Major Issues
Author Links
Essay Questions

Major Issues

The fascinating and horrifying facts of Mishima’s own death, by ritual suicide, loom over his writing and inevitably color the response to his work. As critics have observed, Mishima’s death can be seen as an enactment of some of the major themes explored in his fiction: including the romantic idealization of the warrior culture, and the exploration of the connection between art and violence, beauty and death. Although some reviewers dismiss Mishima’s writing as "fascistic romanticism," others point to the realistic elements and argue that the romantic ideal is shown to be unrealizable, but still valuable, in his work. Mishima’s intense focus on the body and sexuality has disturbed some readers, but has attracted the attention of poststructuralist critics.

Author Links

Mishima Yukio Cyber Museum
This site provides a timeline, list of primary works, and information about the museum in Japan.

Featured Author: Yukio Mishima
Reviews of Mishima’s books, plus articles by and about Mishima from the archives of The New York Times.

Yukio Mishima: 1925-1970
This bio-critical article highlights Mishima’s importance to 20th century Japanese literature, and notes his patriotism, obsession with the body, and ritual suicide.

Yukio Mishima
This short overview discusses Mishima’s controversial reception by Japanese readers and critics.

How to Write in Japanese
1965 interview in which Mishima talks about Japanese characters and the difficulty of translating Japanese into English.