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
Mishima Yukio Prize Mishima Yukio Prize The is a Japanese literary award presented annually. It was established in 1988 in memory of author Yukio Mishima. The Mishima Yukio Prize is explicitly intended for work that "breaks new ground for the future of literature," and prize winners tend to be more controversial and experimental than winners of the more traditional Akutagawa Prize. It is awarded in the same annual ceremony as the Yamamoto Shūgorō Prize, which was established by the same sponsor in 1988 to recognize popular writing and genre fiction. Shinchosha, the award's sponsor, maintains an official archive of award nominee and recipient