«Certainly it would not be right to let everybody exchange his life for a line of poetry written in a splash of blood.»
— 三島 由紀夫
Mishima is a leading Japanese writer, author of The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Kukio's house and The Sea of Fertility, among other many works, famous for having committed seppuku (suicide by the samuraï sword) to honour his nationalist ideals. He incarnates those who take what they think, write and say seriously, as he best expressed in Sun and Steel:
- Never in physical action had I found the chilling satisfaction of words. :Never in words had I experienced the hot darkness of action. :Somewhere there must be a higher principle which reconciles art and action. :That principle, it occurred to me, was death.
He provides one of the major themes for my book Yuriko.
Philip Glass wrote a beautiful score inspired by Mishima. A favourite is Runaway Horses. This is the soundtrack for Paul Schrader's movie Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters.