Yukio Mishima

Japanese writer whose prolific output includes novels, short stories, plays and essays. One of his most memorable works was "The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea," 1963. Mishima Yukio was the most important writer of post war Japan. He crystallized Japans tensions between longing for traditional ways of life and the persistent demands of encroaching westernization. Life magazine called him "the Japanese Hemingway." The first child of a high level civil servant, Mishima was taken from his mother by his grandmother and raised by her on the first floor of the family home, only allowed to be with his mother when she fed him. The grandmother kept her grandson by her side at all times. He was educated at the prestigious Peers School in Tokyo. He began to write as a youth, and published his first short story at 16 under the pseudonym Mishima Yukio to conceal his age. From adolescence on he was possessed by violent, macabre and sado-masochistic fantasies, playing out imagery of murder for entertainment, cannibalism and homosexuality, masturbating for the first time over a picture of a bleeding martyred saint. When World War II began, he tried to join the army but failed to qualify, and instead spent the war working in a factory in Tokyo and writing. After Japans defeat, he studied law at the University of Tokyo, graduating in 1947. He worked for a brief time at the Finance Ministry before deciding to support himself exclusively from his writing. The publication in 1949 of his second novel, "Confessions of a Mask," brought the youth immediate fame. The story of a boy who comes to recognize his homosexuality and the need to conceal it behind a mask, the novel was taken as a sensitive coming of age tale by Japanese audiences who seemed to have missed its homosexual themes. Other novels followed, including "Forbidden Colors," 1953, "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion," 1959 and "Sun and Steel," 1968. Mishima also wrote numerous plays, including the famous "Madame de Sade" as well as works for the Kabuki Theater and modern Noh drama. In 1966 Mishima directed and starred in the film "Patriotism," based on his short story of the same name. Both film and story focus--in morbidly riveting detail--on a young Japanese military officer and his devoted wife as they prepare for and commit the ritual suicide known as seppuku. The effect is mesmerizing and deeply unsettling. Mishima was increasingly drawn to the militaristic samurai past of Japan as an antidote to what he saw as the materialism of the modern world. In his greatest work, "The Sea of Fertility," 1969-1971, he used the image of the barren "seas" of the moon to capture the sterility of contemporary Japan. These four novels are considered to be his masterwork, depicting together a portrait of Japanese life from 1912 to 1970. A right-wing nationalist, he was a fervent proponent for a return to the ancient virtues of Japan. Though deeply attracted to the patriotism of imperial Japan and the samurai spirit of Japans past, he nonetheless dressed in Western clothes and lived in a Western-style house. He was also attracted to and celebrated the venerable tradition of homosexual love between samurai warriors (which had so shocked 16th century Jesuit missionaries). He started body building in 1955 and took up karate and kendo himself, a traditional Japanese form of swordsmanship. The formerly delicate youth who had failed to qualify for the army built up his own private army of 100 young men who Read less