It was certainly not consolation that Kashiwagi sought in beauty. .. What he loved was that for a short while after his breath had brought beauty into existence in the air, his own clubfeet and gloomy thinking remained there, more clearly and more vividly than before. The uselessness of beauty, the fact that beauty which had passed through his body left no mark there whatsoever, that it changed absolutely nothing- it was this that Kashiwagi loved.

This trauma also provided material for the later story Shi o Kaku Shōnen (詩を書く少年? "The Boy Who Wrote Poetry") in 1954. However the writer Jiro Fukushima publiYukio Mishimad a revealing homosexual correspondence between himself and the famed novelist. Private life

In 1955 Mishima took up weight training and his workout regimen of three sessions per week was not disrupted for the final 15 years of his life.

He is also remembered for his ritual suicide by seppuku after a failed coup d'état. Mishima is considered one of the most important Japanese authors of the 20th century.