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 con...
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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 year...
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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 s...
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Critical Essay by Masao Miyoshi
Mishima's first volume, The Forest in Full Bloom (Hanazakari no Mori …), is a collection of precociously decadent and detachedly romantic stories, many o...
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Critical Essay by Hisaaki Yamanouchi
[Mishima's suicide] was rooted in what may be called his personal and aesthetic motives. No explanation, in either purely political or aesthetic terms, is ...
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Critical Essay by Gwenn Boardman Petersen
[Problems] of interpretation abound [in the four novels of The Sea of Fertility: Spring Snow, Runaway Horses, The Temple of Dawn, and The Decay of the Angel]...
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Critical Essay by Bettina L. Knapp
The Damask Drum has maintained the formulae of Noh theatre in its spiritual outlook, its themes, characters, relationship to nature and use of symbol. Like Zen Budd...
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Critical Essay by The Times Literary Supplement
Yukio Mishima's Madame de Sade [is] a Japanese study of the enigmatic marquise who remained constant to her husband during his imprisonment and ...
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In the following essay, Nemoto analyzes parallels in the post-World War II novels of Mishima and Heinrich Böll, focusing on attitudes toward destruction.
In Japan and in Germany the aftermat...
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In the following essay, Carroll explores commonalities in imagery of sacrificial violations of the human torso, including in Mishima's writing and ritual suicide.
Of the many acts of violenc...
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In the following essay, Hutton discusses Mishima's antipathy toward Western influence in Japan.
Japan's Yukio Mishima gave a clue as to his reasons for his seppuku (samurai ritual sui...
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In the following essay, Mengay examines Mishima's portrayal of the Japanese identity in a Westernized society.
The social upheavals caused around the world by western imperialism were also f...
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In the following essay, Washburn discusses the paradoxes of modernism evident in Mishima's works and life.
Charles Jencks, in a famously acerbic account of recent developments in architectur...
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In the following essay, Chan argues that Mishima concerned himself more with culture than with politics.
Fifteen years ago the Japanese writer, Yukio Mishima, died after an abortive coup attempt. T...
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In the following essay, McAdams examines the ways in which Mishima's fantasies are played out in his fiction.
By the time the lieutenant had at last drawn the sword across to the right side ...
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In the following essay, Lingis explores the significance of Mishima's ritual suicide in his writing and overall system of thought.
Yukio Mishima found himself in words. Consumed by words.
...
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In the following essay, Atkinson contends that the pursuit of freedom and beauty lead to alienation in Mishima's novels.
Few novelists dominate twentieth-century Japanese fiction as does Yuk...
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In the following essay, Hirata explores the meaning of death in Mishima's texts and the meaning of Mishima's own textual death.
“[I]t is always something like an opening which ...
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In the following essay, Talmor discusses Mishima's view of mortality.
Yukio Mishima (the pseudonym of Kimitake Hiraoka) was born in Tokyo in 1925. He belonged to an old Samurai family and wa...
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Edward G. Seidensticker, known for his English translation of
the classic ''Tale of Genji'' and translations of works by modern
Japanese authors such as Yasunari Kawabata, died at a Tokyo hos...
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Takeshi Kawamura, Japan's avant-garde director and writer,
brought his production, ''Aoi/Komachi,'' to New York audiences for a
three-day run to highlight Noh as part of the Japan Society's
...
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Yukio Mishima
Yukio Mishima
Hiraoka Kimitake
Critical Essay by Masao Miyoshi
LEAD: Seidensticker, translator of Japanese literary works, dies at 86
