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 which was published in 1954, and drew inspiration from the Greek legend of Daphnis and Chloe. Mishima made use of contemporary events in many of his works. "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion" published in 1956 is a fictionalization of the burning of the famous temple in Kyoto. "Utage no ato" ("After the Banquet"), published in 1960, so closely followed the events surrounding politician Hachirō Arita's campaign to become governor of Tokyo that Mishima was sued for invasion of privacy. In 1962, Mishima's most avant-garde work, "Utsukushii hoshi" ("Beautiful Star"), which at times comes close to science fiction, was published