WRITER

Yukio Mishima

1925 - 1970

Photo of Yukio Mishima

Icon of person Yukio Mishima

Yukio Mishima (三島 由紀夫, Mishima Yukio), born Kimitake Hiraoka (平岡 公威, Hiraoka Kimitake, 14 January 1925 – 25 November 1970), was a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor, model, Shintoist, ultra-nationalist, and leader of an attempted coup d'état which culminated in his suicide. Mishima is considered one of the most important postwar stylists of the Japanese language. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times in the 1960s—including in 1968, but that year the award went to his countryman and benefactor Yasunari Kawabata. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Yukio Mishima has received more than 6,718,986 page views. His biography is available in 92 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 89 in 2019). Yukio Mishima is the 137th most popular writer (down from 119th in 2019), the 11th most popular biography from Japan (down from 10th in 2019) and the 4th most popular Japanese Writer.

Yukio Mishima is most famous for his vivid, existential works exploring themes of beauty, death, and nationalism, as well as for his dramatic death by ritual seppuku in 1970 after a failed coup attempt to restore the emperor's power. His life and work continue to evoke fascination and controversy. His most famous works include The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Confessions of a Mask, and The Sea of Fertility tetralogy, which comprises Spring Snow, Runaway Horses, The Temple of Dawn, and The Decay of the Angel.

Memorability Metrics

  • 6.7M

    Page Views (PV)

  • 78.90

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 92

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 6.27

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 4.70

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Among WRITERS

Among writers, Yukio Mishima ranks 137 out of 7,302. Before him are Plautus, Cato the Elder, Hafez, Samuel Beckett, Günter Grass, and Adam Mickiewicz. After him are Carlo Collodi, Boris Pasternak, Mary Shelley, Petronius, Rudyard Kipling, and Robert Louis Stevenson.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1925, Yukio Mishima ranks 5. Before him are Malcolm X, Margaret Thatcher, Pol Pot, and Richard Burton. After him are Patrice Lumumba, Gilles Deleuze, Paul Newman, Alija Izetbegović, Giorgio Napolitano, Zygmunt Bauman, and Mahathir Mohamad. Among people deceased in 1970, Yukio Mishima ranks 9. Before him are Bertrand Russell, Gamal Abdel Nasser, António de Oliveira Salazar, Erich Maria Remarque, Abraham Maslow, and Jimi Hendrix. After him are Max Born, Sukarno, Alexander Kerensky, Mark Rothko, Nelly Sachs, and François Mauriac.

Others Born in 1925

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Others Deceased in 1970

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In Japan

Among people born in Japan, Yukio Mishima ranks 11 out of 6,245. Before him are Miyamoto Musashi (1584), Akira Kurosawa (1910), Emperor Meiji (1852), Oda Nobunaga (1534), Matsuo Bashō (1644), and Haruki Murakami (1949). After him are Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542), Naruhito (1960), Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536), Emperor Taishō (1879), Isoroku Yamamoto (1884), and Yoko Ono (1933).

Others born in Japan

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Among WRITERS In Japan

Among writers born in Japan, Yukio Mishima ranks 4. Before him are Miyamoto Musashi (1584), Matsuo Bashō (1644), and Haruki Murakami (1949). After him are Yasunari Kawabata (1899), Osamu Dazai (1909), Murasaki Shikibu (973), Kenzaburō Ōe (1935), Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1892), Natsume Sōseki (1867), Kazuo Ishiguro (1954), and Kōbō Abe (1924).

Japanese born Writers

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