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
Yukio Mishima He also had roles in films including "Yukoku" (directed by himself, 1966), "Black Lizard" (directed by Kinji Fukasaku, 1968) and "Hitokiri" (directed by Hideo Gosha, 1969). He also sang the theme song for "Afraid to Die" (lyrics by himself; music by Shichirō Fukazawa). Mishima was featured as a photo model in "Ba-ra-kei: Ordeal by Roses" by Eikoh Hosoe, as well as in "Young Samurai: Bodybuilders of Japan" and "Otoko: Photo Studies of the Young Japanese Male" by Tamotsu Yatō. American author Donald Richie gave a short lively account of Mishima, dressed in a loincloth and armed with a sword, posing