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 Island, Yamaguchi the Imperial Japanese Navy. The island is home to the rare and criticallyendangered Mishima breed of Japanese native cattle, which was declared a Japanese National Treasure in 1928, and is one of two remaining breeds of Japanese native cattle – the other being the Kuchinoshima breed on Kuchinoshima island in the Tokara Islands. The island is the source of Mishima clay, a dark red basaltic clay high in iron, with low plasticity, which was one of the three types of clay used to make Hagi ware. Mishima Island, Yamaguchi Mishima, , is an island in the Hagi Archipelago, in Yamaguchi