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
Propaganda in Japan during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II from Western imperialism. Propaganda portrayed the West, and especially the Anglo-Saxon world, as decadent and weak. Japanese nationalistic propaganda made it difficult for the diverse nations of Asia to feel that they belonged in the new world order Japan was offering. (Japanese propaganda also promoted general Pan-Asianism, but this was never implemented as thoroughly as the nationalistic elements.) Because of this, Japanese propaganda was less appealing to non-Japanese than American propaganda, with its message of universal democracy open (in theory) to everybody. Japanese wartime propaganda was distributed through films, magazines and newspapers, radio, books, cartoons and the education system. The