(1925-1970) novelist, short-story writer, playwright
Mishima Yukio was born in Tokyo to Hiraoka Azusa and Shizue Hashi. Shortly after his birth, Mishima’s paternal grandmother, Natsuko, took him to raise. In accordance with his grandmother’s wishes, he attended the elitist Gakushuin, a school founded to educate the imperial family. Mishima was a good student and displayed a talent for writing even while he was young.
While still at Gakushuin, he published his first prose work, A Forest in Full Bloom (1941), a historical novel. Mishima disclaimed this story as imitative of Austrian poet Rainer Maria rilke, but critics received it favorably. Having made a literary entrance, Mishima widened his literary circles, becoming associated with the Japanese romantics.
As World War II raged, Mishima prepared himself to go to war. However, when he went for his final physical, he was misdiagnosed with tuberculosis. As a result, he sat out the war, working in a navy library, and was accepted to Tokyo Imperial University in 1944.
After World War II, the romantics were out of favor in a world dominated by the struggle to recover from the war. Mishima’s work was regarded as too introspective, so he had difficulty publishing his stories. However, in 1946 he met kawabata Yasunari, who helped him publish two stories. The first of these—”The Middle Ages” (1946)—was a portrayal of the grief the historical figure Ashik-aga Yoshimasa felt over the death of his son, Shogun Ashikaga Yoshihisa. The second story— “Cigarettes” (1946)—was based on Mishima’s experiences at Gakushuin. The protagonist becomes a target of members of a rugby club when he reveals that he has joined the literary club. Shortly thereafter, Mishima received his degree from Tokyo Imperial University and went to work for the finance ministry. After less than a year, he left the ministry and joined a group of leftist writers, who helped him once again to publish his work.
In 1948, he published his first novel, Thieves, a story of love among a group of upper-class youth. The novel was not well received but demonstrated the development of a romantic style that reached its fulfillment in Mishima’s next novel.
Confessions of a Mask (1949) established Mishi-ma as a writer of merit. The story is about a man who struggles with a growing awareness of his homosexuality and attempts to throw off the mask of heterosexuality. In this novel, Mishima tackles for the first time the issue of false appearances, a theme that recurs in his later works.
Although Confessions of a Mask launched Mishima’s career, the stories that followed were not of the same caliber. Two years passed before he published his next major work, Forbidden Colors, a novel that describes the homosexual subculture of Tokyo in the immediate postwar period.
In 1956, Mishima published his best-received work, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. The story centers on a temple acolyte who is handicapped by a stutter. Frustrated by the inaccessibility of beauty, he decides to destroy the temple, a symbol of beauty, and burns it to the ground. This novel won Mishima the Yomiuri Prize for literature.
Mishima married Yoko Sugiyama, the daughter of a well-known painter, in 1958 and settled into a comfortable life. During this period his nationalistic beliefs began to resurface, and he wrote “Patriotism” (1956), a short story based on an attempted coup d’etat by imperial army officers in 1936. “Patriotism” was the first in a series of stories that deal with characters who either betray or uphold ideals.
These nationalistic stories helped build to the climax of Mishima’s life—his ritualistic suicide within the compound of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces in Tokyo in protest of the demilitarization of Japan. On November 25, 1970, Mishima and three members of the militaristic group he organized, the Shield Society, took Gen. Kanetoshi Mashita hostage. After a publicized speech from a rooftop in which Mishima called for a return of the emperor to power, he retired into the building and committed seppuku (a ritualistic suicide using a sword).
Other Works by Yukio Mishima
After the Banquet. Translated by Donald Keene. New York: Knopf, 1963.
Madame de Sade. Translated by Donald Keene. New York: Grove Press, 1967.
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea. Translated by John Nathan. New York: Knopf, 1965.
Works about Yukio Mishima
Nathan, John. Mishima: A Biography. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2000.
Scott-Stokes, Henry. The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1974.
Yourcenar, Marguerite. Mishima: A Vision of the Void. Translated by Alberto Manguel. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1986.
