Remembering Yukio Mishima

Back in April 2009, we discussed Yukio Mishima's novel, Confessions of a Mask. While catching up on back issues of The Economist, I discovered that the Dec. 5 issue included an article reflecting on the 50th anniversary of Mishima's Nov. 25, 1970, death by seppuku (ritual suicide). It rightly traces his choice to die in such a public manner to Mishima's "obsession with pleasure, pain and homoeroticism," and observes that in one of his greatest novels, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, "a monk burns a temple because it is too beautiful. Mishima, in turn, was building his body for a final sacrifice." On a related note, there is a new documentary about the novelist's appearance before a hall of left-wing students the year before his death: "Mishima: The Last Debate."