Yukio Mishima

Mishima's works include the novels Confessions of a Mask and The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, and the autobiographical essay Sun and Steel. Mishima's work is characterized by "its luxurious vocabulary and decadent metaphors, its fusion of traditional Japanese and modern Western literary styles, and its obsessive assertions of the unity of beauty, eroticism, and death", according to the author Andrew Rankin. Mishima's political activities made him a controversial figure; he remains so in Japan to the present day. From his mid-30s onwards, Mishima's far-right ideology and reactionary beliefs became increasingly evident. He extolled the traditional culture and spirit of Japan, and opposed what he saw as Western-style materialism, along with Japan's postwar democracy, globalism, and communism, worrying that by embracing these ideas the Japanese people would lose their "national essence" (kokutai) and distinctive cultural heritage to become a "rootless" people. In 1968, Mishima formed the Tatenokai ("Shield Society"), a private militia, for the purpose of protecting the dignity of the emperor as a symbol of national identity. The Tatenokai are interpreted by scholars as attempting to reclaim Japan's prewar values of loyalty. Mishima believed the traditions that made Japan great had been weakened by postwar Japan. Although the Tatenokai were legally allowed in postwar Japan, their ideology directly opposed the newfound pacifism that was adopted. On 25 November 1970, Mishima and four members of his militia entered a military base in central Tokyo, took its commandant hostage, and unsuccessfully tried to inspire the Japan Self-Defense Forces to rise up and overthrow Article 9 of the 1947 Constitution to restore autonomous national defense and the divinity of the emperor. The incident ended with Mishima's suicide by seppuku, which had been planned.

On 14 January 1925, Yukio Mishima (三島由紀夫, Mishima Yukio) was born Kimitake Hiraoka (平岡公威, Hiraoka Kimitake) in Nagazumi-cho, Yotsuya-ku of Tokyo City (now part of Yotsuya, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo). His father was Azusa Hiraoka (平岡梓), a government official in the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce. His mother, Shizue (平岡倭文重), was the daughter of the 5th principal of the Kaisei Academy. Shizue's father, Kenzō Hashi (橋健三), was a scholar of the Chinese classics, and the Hashi family had served the Maeda clan for generations in Kaga Domain. Mishima's paternal grandparents were Sadatarō Hiraoka, the third Governor-General of Karafuto Prefecture, and Natsuko (family register name: Natsu) (平岡なつ). Mishima received his birth name Kimitake (公威, also read Kōi in on-yomi) in honor of Furuichi Kōi who was a benefactor of Sadatarō. He had a younger sister, Mitsuko (平岡美津子), who died of typhoid fever in 1945 at age 17, and a younger brother, Chiyuki (平岡千之). Mishima's childhood home was a rented house, though a fairly large two-floor house that was the largest in the neighborhood. He lived with his parents, siblings and paternal grandparents, as well as six maids, a houseboy, and a manservant. Mishima's early childhood was dominated by the presence of his grandmother, Natsuko, who took the boy and separated him from his immediate family for several years. She was the granddaughter of Matsudaira Yoritaka, the daimyō of Shishido, which was a branch domain of Mito Domain in Hitachi Province; this relationship made Mishima a descendant of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate, through his grandmother. Natsuko's father, Nagai Iwanojō (永井岩之丞), had been a Supreme Court justice, and Iwanojō's adoptive father, Nagai Naoyuki, had been a bannerman of the Tokugawa House during the Bakumatsu. Natsuko had been raised in the household of Prince Arisugawa Taruhito, and she maintained considerable aristocratic pretensions even after marrying Sadatarō, a bureaucrat who had made his fortune in the newly opened colonial frontier in the north, and who eventually became Governor-General of Karafuto Prefecture on Sakhalin Island. Sadatarō's father, Takichi Hiraoka (平岡太吉), and grandfather, Tazaemon Hiraoka (平岡太左衛門), had been farmers. Natsuko was prone to violent outbursts, occasionally alluded to in Mishima's works, to which some biographers have traced Mishima's fascination with death. She did not allow Mishima to venture into the sunlight, engage in any kind of sport, or play with other boys. He spent much of his time either alone or with female cousins and their dolls. Mishima's father, Azusa, had a taste for military discipline, and worried Natsuko's style of childrearing was too soft. When Mishima was returned to his immediate family at age 12, Azusa employed extreme parenting tactics, such as holding young Mishima up close to the side of a speeding steam locomotive. He also raided his son's room for evidence of an "effeminate" interest in literature, and often ripped his son's manuscripts apart. Although Azusa forbade him from writing any additional stories, Mishima continued to write in secret, supported and protected by his mother, who was always the first to read a new story. When Mishima was 13, Natsuko took him to see his first Kabuki play: The Treasury of Loyal Retainers, an allegory of the story of the 47 Rōnin. He was taken to his first Noh play (Miwa, a story featuring Amano-Iwato) by his maternal grandmother Tomi Hashi (橋トミ). From these early experiences, Mishima enjoyed Kabuki and Noh. He began attending performances every month and grew deeply interested in these traditional Japanese dramatic art forms.

Mishima was enrolled at the age of six in the elite Gakushūin, the Peers' School in Tokyo, which had been established in the Meiji period to educate the Imperial family and the descendants of the old feudal nobility. Mishima began to write his first stories aged 12, taking inspiration from myths (Kojiki, Greek mythology, etc.) and the works of numerous classic Japanese authors, as well as Raymond Radiguet, Jean Cocteau, Oscar Wilde, Rainer Maria Rilke, Thomas Mann, Friedrich Nietzsche, Charles Baudelaire, l'Isle-Adam, and other European authors. He also studied German. After six years as a pupil, he became the youngest member of the editorial board of its literary society. Mishima was particularly drawn to the works of Japanese poet Shizuo Itō (伊東静雄), Haruo Satō, and Michizō Tachihara, who inspired Mishima's appreciation of classical Japanese waka poetry. Mishima's early contributions to the Gakushūin literary magazine Hojinkai-zasshi (輔仁会雑誌) included haiku and waka poetry before he turned his attention to prose. In 1941, at the age of 16, Mishima was invited to write a short story for the Hojinkai-zasshi, where he submitted Forest in Full Bloom (花ざかりの森, Hanazakari no Mori), a story in which the narrator describes the feeling that his ancestors somehow still live on within him. The story displays several metaphors and aphorisms that would become Mishima's hallmarks. He also sent a copy of the manuscript to his teacher Fumio Shimizu, who was so impressed that he and his fellow editorial board members decided to publish it in their literary magazine Bungei Bunka. In order to protect him from potential backlash from Azusa, Shimizu and the other editorial board members coined the pen-name Yukio Mishima. They took "Mishima" from Mishima Station, which Shimizu and his fellow Bungei Bunka board member Hasuda Zenmei passed through on their way to the editorial meeting, which was held in Shuzenji, Shizuoka. The name "Yukio" came from yuki (雪), the Japanese word for "snow", because of the snow they saw on Mount Fuji as the train passed. The story was later published as a limited book edition (4,000 copies) in 1944 due to a wartime paper shortage. Mishima had it published as a keepsake to remember him by, as he assumed that he would die in the war. In the editorial notes of Bungei Bunka magazine in 1941, when this debut work was serialized, Hasuda praised Mishima's genius: "This youthful author is a heaven-sent child of eternal Japanese history. He is much younger than we are, but has arrived on the scene already quite mature." Hasuda, who became something of a mentor to Mishima, was an ardent nationalist and a fan of Motoori Norinaga (1730–1801), a scholar of kokugaku from the Edo period who preached Japanese traditional values and devotion to the emperor. Hasuda had previously fought for the Imperial Japanese Army in China in 1938, and in 1943 he was recalled to active service for deployment as a first lieutenant in the Southeast Asian theater. At a farewell party thrown for Hasuda by the Bungei Bunka group, Hasuda offered the following parting words to Mishima: "I have entrusted the future of Japan to you." According to Mishima, these words were deeply meaningful to him, and had a profound effect on the future course of his life. Later in 1941, Mishima wrote an essay about his deep devotion to Shintō, titled The Way of the Gods (惟神之道, Kannagara no michi). Mishima's story The Cigarette (煙草, Tabako), published in 1946, describes a homosexual love he felt at school and being teased from members of the school's rugby union because he belonged to the literary society. Another story from 1954, The Boy Who Wrote Poetry (詩を書く少年, Shi o kaku shōnen), was similarly based on Mishima's memories of his time at Gakushūin Junior High School. On 9 September 1944, Mishima graduated Gakushūin High School at the top of the class, becoming a graduate representative. Emperor Hirohito was present at the graduation ceremony, with Mishima later receiving a silver watch from him at the Imperial Household Ministry. On 27 April 1944, during the final years of World War II, Mishima received a conscription notice for the Imperial Japanese Army, barely passing his conscription examination on 16 May 1944 with a less desirable rating of "second class" conscript. Scholars have argued that Mishima's failure to receive a "first class" rating on his conscription examination (reserved only for the most physically fit recruits), in combination with the illness which led him to be erroneously declared unfit for duty, contributed to an inferiority complex over his frail constitution that later led to his obsession with physical fitness and bodybuilding. Mishima had a cold during his medical check on convocation day (10 February 1945), which the army doctor misdiagnosed as tuberculosis; Mishima was declared unfit for service and sent home. Mishima would later hint in his quasi-autobiographical novel Confessions of a Mask (1949) that he might have lied to the doctor in order to secure the misdiagnosis. Mishima wrote: Why had I looked so frank as I lied to the army doctor? Why had I said that I'd been having a slight fever for over half a year, that my shoulder was painfully stiff, that I spit blood, that even last night I had been soaked by a night sweat?...Why when sentenced to return home the same day had I felt the pressure of a smile come pushing so persistently at my lips that I had difficulty in concealing it? Why had I run so when I was through the barracks gate? Hadn't my hopes been blasted? What was the matter that I hadn't hung my head and trudged away with heavy feet? I realized vividly that my future life would never attain heights of glory sufficient to justify my having escaped death in the army... The veracity of this account is impossible to know for certain, but what is unquestionable is that Mishima did not speak out against the doctor's diagnosis of tuberculosis. Researchers have speculated that Mishima's guilt at allowing himself to escape death in the war left a lasting impression on his life and writing, possibly contributing to his later suicide. The day before his failed medical examination, Mishima had written a farewell message to his family, ending with the words "Long live the Emperor!" (天皇陛下万歳, Tennō heika banzai), including hair and nail clippings as mementos for his parents. The unit that Mishima would have enlisted in was eventually sent to the Philippines, with few survivors. Mishima's parents were ecstatic that he did not have to go to war, but Mishima's mood was harder to read, and Mishima's mother overheard him express a wish that he could have joined a "Special Attack" unit. He also expressed an admiration for kamikaze pilots and other "special attack" units. In a 21 April 1945 letter to a friend, Mishima wrote: It was through the kamikazes that "modern man" has finally been able to grasp the dawning of the "present day", or perhaps better said, "our historical era" in a true sense, and for the first time the intellectual class, which until now had been the illegitimate child of modernity, became the legitimate heir of history. I believe that all of this is thanks to the kamikazes. This is the reason why the entire cultural class of Japan, and all people of culture around the world, should kneel before the kamikazes and offer up prayers of gratitude. Mishima was deeply affected by Emperor Hirohito's radio broadcast announcing Japan's surrender on 15 August 1945, vowing to protect Japanese cultural traditions and to help to rebuild Japanese culture after the destruction of the war. He wrote in his diary, "Only by preserving Japanese irrationality will we be able contribute to world culture 100 years from now." Four days after Japan's surrender, Mishima's mentor Zenmei Hasuda, who had been drafted and deployed to the Malay peninsula, shot and killed his superior officer, who blamed Japan's defeat on the Emperor. Hasuda had long suspected the officer to be a Korean spy. After shooting him, Hasuda turned his pistol on himself. Mishima learned of the incident a year later and contributed poetry in Hasuda's honor at a memorial service in November 1946. On 23 October 1945 (Showa 20), Mishima's beloved younger sister Mitsuko died suddenly at age 17 from typhoid fever after drinking untreated water. Around the same time, he also learned that Kuniko Mitani (三谷邦子), a classmate's sister whom he had hoped to marry, was engaged to another man. Mishima used these events as inspiration and motivation for his later literary work. At the end of the war, his father Azusa "half-allowed" Mishima to become a novelist. He was worried that his son would become a professional novelist, preferring instead that his son follow in the footsteps of himself and Mishima's grandfather Sadatarō and become a bureaucrat. To this end, he advised his son to enroll in the Faculty of Law instead of the literature department. Attending lectures during the day and writing at night, Mishima graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1947. He obtained a position in the Ministry of Finance and was set for a promising career as a government bureaucrat. However, after just one year of employment, Mishima had exhausted himself so much that his father agreed to allow him to resign from his post and devote himself to writing full time. In 1945, Mishima began the short story "A Story at the Cape" (岬にての物語, Misaki nite no Monogatari) and continued to work on it throughout World War II. After the war, the story was praised by poet Shizuo Itō (伊東静雄), whom Mishima respected.

Mishima was also an actor, and starred in Yasuzo Masumura's 1960 film Afraid to Die, and he sang the theme song (lyrics by himself; music by Shichirō Fukazawa). He performed in films like Patriotism or the Rite of Love and Death directed by himself, 1966, Black Lizard directed by Kinji Fukasaku, 1968 and Hitokiri directed by Hideo Gosha, 1969. Maki Isaka has discussed how his knowledge of performance and theatrical forms influenced short stories including Onnagata (女方, Onnagata). Mishima was featured as the photo model in the photographer Eikoh Hosoe's book Ba-ra-kei: Ordeal by Roses (薔薇刑, Bara-kei) and in Tamotsu Yatō's photobooks Young Samurai: Bodybuilders of Japan (体道～日本のボディビルダーたち, Taidō: Nihon no bodybuilder tachi) and Otoko: Photo Studies of the Young Japanese Male (男, Otoko). The American author Donald Richie gave an eyewitness account of seeing Mishima, dressed in a loincloth and armed with a sword, posing in the snow for one of Tamotsu Yatō's photoshoots. In the men's magazine Heibon Punch, Mishima had contributed various essays and criticisms, and he won first place in the "Mr. Dandy" reader popularity poll in 1967 with 19,590 votes, beating Toshiro Mifune by 720 votes. In the next reader popularity poll, "Mr. International", Mishima ranked second behind French President Charles de Gaulle. At that time in the late 1960s, Mishima was the first celebrity to be described as a "superstar" (sūpāsutā) by the Japanese media.

In 1955, Mishima took up weight training to overcome his weak constitution, and his strictly observed workout regimen of three sessions per week was not disrupted for the final 15 years of his life. In his 1968 essay Sun and Steel, Mishima deplored the emphasis given by intellectuals to the mind over the body. He later became very skilled (5th Dan) at kendo (traditional Japanese swordsmanship), and became 2nd Dan in battōjutsu, and 1st Dan in karate. In 1956, he tried boxing for a short period of time. In the same year, he developed an interest in UFOs and became a member of the "Japan Flying Saucer Research Association" (日本空飛ぶ円盤研究会, Nihon soratobu enban kenkyukai). In 1954, he fell in love with Sadako Toyoda (豊田貞子), who became the model for main characters in The Sunken Waterfall (沈める滝, Shizumeru taki) and The Seven Bridges (橋づくし, Hashi zukushi). Mishima hoped to marry her, but they broke up in 1957. After briefly considering marriage with Michiko Shōda, who later married Crown Prince Akihito and became Empress Michiko, Mishima married Yōko (瑤子; née Sugiyama), the daughter of the Japanese-style painter Yasushi Sugiyama, on 1 June 1958. The couple had two children: a daughter named Noriko (紀子) (born 2 June 1959) and a son named Iichirō (威一郎) (born 2 May 1962). Noriko eventually married the diplomat Koji Tomita. While working on his novel Forbidden Colors, Mishima visited gay bars in Japan. Mishima's sexual orientation was an issue that bothered his wife, and she always denied his homosexuality after his death. In 1998, the writer Jirō Fukushima (福島次郎) published an account of his relationship with Mishima in 1951, including fifteen letters (not love letters) from Mishima. Mishima's children successfully sued Fukushima and the publisher for copyright violation over the use of Mishima's letters. The publisher Bungeishunjū had argued that the contents of the letters were "practical correspondence" rather than copyrighted works. However, the ruling for the plaintiffs declared, "In addition to clerical content, these letters describe the Mishima's own feelings, his aspirations, and his views on life, in different words from those in his literary works." In February 1961, Mishima became embroiled in the aftermath of the Shimanaka incident. In 1960, the author Shichirō Fukazawa had published the satirical short story The Tale of an Elegant Dream (風流夢譚, Fūryū Mutan) in the mainstream magazine Chūō Kōron. It contained a dream sequence (in which the emperor and empress are beheaded by a guillotine) that led to outrage from right-wing, ultra-nationalist groups, and numerous death threats against Fukazawa, any writers believed to have been associated with him, and Chūō Kōron magazine. On 1 February 1961, Kazutaka Komori, a 17-year-old rightist, broke into the home of Hōji Shimanaka, the president of Chūō Kōron, killed his maid with a knife and severely wounded his wife. In the aftermath, Fukazawa went into hiding, and dozens of writers and literary critics, including Mishima, were provided with round-the-clock police protection for several months; Mishima was included because a rumor became widespread that Mishima had personally recommended The Tale of an Elegant Dream for publication, and even though he repeatedly denied the claim, he received hundreds of death threats. In later years, Mishima harshly criticized Komori, arguing that those who harm women and children are neither patriots nor traditional right-wingers, and that an assassination attempt should be a one-on-one confrontation with the victim at the risk of the assassin's life. Mishima also argued that it was the custom of traditional Japanese patriots (such as Otoya Yamaguchi) to immediately commit suicide after committing an assassination. In 1963, "The Harp of Joy Incident" (喜びの琴事件, Yorokobi no Koto Jiken) occurred within the theatrical troupe Bungakuza, to which Mishima belonged. He wrote a play titled The Harp of Joy (喜びの琴, Yorokobi no koto), but star actress Haruko Sugimura and other Communist Party-affiliated actors refused to perform because the protagonist held anti-communist views and mentioned criticism about a conspiracy of world communism in his lines. As a result of this ideological conflict, Mishima quit Bungakuza and later formed the troupe Neo Littérature Théâtre (劇団NLT, Gekidan NLT) with playwrights and actors who had quit Bungakuza along with him, including Seiichi Yashio (矢代静一), Takeo Matsuura (松浦竹夫), and Nobuo Nakamura. When Neo Littérature Théâtre experienced a schism in 1968, Mishima formed another troupe, the Roman Theatre (浪曼劇場, Rōman Gekijō), and worked with Matsuura and Nakamura again. During the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Mishima interviewed various athletes every day and wrote articles as a newspaper correspondent. He had eagerly anticipated the long-awaited return of the Olympics to Japan after the 1940 Tokyo Olympics were cancelled due to Japan's war in China. Mishima expressed his excitement in his report on the opening ceremonies: "It can be said that ever since Lafcadio Hearn called the Japanese "the Greeks of the Orient", the Olympics were destined to be hosted by Japan someday." Mishima hated Ryokichi Minobe, who was a socialist and the governor of Tokyo beginning in 1967. Influential persons in the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), including Takeo Fukuda and Kiichi Aichi, had been Mishima's superiors during his time at the Ministry of Finance, and Prime Minister Eisaku Satō came to know Mishima because his wife, Hiroko, was a fan of Mishima's work. Based on these connections LDP officials solicited Mishima to run for the LDP as governor of Tokyo against Minobe, but Mishima had no intention of becoming a politician. Mishima was fond of manga and gekiga, especially the drawing style of Hiroshi Hirata, a mangaka best known for his samurai gekiga; the slapstick, absurdist comedy in Fujio Akatsuka's Mōretsu Atarō; and the imaginativeness of Shigeru Mizuki's GeGeGe no Kitarō. Mishima especially loved reading the boxing manga Ashita no Joe in Weekly Shōnen Magazine every week. Ultraman and Godzilla were his favorite kaiju fantasies, and he once compared himself to "Godzilla's egg" in 1955. On the other hand, he disliked story manga with humanist or cosmopolitan themes, such as Osamu Tezuka's Phoenix. Mishima was a fan of science fiction, contending that "science fiction will be the first literature to completely overcome modern humanism". He praised Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End in particular. While acknowledging "inexpressible unpleasant and uncomfortable feelings after reading it," he said "I'm not afraid to call it a masterpiece." Mishima traveled to Shimoda on the Izu Peninsula with his wife and children every summer from 1964. In Shimoda, Mishima often enjoyed eating local seafood with his friend Henry Scott-Stokes. Mishima never showed any hostility towards the US in front of foreign friends like Scott-Stokes, until Mishima heard that the name of the inn where Scott-Stokes was staying was Kurofune (lit. 'black ship'), at which point his voice suddenly became low and he said in a sullen manner, "Why? Why do you stay at a place with such a name?". Mishima liked ordinary American people after the war, and he and his wife visited Disneyland as newlyweds. However, he clearly retained a strong sense of hostility toward the "black ships" of Commodore Matthew C. Perry, who forcibly opened Japan up to unequal international relations at the end of the Edo period, and had destroyed the peace of Edo, where vivid chōnin culture was flourishing.

Mishima's nationalism grew toward the end of his life. In 1966, he published his short story "Voices of the Fallen Heroes", in which he denounced Emperor Hirohito for renouncing his own divinity after World War II. Mishima argued that the soldiers who had died in the February 26 incident and the Kamikaze had died for their "living god" emperor, and that Hirohito's renunciation of his own divinity meant that all those deaths had been in vain. In February 1967, Mishima joined his fellow-authors Yasunari Kawabata, Kōbō Abe, and Jun Ishikawa in issuing a statement condemning China's Cultural Revolution for suppressing academic and artistic freedom. However, only one Japanese newspaper carried the full text of their statement. In September 1967 Mishima and his wife visited India at the invitation of the Indian government. He traveled widely and met with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and President Zakir Hussain. He left extremely impressed by Indian culture, and what he felt was the Indian people's determination to resist Westernization and protect traditional ways. Mishima feared that his fellow Japanese were too enamored of modernization and Western-style materialism to protect traditional Japanese culture. On his way home from India, Mishima also stopped in Thailand and Laos; his experiences in the three nations became the basis for portions of his novel The Temple of Dawn, the third in his tetralogy The Sea of Fertility. In a series of critical essays in the late 1960s, Mishima exalted what he viewed as traditional Japanese values. In 1967, he published On Hagakure: The Samurai Ethic and Modern Japan (葉隠入門, Hagakure Nyūmon), an impassioned plea for a return to bushido, the putative "samurai code" of Japan's past. Mishima praised the Hagakure, a treatise on warrior virtues authored by the samurai Yamamoto Tsunetomo during the Edo period that valorized the warrior's willingness to die, as being at the core of his literary production and "the source of his vitality as a writer". Mishima concluded, What Hagakure is insisting is that even a merciless death, a futile death that bears neither flower nor fruit, has dignity as the death of a human being. If we value so highly the dignity of life, how can we not also value the dignity of death? No death may be called futile. Mishima's critique of postwar Japan largely is related to the rapid economic growth (economic miracle) displayed by the growth of capitalism. While the economic miracle brought Japan global influence, scholars claim that this created cultural problems. Mishima aligned with the view of cultural decay brought about from this economic growth. Yukio Mishima perceived Imperial Japan to be a spiritually rich society. Mishima expressed his concerns of Japan abandoning discipline, sacrifice, and national identity in exchange for comfort and consumerism. The political consequences of Japan's rapid economic growth had created civil unrest. Postwar Japan was defined by this economic growth and influence from the United States bloated consumerism. Mishima's writings and public affairs shined light upon his views of postwar society crippling the countries future. In On the Defense of Culture (文化防衛論, Bunka bōei ron; 1968), Mishima preached the centrality of the emperor to Japanese culture, and argued that Japan's postwar era was a time of flashy but ultimately hollow prosperity (a "Shōwa Genroku"), lacking any truly transcendent literary or poetic talents comparable to the 18th century masters of the original Genroku era, such as the playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon or the poet Matsuo Bashō. In 1968, Mishima wrote a play titled My Friend Hitler, in which he depicted the historical figures of Adolf Hitler, Gustav Krupp, Gregor Strasser, and Ernst Röhm as mouthpieces to express his own views on fascism and beauty. Mishima explained that after writing the all-female play Madame de Sade, he wanted to write a counterpart play with an all-male cast. Mishima wrote of My Friend Hitler, "You may read this tragedy as an allegory of the relationship between Ōkubo Toshimichi and Saigō Takamori" (two heroes of Japan's Meiji Restoration who initially worked together but later had a falling out). Given the play's provocative title, Mishima was repeatedly asked if he intended to express admiration or support for Hitler. Mishima wrote in a program note,To be honest, I feel a terrifying interest in Hitler, but if the question is whether I like or dislike him, I can only answer, I don't like him. Hitler was a political genius but was not a hero. He thoroughly lacked the refreshing, sunny quality indispensable to becoming a hero. Hitler is as gloomy as the twentieth century. That same year, he wrote Life for Sale, a humorous story about a man who, after attempting suicide, advertises his life for sale. In a review of the English translation, the novelist Ian Thomson called it a "pulp noir" and a "sexy, camp delight", but also noted that, "beneath the hard-boiled dialogue and the gangster high jinks is a familiar indictment of consumerist Japan and a romantic yearning for the past." Like many other right-wingers, Mishima was extremely alarmed by the riots and revolutionary actions undertaken by radical "New Left" university students, who took over dozens of college campuses in Japan in 1968 and 1969. On 25 February 1968, he and several other right-wingers met at the editorial offices of the recently founded minzoku-ha monthly magazine Controversy Journal (論争ジャーナル, Ronsō jaanaru), where they pricked their little fingers and signed a blood oath promising to die if necessary to prevent a left-wing revolution from occurring in Japan. Mishima showed his sincerity by signing his birth name, Kimitake Hiraoka, in his own blood. On 13 May 1969, Mishima accepted an invitation to debate with members of the Tokyo University Zenkyōtō on the university's Komaba campus. This debate lasted for 2.5 hours, with both Mishima and the students treating each other amiably and with respect, despite Mishima's initial fears that the students might kill him on the spot for his right-wing views. At this debate, Mishima told the students, "As long as you refer to the Emperor as 'Emperor,' I will gladly join forces with you," but in the end the ideological differences between Mishima and the students could not be overcome. Mishima ended by saying, "I believe in your passion. I believe in this alone. Even if I believe in nothing else of yours, I want you to know that I believe in this alone." In an essay written after the debate Mishima said that "they could not escape established leftist thinking" and that "the discussion was inevitably at a stalemate." In this essay, Mishima argued that the supposedly revolutionary Zenkyōtō were themselves "weakening the roots of the revolutionary ideal in Japan" by rejecting the idea of the "Emperor", which Mishima claimed was also "a revolutionary ideal deeply rooted in the consciousness of the Japanese people." Mishima's friends interpreted this essay as him expressing his disappointment with the Zenkyōtō. In these days, Mishima wrote many essays and gave many dialogues about Japan and Japanese culture. In a dialogue about what you would die for as a Japanese, he stated that "protecting freedom," "protecting democracy," or "protecting a certain political system" were "secondary issues," not essential issues, and that he could not imagine dying for them. He argued that the ultimate values that should be protected were the "Three Sacred Treasures," which represent the identity of Japanese culture, and the Emperor. Throughout this period, Mishima continued to work on his magnum opus The Sea of Fertility tetralogy of novels, which began appearing in a monthly serialized format in September 1965. The four completed novels were Spring Snow (1969), Runaway Horses (1969), The Temple of Dawn (1970), and The Decay of the Angel (published posthumously in 1971). Mishima aimed for a very long novel with a completely different raison d'être from Western chronicle novels of the 19th and 20th centuries; rather than telling the story of a single individual or family, Mishima boldly set his goal as interpreting the entire human world. In The Sea of Fertility, four stories convey the transmigration of the human soul as the main character goes through a series of reincarnations. Mishima hoped to express in literary terms something akin to pantheism. The novelist Paul Theroux wrote a blurb for the first edition of the English translation of The Sea of Fertility as "the most complete vision we have of Japan in the twentieth century" and critic Charles Solomon wrote in 1990 that "the four novels remain one of the outstanding works of 20th-Century literature and a summary of the author's life and work".

From 12 April to 27 May 1967, Mishima underwent basic training with the Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF). Mishima had originally lobbied to train with the GSDF for six months, but was met with resistance from the Defense Agency. Mishima's training period was finalized to 46 days, which required using some of his connections. His participation in GSDF training was kept secret, both because the Defense Agency did not want to give the impression that anyone was receiving special treatment, and because Mishima wanted to experience "real" military life. Accordingly, Mishima trained under his birth name, Kimitake Hiraoka, and most of his fellow soldiers did not recognize him. From June 1967, Mishima became a leading figure in a plan to create a 10,000-man "Japan National Guard" (祖国防衛隊, Sokoku Bōeitai) as a civilian complement to the Self-Defense Forces. He began leading groups of right-wing college students to undergo basic training with the GSDF in the hope of training 100 officers to lead the National Guard. Finding that his plan for a large-scale Japan National Guard with broad public and private support had failed to catch on, Mishima formed the Tatenokai ("Shield Society"), a private militia composed primarily of right-wing college students, on 5 October 1968. Mishima accepted no outside money, and funded the activities of the Tatenokai using royalties from his writing. The Tatenokai primarily focused on martial training and physical fitness, including traditional kendo sword-fighting and long-distance running. Live-fire training was also conducted. Mishima personally oversaw this training. Initial membership was around 50, and was drawn primarily from students from Waseda University and individuals affiliated with the Controversy Journal. The number of Tatenokai members was later increased to exactly 100. On 25 November 1970, Mishima and four members of the Tatenokai—Masakatsu Morita, Masahiro Ogawa (小川正洋), Masayoshi Koga (小賀正義), and Hiroyasu Koga—used a pretext to visit Lieutenant General Kanetoshi Mashita (益田兼利), the commandant of Camp Ichigaya (防衛省市ヶ谷地区), a military base in central Tokyo and the headquarters of the Eastern Command of the Japan Self-Defense Forces. Once inside, they barricaded the door to Mashita's office and tied him to his chair. Mishima wore a white hachimaki headband with a red hinomaru circle in the center bearing the kanji for "To be reborn seven times to serve the country" (七生報國, Shichishō hōkoku), a reference to the last words of Kusunoki Masasue, the younger brother of the 14th-century imperial loyalist samurai Kusunoki Masashige, as the two brothers died fighting to defend the emperor. Holding a prepared manifesto and a banner listing their demands, Mishima stepped out onto the balcony to address the soldiers gathered below. His speech was intended to inspire a coup d'état to restore direct rule to the emperor. He succeeded only in irritating the soldiers, and was heckled, with jeers and the noise of helicopters drowning out some parts of his speech. In his speech, Mishima rebuked the JSDF for its passive acceptance of a constitution that "denies (their) own existence" and shouted "Where has the spirit of the samurai gone?" In a final written appeal titled Geki that Morita and Ogawa scattered copies of from the balcony, Mishima expressed his dissatisfaction with the half-baked nature of the JSDF: "It is self-evident that the United States would not be pleased with a true Japanese volunteer army protecting the land of Japan." Scholars argue that Mishima’s rebellion was less about militarism itself and more about resisting Japan’s total submission to U.S. democratic ideals, which he saw as a direct opposition to Japanese imperialistic tradition. Mishima emphasized the importance of the emperor to Japanese culture. The emperor's loss of status and authority was a significant motivation for Mishima's attempted coup; he argued that this loss reflected a broader loss of national identity and culture. After he finished reading his prepared speech in a few minutes' time, Mishima cried out "Long live the Emperor!" (天皇陛下万歳, Tenno-heika banzai) three times. He then retreated into the commandant's office and apologized to the commandant, saying, "We did it to return the JSDF to the Emperor. I had no choice but to do this." Mishima then committed seppuku, a form of ritual suicide by disembowelment associated with the samurai. Morita had been assigned to serve as Mishima's second (kaishakunin), cutting off his head with a sword at the end of the rite to spare him unnecessary pain. However, Morita proved unable to complete his task, and after three failed attempts to sever Mishima's head, Hiroyasu Koga had to step in and complete the task. According to the testimony of the surviving coup members, originally all four Tatenokai members had planned to commit seppuku along with Mishima. However, Mishima attempted to dissuade them and three of the members acquiesced to his wishes. Only Morita persisted, saying, "I can't let Mr. Mishima die alone." However, Mishima knew that Morita had a girlfriend and still hoped he might live. Just before his seppuku, Mishima tried one more time to dissuade him, saying "Morita, you must live, not die." Nevertheless, after Mishima's seppuku, Morita knelt and stabbed himself in the abdomen and Koga acted as kaishakunin again. Another traditional element of the suicide ritual was the composition of death poems by the Tatenokai members prior to their entry into the headquarters. This coup attempt is called the "Mishima Incident" (三島事件, Mishima jiken) in Japan. Mishima had planned his suicide meticulously for at least a year, and no one outside a small group of hand-picked Tatenokai members knew of his plan. Mishima had made sure his affairs were in order and left money for the legal defense of the three surviving Tatenokai members involved in the incident. Mishima had also arranged for a department store to send his two children Christmas gifts every year until they became adults, and had asked a publisher to pay the long-term subscription fee for children's magazines in advance and deliver them every month. Much speculation has surrounded Mishima's suicide. One of Mishima's biographers, translator John Nathan, suggests that the coup attempt was only a pretext for the ritual suicide of which Mishima had long dreamed. Mishima's friend Henry Scott-Stokes, another biographer and journalist, noted a meeting with Mishima in his diary entry for 3 September 1970 at which Mishima, with a dark expression on his face, said: Japan has lost its spiritual tradition, and instead has become infested with materialism. Japan is under the curse of a green snake. There is a green snake in the bosom of Japan. There is no way to escape this curse. In 1990, Scott-Stokes told Takao Tokuoka (徳岡孝夫), who was entrusted with the Geki by Mishima just before the Mishima Incident, that he understood the meaning of "green snake" was the U.S. dollar. One researcher has speculated that Mishima chose 25 November for his coup attempt in order to set his period of bardo until his reincarnation, such that the 49th day after his death would coincide with his birthday, 14 January. Mishima's remains were returned to his family the day after the incident, and were buried in the grave of the Hiraoka family at Tama Cemetery on what would have been his 46th birthday, 14 January 1971.

Harakiri, by Péter Eötvös (1973). An opera based on the Japanese translation of István Bálint's poetry Harakiri that inspired by Mishima's hara-kiri. This work is included in Ryoko Aoki (青木涼子)'s album Noh x Contemporary Music (能×現代音楽) in June 2014. String Quartet No.3, "Mishima", by Philip Glass. A reworking of parts of his soundtrack for the film Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, it has a duration of 18 minutes. Sonatas for Yukio – C.P.E. Bach: Harpsichord Sonatas, by Jocelyne Cuiller (2011). A program composed of Bach sonatas for each scene of the novel "Spring Snow".

Patriotism (憂国, Yūkoku) lyrics by Yoshio Kodama, composition by Masao Koga, singing by Hisao Itō (伊藤久男) (1971) Curry rice (カレーライス, Karē raisu) lyrics/composition and singing by Kenji Endo (遠藤賢司) (1971) "Death and Night and Blood (Yukio)", a song by the Stranglers from the Black and White album (1978). (Death and Night and Blood is the phrase from Mishima's novel Confessions of a Mask) "Forbidden Colours", a song on Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence soundtrack by Ryuichi Sakamoto with lyrics by David Sylvian (1983). Inspired by Mishima's novel Forbidden Colors. "Kendo for Yukio Mishima", Japanese bonus track on the album The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast by American electronic duo Matmos. (2006)

Yukio Mishima, a play by Adam Darius and Kazimir Kolesnik, first performed at Holloway Prison, London, in 1991, and later in Finland, Slovenia and Portugal. M, a ballet spectacle work homage to Mishima by Maurice Béjart in 1993

Yuuyake Banchō Volume 15 "Both literary and martial arts" (文武両道, bunbu ryōdō) written by Ikki Kajiwara and Illustrated by Toshio Shōji (荘司としお) (1971) Shin Megami Tensei by Atlus (1992) – A character Gotou who started a coup in Ichigaya, modeled on Mishima. Tekken by Namco (1994) – Mishima surname comes from Yukio Mishima, and a main character, Kazuya Mishima, had his way of thinking based on Mishima. Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd GIG (攻殻機動隊 S.A.C. 2nd GIG, Kokaku Kidōtai S.A.C. 2nd GIG) (2004, Production I.G) Jakomo Fosukari (Jakomo Fosukari (ジャコモ・フォスカリ)) by Mari Yamazaki (2012) – The characters modeled on Mishima and Kōbō Abe appears in. Persona 5 (2016) - A character named after Mishima, named Yuki Mishima, appears. He works to support the main characters from the sidelines and eventually resolves to write a documentary about them.

Harakiri, by István Bálint. 3 Tanka poems, Grave of Mishima (ユキオ・ミシマの墓, Mishima Yukio no haka) written by Pierre Pascal (1970) and 12 Haiku poems. Appendix of Shinsho Hanayama (花山信勝)'s book Discovering Peace: A Record of Life and Death in Sugamo (平和の発見―巣鴨の生と死の記録, Heiwa no Hakken: Sugamo no Sei to Shi no Kiroku) translated into French. The Ritual of Love and Death (Patriotism) (愛と死の儀式（憂国）, Ai to Shi no gishiki (Yūkoku)) written by Emmanuel Rothen (1970) Lamentation: Yukio Mishima (哭三島由紀夫, Koku Mishima Yukio) written by Akira Asano (浅野晃) (1971) described at the conclusion of the eulogy "Rainbow Gate". Yūkoku-ki (憂国忌) written by Shūji Terayama (1971) Harakiri (ハラキリ) written by Hiromi Itō (1986) It was noon (正午だった, Shogo datta) & Haiku written by Genki Fujii (2007) Reading at the 38th "Patriotism Memorial" (憂国忌, Yūkoku-ki), 37th Anniversary of His Death.

Kou (Kou (恒)) by Junji Wakebe (分部順治) (1976) – Life-sized male bronze sculpture modeled on Mishima. The work was requested by Mishima in the fall of 1970, he went to Wakebe's atelier every Sunday. It was exhibited at the 6th Niccho Exhibition on 7 April 1976. In his will, Mishima wrote that he wanted his divided bones buried in a location with a view of Mount Fuji and the ocean, and that he wanted this bronze statue to be placed there concurrently, but as of 2017, this request had not yet been fulfilled. Season of fiery fire / Requiem for someone: Number 1, Mishima (Rekka no kisetsu/Nanimonoka eno rekuiemu: Sono ichi Mishima (烈火の季節／なにものかへのレクイエム・その壱 ミシマ)) and Classroom of beauty, listen quietly: bi-class, be quiet (Bi no kyositsu, seicho seyo (美の教室、清聴せよ)) by Yasumasa Morimura (2006, 2007) – Disguise performance as Mishima Objectglass 12 and The Death of a Man (Otoko no shi (男の死)) by Kimiski Ishizuka (石塚公昭) (2007, 2011) – Mishima dolls

In addition to contemporary-style plays such as Madame de Sade, Mishima wrote for two of the three genres of classical Japanese theatre: Noh and Kabuki (as a proud Tokyoite, he would not attend the Bunraku puppet theatre, always associated with Osaka and the provinces). Although Mishima took themes, titles, and characters from the Noh canon, his twists and modern settings, such as hospitals and ballrooms, startled audiences accustomed to the long-settled originals. Donald Keene translated Five Modern Noh Plays (Tuttle, 1981; ISBN 0-8048-1380-9). Most others remain untranslated and so lack an "official" English title; in such cases it is therefore preferable to use the rōmaji title.

Ba-ra-kei: Ordeal by Roses (薔薇刑) by Eikō Hosoe and Mishima (photoerotic collection of images of Mishima, with his own commentary, 1963) (Aperture 2002 ISBN 0-89381-169-6) Grafica: Yukio Mishima (Grafica Mishima Yukio (グラフィカ三島由紀夫)) by Kōichi Saitō, Kishin Shinoyama, Takeyoshi Tanuma, Ken Domon, Masahisa Fukase, Eikō Hosoe, Ryūji Miyamoto etc. (photoerotic collection of Yukio Mishima) (Shinchosha 1990 ISBN 978-4-10-310202-1) Yukio Mishima's house (Mishima Yukio no Ie (三島由紀夫の家)) by Kishin Shinoyama (Bijutsu Shuppansha 1995 ISBN 978-4-568-12055-4) The Death of a Man (Otoko no shi (男の死)) by Kishin Shinoyama and Mishima (photo collection of death images of Japanese men including a sailor, a construction worker, a fisherman, and a soldier, those were Mishima did modeling in 1970) (Rizzoli 2020 ISBN 978-0-8478-6869-8)

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985), a film directed by Paul Schrader The Strange Case of Yukio Mishima (1985) BBC documentary directed by Michael Macintyre Yukio Mishima: Samurai Writer, a BBC documentary on Yukio Mishima, directed by Michael Macintyre, (1985, VHS ISBN 978-1-4213-6981-5, DVD ISBN 978-1-4213-6982-2) Miyabi: Yukio Mishima (みやび 三島由紀夫) (2005), a documentary film directed by Chiyoko Tanaka 11:25 The Day He Chose His Own Fate (2012), a film directed by Kōji Wakamatsu Mishima Yukio vs. Zenkyōtō of Tokyo University: the Truth revealed in the 50th year (三島由紀夫vs東大全共闘〜50年目の真実〜) (2020), a documentary film directed by Keisuke Toyoshima (豊島圭介)

Mishima starred in multiple films. Patriotism was written and funded by himself, and he directed it in close cooperation with Masaki Domoto. Mishima also wrote a detailed account of the whole process, in which the particulars regarding costume, shooting expenses and the film's reception are delved into. Patriotism won the second prize at the Tours International Short Film Festival in January 1966.