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The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima
Novelist, playwright, film actor, martial artist, and political commentator, Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) was arguably the most famous person in Japan at the time of his death. Henry Scott Stokes, one of Mishima's closest friends, was the only non-Japanese allowed to attend the trial of the men involved in Mishima's spectacular suicide. In this insightful and empathetic look ...more
Paperback, 318 pages
Published
October 25th 2000
by Cooper Square Publishers
(first published 1974)
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The Life And Death Of Yukio Mishima by Henry Scott Stokes is a good companion to John Nathan's biography, which focuses more on Mishima's early life. Stokes spends a lot of time on Mishima's politics and last years. Furthermore, there is more analysis on Mishima's work and how it reflected his life and views. In Paul Schrader's commentary for his film Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, he mentions Stokes accuses them of using his book for the film at a press conference. Schrader publicly states ...more
De eerste keer dat ik hoorde over Japanse schrijver Mishima (1925-1970), was toen Mishima (1985) van Paul Schrader (o.m. ook scenarist van Taxi Driver) ergens in de eerste helft van de jaren negentig op VTM getoond werd. Meteen was ik in de ban van een van de meest markante literaire figuren van de vorige eeuw. Mishima’s leven en werk is larger-than-life en intrigerend om talloze redenen. Hij wordt tot de grootste Japanse auteurs van de 20e eeuw gerekend (naast Junichiro Tanizaki, Yasunari Kawab...more
Is there any writer more 'out' there than Yukio Mishima? It is not just his spectacular and very public suicide - which by the way he wrote in detail about as well as doing a film version of his death, before hand of course - but also his public identity as a writer. Probably one of my favorite writers and as a teenager I couldn't get enough of him. A role model of sorts!
This is a very good biography by a friend of his, and also there is another bio in English by another friend...more
This is a very good biography by a friend of his, and also there is another bio in English by another friend...more
He is a little bit annoying about knowing Mishima. Lots of "I was the only foreigner invited to x", "I was the only journalist who met him at y" and he includes a photograph of himself with Mishima. But I forgive him because his account of the Shield Society’s training manoeuvres is very interesting, and he includes some more information on Morita Masakatsu. He spends more time on the theory that Mishima saw Morita as Omi (from "Confessions of a Mask"), they had a s...more
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Of the two standard biographies of Mishima, this is the one written by someone who met and interviewed him.
I've no interest whatsoever in either Mishima or his works, but I met both Scott-Stokes and his first wife, so I thought I'd give the book a try. It proved useful as a reference work for a course I offered in the Modern Japanese Novel.
I've no interest whatsoever in either Mishima or his works, but I met both Scott-Stokes and his first wife, so I thought I'd give the book a try. It proved useful as a reference work for a course I offered in the Modern Japanese Novel.
I've only read one Mishima novel - Temple of the Golden Pavilion - but I suspect it's much more interesting to read about him than to read him. Really, a nationalistic, aristocratic, closeted, Japanese novelist/playwright...that’s entertaining.
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