Yukio Mishima

Yukio Mishima was the pen name of Kimitake Hiraoka, a Japanese novelist and playwright whose work is known for its luxurious vocabulary and decadent metaphors. He is best known for novels such as Confessions of a Mask and The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, along with the autobiographical essay Sun and Steel. Considered one of the most important postwar stylists of the Japanese language, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times in the 1960s. He died in 1970 by seppuku after leading an attempted coup.