INTRODUCTION

Yukio Mishima was a controversial Japanese author who, in 1970, dis-embowelled himself in an act of ritual seppuku. A self-avowed nihilist, Mishima devoted his career to finding a cure for his own lifelong spiritual alienation through an eccentric assortment of activities, including: writing, bodybuilding, political action, and an antiquarian return to Emperor worship and samurai ideals. Through the integration of art and life, he sought to tran-scend the decadence of his cultural inheritance, purifying and finally perfect-ing himself with a heroic death. In Mishima's life, work and death we find dramatic examples of the creative potential, as well as the dangerous tempta-tions, involved in the struggle to overcome nihilism.

Part of Mishima's wide, international appeal came from his eagerness to embrace popular culture - including film - as a vehicle for the propagation of his own ideas and personality. In addition to writing for the stage, TV and movies, Mishima acted in a handful of productions, and also acted, directed and produced the short film Patriotism (1966), which was adapted from one of his own short stories. In Japan, many of his works have been made into movies, and in 1976, his novel The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea was produced in the UK as a major motion picture starring Kris Kristo§erson. In 1985, Paul Schrader directed Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, in which portions of Mishima's fictional and non-fictional works were dramatised in order to tell the story of the author's life and extraordinary death.

The case of Yukio Mishima o§ers a unique opportunity to scrutinise the complicated operations of nihilism on at least three interrelated levels of analysis.

First of all, as he advocated and strove toward the unification of‘action and art’ (Mishima 1982: šf), Mishima's involvement with literature, film, the stage and TV highlights and dramatises the obscure gap always lurking between representations and the reality they purport to depict. Mishima's art was never mere entertainment, but always evocative of the deeper existential struggles and issues with which he himself was engaged.