Yukio Mishima Another traditional element of the suicide ritual was the composition of so-called death poems before their entry into the headquarters. Mishima planned his suicide meticulously for at least a year and no one outside the group of hand-picked "Tatenokai" members had any indication of what he was planning. His biographer, translator John Nathan, suggests that the coup attempt was only a pretext for the ritual suicide of which Mishima had long dreamed. Mishima made sure his affairs were in order and left money for the legal defense of the three surviving "Tatenokai" members. Mishima's grave is located at the Tama
Tomoyuki Hoshino Tomoyuki Hoshino Born in Los Angeles, he accompanied his family back to Japan before he was three years old. He attended Waseda University and worked for a while as a journalist after graduating in 1988. He spent the better part of the years 1990-5 living in Mexico before returning to Japan, where for a time he worked translating from Spanish-language movies into Japanese. In 1997 he published his first novel "The Last Gasp", for which he was awarded the Bungei Prize. He won the 13th Yukio Mishima Prize for his second novel "The Mermaid Sings Wake Up", which was published