Richard Appignanesi (2002, ISBN 1-84046-371-6)
• Mishima's Sword – Travels in Search of a Samurai Legend by Christopher Ross (2006, ISBN 0-00-713508-4)
• Yukio Mishima's Report to the Emperor by Richard Appignanesi (2003, ISBN 978-0-9540476-6-5)
• Reflections On The Death Of Mishima by Henry Miller (1972, ISBN 0-912264-38-1)
• Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985), a film directed by Paul Schrader
• The Strange Case of Yukio Mishima (1985) BBC documentary directed by Michael Macintyre
• Yukio Mishima: Samurai Writer, a BBC documentary on Yukio Mishima, directed by Michael Macintyre, (1985, VHS ISBN 978-1-4213-6981-5, DVD ISBN 978-1-4213-6982-2)
• Yukio Mishima, a play by Adam Darius and Kazimir Kolesnik, first performed at Holloway Prison, London, in 1991, and later in Finland, Slovenia and Portugal.
• String Quartet No.3, "Mishima", by Philip Glass. A reworking of parts of his soundtrack for the film Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters it has a duration of 18 minutes.
• 11·25 jiketsu no hi: Mishima Yukio to wakamonotachi (2012), a film directed by Kōji Wakamatsu
• Death and Night and Blood (Yukio), a song by the Stranglers from the Black and White album (1978) ( Death and Night and Blood is the phrase from Mishima's novel Confessions of a Mask)[25]
• Forbidden Colours, a song on Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence soundtrack by Ryuichi Sakamoto with lyrics by David Sylvian (1983). (Inspired by Mishima's novel Forbidden Colors)[26]
• Persona: A Biography of Yukio Mishima by Naoki Inose with Hiroaki Sato (Berkeley, Stone Bridge Press, 2012, ISBN 978-1-61172-008-2)
• Biografia Ilustrada de Mishima by Mario Bellatin (Argentina, Editorian Entropia, 2009, ISBN 978-987-24797-6-3)