Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) was a Japanese novelist and playwright. He wrote in a multitude of styles, from ornate to plain, and dealt with a variety of subjects drawn from both literary sources and contemporary life. Born and raised in Tokyo, Yukio...

More than two decades after his death, Mishima Yukio is arguably still the most famous writer modern Japan has produced. The reasons for this fame are both complex and controversial. His critics may suggest that his notorious death by seppuku, or...

Life magazine once called Yukio Mishima "the Japanese Hemingway," while Japan's first Nobel laureate, Yasunari Kawabata, "declared that a 'writer of his caliber appears only once every 200 or 300 years,'" as reported in the Economist. Mishima was a...

Yukio Mishima was a Japanese writer, actor and political activist who killed himself on Nov 25, 1970. Mishima's writings attacked the way in which Japan's society had evolved after World War II, and attempted to prove the country was losing its soul with its...

An examination of Japanese and German literary development post World War 1939-1945 is presented with reference to Mishima Yukio's novel 'Kinkakuji' and Heinrich Boll's novel, 'Billard um Halbzehn.' Both authors demonstrate a desire to destroy monuments representative of an unsatisfactory post-war social order. For...

In the following essay, McAdams examines the ways in which Mishima's fantasies are played out in his fiction.

In the following essay, Washburn discusses the paradoxes of modernism evident in Mishima's works and life.

In the following essay, Nemoto analyzes parallels in the post-World War II novels of Mishima and Heinrich Böll, focusing on attitudes toward destruction.