Yasunari Kawabata had Parkinson's disease), a possible illicit love affair, or the shock caused by the suicide of his friend Yukio Mishima in 1970. Unlike Mishima, Kawabata left no note, and since (again unlike Mishima) he had not discussed significantly in his writings the topic of taking his own life, his motives remain unclear. However, his Japanese biographer, Takeo Okuno, has related how he had nightmares about Mishima for two or three hundred nights in a row, and was incessantly haunted by the specter of Mishima. In a persistently depressed state of mind, he would tell friends during his last years that
Mishima Island, Yamaguchi Mishima Island, Yamaguchi Mishima, , is an island in the Hagi Archipelago, in Yamaguchi Prefecture in the Chūgoku region of south-western Honshu, Japan. It lies in the Sea of Japan, approximately from Hagi. It has a surface area of approximately , and a population of 829 in 458 households. The Battle of Tsushima between Russian and Japanese forces took place near the island of Mishima on 27–28 May 1905, during the Russo-Japanese War. Nikolai Nebogatov surrendered to the Japanese on 28 May, and his remaining ships were taken. One of these, the "Admiral Seniavin", was renamed "Mishima" when commissioned into