Yukio Mishima Yukio Mishima Mishima was active as a nationalist and founded his own right-wing militia, the Tatenokai. In 1970, he and four other members of his militia attempted a "coup d'état" when they seized control of a Japanese military base and took the commander hostage, then tried and failed to inspire a coup to restore the Emperor's pre-war powers, in accordance with Mishima's conceptualization of the Kokutai. Mishima then committed ritual suicide by "seppuku". The coup attempt became known as the "Mishima Incident". The Mishima Prize was established in 1988 to honor his life and works. Mishima was born in the
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".