Yukio Mishima

The Japanese writer and right-wing militant Yukio Mishima was born as Kimitake Hiraoka to a respected family with deep roots in the traditional Japanese aristocracy and the samurai tradition. He attended an elite private school, where he excelled and studied a mixture of Japanese and European literature. A well-known Japanese literary magazine published Mishima’s first story when he was just 16 years old and deemed him one of the nation’s greatest young writers. In 1944, in the closing months of World War II, he was drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army. However, he failed his medical examination due to an illness and never went to war, where he likely would have died. After the war, the prominent writer Yasunari Kawabata helped Mishima publish his early writing, much of which focused on death, Japanese history, and same-sex love. While well-known, he was very controversial because of his strong affinity for traditional Japanese culture. In the mid-1950s, Mishima became an avid weight trainer and martial artist. He also married and had two children, even though he was widely known to be gay. In addition to his books, Mishima directed numerous plays. Starting in the 1960s, his work became highly political, and he was embroiled in a number of public scandals. In 1967, Mishima spent six weeks secretly undergoing military training and then helped found two right-wing ultranationalist civilian militias dedicated to protecting the Emperor. Finally, on November 25, 1970, Mishima and four other militia members attacked a military base and took a commander hostage. Then, Mishima gave an impassioned speech trying to convince the base’s soldiers to overthrow the government. Instead, the soldiers heckled and laughed at him. After his speech, Mishima yelled “Long live the Emperor!” and committed ritual suicide (seppuku). He is still best known for this act of terrorism, which is known as “The Mishima Incident” in Japan. To this day, scholars still debate whether Mishima sincerely wanted to overthrow the Japanese government or was just seeking the kind of dramatic, glorious death that he praised across his work. While the Japanese public widely ridiculed and condemned Mishima’s suicide, it also brought greater international attention to his work and helped cement his status as one of Japan’s most influential postwar writers.