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As General Mashita looked on in helpless horror, Mishima stripped to the waist and knelt on the floor, only inches away. "Don't be a fool, stop it!" the general cried. Mishima paid no heed. He followed to the letter the seppuku, the traditional samurai form of suicide sometimes called harakiri. Probing the left side of his abdomen, he put the ceremonial dagger in place, then thrust it deep into his flesh. Standing behind him, Masakatsu Morita, 25, one of his most devoted followers, raised his sword and with one stroke sent Mishima's severed head rolling to the floor. To complete the ceremony, Morita plunged a dagger into his own stomach, and yet another student lopped off Merita's head. Shedding tears, the three surviving students saluted the two dead men and surrendered to the general's aides.
Ultimate Dream. Evidently Mishima hoped—vainly—that his seppuku might arouse the 125,000 Japanese who belong to the 400 or so right-wing organizations in the country. When a similar revolt was staged in February 1936 by a group of young soldiers who tried to overthrow the government, it foreshadowed the disastrous Tojo regime of four years later. Mishima had written a short story, Patriotism, about that revolt, and in 1965 he made it into a movie. He himself acted the lead role of a young army lieutenant who commits hara-kiri with his wife after a night of passionate lovemaking. Writing about the experience afterward, Mishima referred to it as "the ultimate dream of my life."
His real dream was to die a hero's death for Japan. He was born Kimi-take Hiraoka, son of an aristocratic samurai family, and was imbued with a warrior code that apotheosized complete control over mind and body and loyalty to the Emperor. At 18, he felt an almost erotic fascination with the death that, he was certain, awaited him when he would be drafted. But his wish to die for the Emperor was thwarted by a weak body and a frail constitution.
His "romantic impulse toward death" prompted him to begin writing—and building his body to be worthy of destruction. After publishing his first book at 19—a pretty, sensitive collection of short stories called A Forest in Flower—he finished his studies at Tokyo University and took a job in the Finance Ministry. In 1948 he quit the ministry, changed his name to Yukio Mishima, and published Confessions of a Mask. A fierce portrait of homosexuality—a subject with which Mishima had a lifelong fascination and, some say, involvement—Mask brought him fame. His best-known work, Temple of the Golden Pavilion, brought him a small fortune as well. From that point on, even his art was devoted to the spirit of the samurai.
His highly polished style, stripped of embellishment in order to emphasize action, helped him to create the psychological realism that led to great critical acclaim and commercial success in Japan and abroad. Perhaps better than any other contemporary Japanese author, Mishima was able to articulate the conflicts of his people in their transition from the old culture to the Western mode of living.