Mishima A Biography Author:John Nathan At age forty-five, Kimitake Hiraoka -- better known b his pen name, Yukio Mishima -- was unrivaled as the outstanding Japanese writer of his generation. In November, 1970, he performed the most spectacular feat of his career, a scenario that had been painstakingly plotted for eight months. — While his followers held captive the commander of the J... more »apan Self-Defense Force, he exhorted the assembled troops to repudiate the postwar democracy that robbed Japan of its identity. Shouting a greeting to the emperor, he plunged a sword into his abdomen. One of his disciples beheaded him, thus completing the ritual.
The same master of letters who had produced forty novels, eighteen plays, twenty volumes of short stories and essays and who had been nominated three times for the Nobel Prize, denounced the literary life as effete and antithetical to the hero's life. John Nathan's fascinating biography examines the life of this tortured, nearly superhuman personality.« less