Japanese novelist who combined extraordinary literary achievement with extreme nationalism, leading to his death by ritual suicide (seppuku) after a failed attempt to rouse the Japanese Self-Defense Forces to restore imperial rule.
The Sea of Fertility tetralogy: a four-novel cycle on the theme of Buddhist transmigration and the decay of Japan. Confessions of a Mask: his coded autobiographical account of homosexual desire. The Temple of the Golden Pavilion: a monk burns Japan's most sacred structure — beauty, impermanence, destruction. His death was itself a final literary act.
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