Out Now: Yukio Mishima - Thoughts & Perspectives

YUKIO MISHIMA: THOUGHTS & PERSPECTIVES is now available to order. The book is 150 pages in length and costs just 23 EUROS with free postage to anywhere in the world. The PayPal address is blackfrontpress@yahoo.co.uk and you can find more details below. Editor: Troy Southgate / Cover: Francisco Albanese Pastene

THE well-known author, Yukio Mishima (1925–1970), remains one of the greatest figures in Japanese literature and was also an accomplished poet, actor, playwright and film director. Inspired by the traditional principles of the Samurai texts, Mishima was a fierce critic of post-1945 Japan and made the ultimate sacrifice for his beliefs. On November 25th, 1970, shortly after completing his four-volume Sea of Fertility, Mishima and several other committed members of the Tatenokai, or Shield Society, stormed the commandant's office at the Self-Defence Forces headquarters in Tokyo and delivered a stirring speech to the assembled troops gathered beneath the balcony. Consequently, Japan's most famous and controversial personality committed ritual suicide (seppuku) and was immortalised forever. First published in 2012, this radical and uncompromising text - with some very welcome and surprising contributors - is sure to attract a great deal of interest at a time when making sacrifices for a principle higher than oneself is becoming something of a rarity.

Chapters include The Immortal Death of Mishima; Warrior of the Rising Sun; Mishima Contra Nihilism; Twentieth-Century Samurai; Discovering Mishima; Production Without Capital: Mishima's Lost World; Damn Japs: The People It's Okay to Hate; Mishima in 1968; and Hidden Among the Leaves: Yukio Mishima and Hagakure.

The contributors include Troy Southgate, Douglas P., Koichi Toyama, K. R. Bolton, Dimitris Michalopoulos, Wulf Ingessunu, Christopher Pankhurst, John Howells and Vijay Prozak.