Book, Yukio Mishima: the man of theater and cinema[LS]

West and East present in 'Yukio Mishima: The Man of Theater and Cinema' a fascinating expression of their cultural, literary and artistic encounter, thanks to the detailed historical-biographical survey and critical analysis that Darci Kusano now presents in this volume of the Studies collection. Going through the main routes in which the work of the controversial Japanese writer took place, the focus is not mainly on the novelist, but rather on the playwright, the director, the actor and the activist, highlighting his unique bodily aesthetics inspired by Classical Greece , but carried out under the influence of the concept of bunbu-ryôdô, 'the combined path of the scholar and the warrior', which is brought to the pinnacle in 'skill in both the literary and military arts'. It is under his aegis that the militant's ideology and his action as organizer of the Escudo student society are composed. For him, it is about reincarnating in modernity, in an existential philosophy, the values ​​of tradition, in which man comes to 'live with beauty and die with beauty'. It was this obsession with action and this commitment to its most organic, vital and significant manifestation that culminated in Mishima's fusion of art and life, aesthetics and ideology, techné and acting, preparing the path and the setting for his dramatic finale, in desired heroic frame of the warrior's suicide, seppuku.