Japanese literature volcanic island, close to Kagoshima, on the southern tip of the Kyushu island. Osamu Dazai's novel "The Setting Sun" tells of a soldier returning from Manchukuo. Shōhei Ōoka won the Yomiuri Prize for his novel "Fires on the Plain" about a Japanese deserter going mad in the Philippine jungle. Yukio Mishima, well known for both his nihilistic writing and his controversial suicide by seppuku, began writing in the post-war period. Nobuo Kojima's short story "The American School" portrays a group of Japanese teachers of English who, in the immediate aftermath of the war, deal with the American occupation in varying
Yukio Mishima to mixed critical response. Mishima was considered for the Nobel Prize for Literature three times and was a favorite of many foreign publications. However, in 1968 his early mentor Kawabata won the Nobel Prize and Mishima realized that the chances of it being given to another Japanese author in the near future were slim. In a work published in 1970, Mishima wrote that the writers he paid most attention to in modern western literature were Georges Bataille, Pierre Klossowski, and Witold Gombrowicz. Mishima was also an actor, and had a starring role in Yasuzo Masumura's 1960 film, "Afraid to Die".