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
Seppuku surrender at the end of World War II. This behavior had been widely praised by propaganda, which made a soldier captured in the Shanghai Incident (1932) return to the site of his capture to perform seppuku. In 1970, author Yukio Mishima and one of his followers performed public seppuku at the Japan Self-Defense Forces headquarters after an unsuccessful attempt to incite the armed forces to stage a coup d'état. Mishima performed seppuku in the office of General Kanetoshi Mashita. His second, a 25-year-old man named Masakatsu Morita, tried three times to ritually behead Mishima but failed; his head was finally