Thirst for Love pre-Oedipal complex running through this and several other Mishima texts. "Thirst for Love" was translated into English by Alfred H. Marks (Alfred A. Knopf, 1969). On November 25, 1970, Mishima committed suicide. A paperback edition was released July 1971 from Berkley Books. "Ai no Kawaki" was made into a 1967 film with the same title, directed by Koreyoshi Kurahara, with Ruriko Asaoka playing Etsuko. Thirst for Love Thirst for Love (or 愛の渇き, Ai no Kawaki) is a 1950 novel by the Japanese writer Yukio Mishima. The word "kawaki" literally means "thirst", but has a sense of parched dryness associated with
Yukio Mishima that all those deaths were in vain. In the final ten years of his life, Mishima wrote several full-length plays, acted in several films, and co-directed an adaptation of one of his stories, "Patriotism, the Rite of Love and Death." He also continued work on his final tetralogy, "The Sea of Fertility" ("Hōjō no Umi"), which appeared in monthly serialized format from September 1965. Mishima espoused a very individual brand of nationalism towards the end of his life. He was hated by leftists, in particular for his outspoken commitment to bushido, the code of the samurai, and by mainstream nationalists