Richard Appignanesi interesting and Mr. Appignanesi's descriptive skills are considerable." Almost two decades later Appignanesi published "Yukio Mishima’s Report to the Emperor", a fictional autobiography of the Japanese poet, novelist, playwright, film director, actor and bodybuilder Yukio Mishima (1925 - 1970), one of the most important Japanese literary and artistic figures of the 20th century as well as an extreme-right activist. Appignanesi's novel is set predominantly in post-World War II reconstruction Japan and in Benares, India. Its narrative builds up to Mishima's horrific ritual suicide by seppuku that accompanied his failed right-wing coup against the Japanese government. The novel explores some of
Yukio Mishima promising career. However, Mishima had exhausted himself so much that his father agreed to his resigning from the position during the first year of employment in order to devote himself to writing. Mishima wrote novels, popular serial novellas, short stories and literary essays, as well as highly acclaimed plays for the Kabuki theater and modern versions of traditional Noh drama. "Kemono no Tawamure" (獣の戯れ, "The Frolic of the Beasts") is considered a parody of the classical Noh play "Motomezuka," written in the fourteenth century by the playwright Kiyotsugu Kan'ami. Mishima began the short story in 1945, and continued to work