their art, but few died their art as ambitiously or publicly as Yukio Mishima—imperialist, bodybuilder, actor, director, best-selling author, homosexual, commander of his own private army, icon, and ...

Before this point, I was beginning to think that Yukio Mishima was only capable of one type of novel — that is, the angsty, pissed off, young male protagonist in search of self-destruction. In fact, ...

The name Yukio Mishima remains prominent more than 15 years after his suicide because, to paraphrase Robert Lowell on Marlowe, his works were stamped in bronze and his life in tabloid. Here was a ...

Shakespeare was a Master when it came to crafting great melodrama. Just look at some of his tragedies, ones like Hamlet where everyone literally ends up dead. And with that bad ass sword fight at the ...

I once owned a photograph of Yukio Mishima squatting in the snow, dressed in nothing but a skimpy white loincloth, brandishing a long samurai sword. Mishima’s torso is buffed from years of ...