S1·E262 The Strange Case of Yukio Mishima

Yukio Mishima was one of the outstanding writers of his generation. Nominated three times for the Nobel Prize, he was the author of 40 novels and 18 plays. But his legend rests less on his literary output than on his bizarre suicide 15 years ago by ritual hara-kiri.

Mishima's life was filled with contradictions. An intellectual, he was also a right-wing militarist who maintained his own private army. A nationalist who wished to restore the Emperor to power, he was obsessed with Western culture and offended his own people by adopting the image of a Western-style celebrity.

In Tokyo, Arena reconstructs the story of this complex and contradictory figure against the background of Japan's wartime humiliation and astonishing post-war recovery.