Japanese writer and militant Yukio Mishima was BOTD in 1925. Born Kimitake Hiraoka in Tokyo, he was raised by his grandmother who encouraged his interest in theatre and literature. He began writing stories as a teenager, drawing on Japanese folklore and old-world nationalist values. At 16, he submitted his story Forest in Full Bloom to a literary magazine, who arranged for its publication in book form. Drafted into the Army in 1944, he was discharged as physically unfit. After a brief career in the civil service, he began writing full-time. His first two novels, Thieves and the autobiographical Confessions of a Mask caused a sensation with their stylised language, explicit references to homosexuality and erotic obsession with death. He became the most famous Japanese writer of his generation, admired for the beauty of his prose but was frequently criticised for his conservative politics. An opponent of Japan’s post-war democracy, he railed against Communism, capitalism and globalisation, arguing for the preservation of traditional Japanese values. In the mid-1950s he took up weightlifting, posing as a model for physique magazines and occasionally acting in films. He married Yōko Sugiyama in 1958, with whom he had two children, while pursuing relationships with men he met in gay bars. His most ambitious works, a novel tetralogy known as The Sea of Fertility, were published between 1965 and 1971. Obsessed with remilitarising Japan, he founded a private militia who swore allegiance to the Emperor. In 1970, he attempted to stage a coup at a military base. He then committed seppuku (ritualised suicide by disembowelment) with a samurai sword. He was 45. Still a controversial figure in Japan, his posthumous reputation has been complicated by his widow’s attempts to deny his homosexuality. His life and works have been dramatised many times, most notably by the American filmmaker Paul Schrader in his 1985 film Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, starring Ken Ogata as Mishima.