Mitsuyasu Maeno Mitsuyasu Maeno Mitsuyasu Maeno was born Shimoichiro Maeno in about 1947. He attended classes in acting at the University of California in 1967. Maeno was married twice, and both marriages ended in divorce. His troubled personal life also included a suicide attempt. According to his father, Maeno came under the influence of the right-wing and ultra-nationalistic philosophies of the writer Yukio Mishima. In November 1970, Mishima had attempted to incite the Self-Defense Forces to overthrow the 1947 Constitution of Japan. When his efforts to restore Japan to a wartime samurai ethic failed, Mishima committed ritual suicide. In contrast to the
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