Death in Midsummer

Yukio Mishima (real name Kimitake Hiraoka, 1925–1970) is the most famous and widely read Japanese writer in the world. He authored forty novels, eighteen plays, numerous short stories, essays, and journalistic works. In total, his literary legacy amounts to about one hundred volumes. Yet besides writing, Mishima—over his comparatively short life—also gained fame as an athlete, theater and film director, actor, a conductor of a symphony orchestra, a pilot, a traveler, and a photographer. In his final years, Mishima was obsessively devoted to monarchism and samurai traditions; after leading a monarchist coup on November 25, 1970 and failing, he committed seppuku.

Contents:
Love of the Holy Old Man from the Shiga Temple
The Sea and the Sunset
Death in the Middle of Summer
Patriotism
Flowers of Sorrel
The Newspaper
A Philosophical Diary of a Madman-Murderer Who Lived in the Middle Ages