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.

In the following essay, Talmor discusses Mishima's view of mortality.

In the following essay, Mengay examines Mishima's portrayal of the Japanese identity in a Westernized society.

In the following essay, Lingis explores the significance of Mishima's ritual suicide in his writing and overall system of thought.

In the following essay, Hirata explores the meaning of death in Mishima's texts and the meaning of Mishima's own textual death.

In the following essay, Carroll explores commonalities in imagery of sacrificial violations of the human torso, including in Mishima's writing and ritual suicide.

In the following essay, Atkinson contends that the pursuit of freedom and beauty lead to alienation in Mishima's novels.

[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]…. [The] prevalence of Mishima's hybrid personal symbolism leaves the reader uncertain of the correct context in interpreting Mishima's fictional—and philosophical—approach to Reincarnation. Like the characters in Mishima's play Dōjōji, we are faced with sounds simultaneously identified as Nō...

[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 adequate: the truth may be seen only from a due balance between the two. For Mishima's whole career was one of paradox built on an extraordinary tension between spirit and body, words and action and artistic creation and commitment to the world. (p. 138) Mishima's contribution to modern Japanese literature was immense. In embracing bo...

In the following essay, Hutton discusses Mishima's antipathy toward Western influence in Japan.

Mishima's first volume, The Forest in Full Bloom (Hanazakari no Mori …), is a collection of precociously decadent and detachedly romantic stories, many of which recollect a colorful but boring upper-class life long gone even then. Also they provide a heavy dose of nationalistic rhetoric glorifying the beauty and elegance of the Imperial past—a fact interesting in view of their author's later works. The elaborate and archaic vocabulary and general aloofness to the drab and wretche...

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 Buddhism and Taoism, The Damask Drum is meditative, introspective, slow-paced, subtle and suggestive. The depth and meaning of Iwakichi's love may be apprehended in sudden flashes of illumination; it is not brash or aggressive, but turned inward, felt, sensed. [Iwakichi is an old janitor who eventually commits suicide because of his unfulfille...

In the following essay, Chan argues that Mishima concerned himself more with culture than with politics.

Yukio Mishima's Madame de Sade [is] a Japanese study of the enigmatic marquise who remained constant to her husband during his imprisonment and abandoned him when he was released during the Revolution. Mishima's explanation is that the lady could put up with Sade's actions, but not with his literary work which, in her view, forecast the emerging social order … Apart from the historical snag that Sade himself proved a moderate when entrusted with revolutionary authority, this conc...