The most internationally acclaimed Japanese author of the twentieth century, Yukio Mishima (1925-70) was a prime candidate for the Nobel Prize. But the prolific author shocked the world in 1970 when he attempted a coup d'etat that ended in his suicide by ritual disembowelment. In this radically new analysis of Mishima's extraordinary life, Damian Flanagan deviates from the stereotypical depiction of a right-wing nationalist and aesthete, presenting the author instead as a man in thrall to the modern world while also plagued by hidden neuroses and childhood trauma that pushed him toward his...