He is a great writer.
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is also one of the best films ever made.

How does Confessions of a Mask compare to other memoirs of the same vein?

>>7841001
He's rad af, read The Sea of Fertility

>>7841035
It's not a memoir, it's a novel loosly based on his youth

why did he an hero

>>7841056
because all the cool kids were doing it

nigger went ham on those bicep curls

>>7841056
Aesthetics

>>7841056
if you read some of his works it kind of explains why.

>>7841083
this is probably the short answer. He always romanticized a beautiful death

I find his ethics to be delusional and potentially dangerous so I don't particularly enjoy that aspect of his novels. While I do enjoy the aestheticised nature of his writing (and that includes such parts of his works outside of the ethical) I find Kawabata does something similar but much better.

I would recommend something like The Golden Pavilion or Spring Snow as a first read. After reading one you will know if you want to read more.

>>7841056
Read his stuff, his whole shtick is that it is better to die than to give up things like honor or whatever pre-war shit the Japanese had.

>>7841001
both

Where's a good place to start reading his work?

>>7841835
the chesterfield

He also made one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen, and it's only 30 minutes long

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO-w-cn-pJM

>>7841855
why was this guy so obsessed with suicide?

>>7842777
because he's retarded

>>7841773
Way too complex. He had body dysmorphia and had achieved a level of /fit/ness that he found narcissisticly pleasing. In sun and steel he swore to die before old age took it away.

Runaway Horses (in the context of the whole tetrology), Confessions of a Mask, The Golden Pavillion, Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, and Patriotism are fucking great OP

>>7842805
also >>7841083 is spot on. The last book of his tetrology is called decay of the angel for fuck sake, and if you read the previous 3 books you can see that he is basically shitting on them.

>>7841644
They were very close, Kawabata even died only a year after Mishima in what might have been suicide because of Mishima's death.

Although very different, Mishima was a very masculine man who romanticized his samurai ancestry. Kawabata once said that the only real writers are young girls, and that even professional writers are inferior to a young girls pure and innate abilities.

But at the same time, both of their work deals with the idea that beauty is temporary, and the happiness and sadness that comes with beauty.

>>7842805
>>7842809
>I don't want to revive harakiri itself - I wanted to inspire younger people, give them a sense of order and responsibility.

Mishima being inspired by Bushido, japanese traditonalism and a cult of youth saw his work and indeed attempted coup as a theatrical revolt against a modernity that he believed was destroying the Japanese nation. I think he would have found much in the notion that "we are the ghosts of a war we have not fought"

>>7841020
>Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is also one of the best films ever made

umm so you've only seen what...like 3 movies in your life or what? soundtrack was awesome but come on...the movie jerks off too much to the dude who was the king of jerking off to ideas of hero worship.

>>7841056
honestly one of the reasons was because he wanted to be immortalized with a youthful image. he didn't want to grow old. he had an awful peter pan complex for sure.