It’s the birthday of Yukio Mishima (b. 1925-1970), who is possibly the most important Japanese novelist of his century and who died in a far more dramatic way than any of us can hope to achieve. Seriously. Don’t even try.

Mishima was born Hiraoka Kimitake in Tokyo to a government official and his wife, but his early life was dominated to a weird degree by his grandparents, who lived with his parents. His grandmother coddled him—no playing outside in the sun, no sports—and yet instilled in him a reverence for her samurai ancestors, all of which may account for the fact that Mishima was a sickly child and teenager who later became obsessed with bodybuilding, karate, and kendo. Grandma was also given to fits of insane rage and made little Mishima massage her when her sciatica acted up. (My grandma gave me chicken noodle soup and helped me sew doll clothes, but whatever.) Grandma eventually died (whew) and Mishima then had the chance to get weirdly close to his mom and interact with his scary dad, who would hold him up to a speeding train as a disciplinary tactic because, you know, that’s so good for a child.

Mishima went to an aristocratic school in Tokyo called Peers School and was miserable but joined the board of the school literary society and eventually published the story “The Forest in Full Bloom” for an actual lit journal. During WWII he was drafted, faked having tuberculosis, like you do, and got out of service; after that he felt relieved, guilty, and bummed at not getting to die a heroic death. (FORESHADOWING.) He graduated from Tokyo Imperial University in 1947 with a degree in German law because Daddy was pro-Nazi and started working for the Finance Ministry but soon quit to get down to the business of being A Brilliant Author. He published his first novel, Thieves, in 1948, followed the next year by the autobiographical novel Confessions of a Mask about a gay man who must hide his sexuality. This made him famous at 24. He continued writing novels, plays, short stories, and more, including the novels Thirst for Love (1950), Forbidden Colors (1954), The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (1963), and many others. One of his most successful and famous was The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (1956), about a psychopathic monk who destroys a Buddhist temple.

All this time, Mishima was obsessed with beauty, patriotism, and a reverence for Japan’s traditional martial spirit. He was also becoming more and more disgusted with Japan’s post-war embrace of all things Western. (MORE FORESHADOWING.) Along the way he also got married and had two children, possibly for his mother’s sake and because he cared about public opinion.

In the final years of his life, Mishima wrote a four-volume epic masterpiece, The Sea of Fertility, covering Japan from 1912 to the 1960s. On November 25, 1970, he handed in his last Sea of Fertility manuscript and along with four followers from a sort of private army he’d founded took over an office at a military headquarters in downtown Tokyo. (You can see where this is going.) He stepped onto the balcony to address the soldiers gathered below, urging them to restore the Emperor to power but only incurring their disdain. Then he returned to the office to commit the traditional samurai suicide, in which you disembowel yourself and are then decapitated by a faithful follower. (Trigger warning: this does not go well.) After Mishima failed to perform a good clean disembowelment, his appointed faithful follower botched the decapitation several times—perhaps not having had a lot of practice—and finally another faithful follower had to step up and finish the job. (Personally, I feel for the commandant, who’d been tied to a chair during the coup and probably had to watch the whole thing.)

There is a great deal more to say about this author and little time to say it. When he died at 45, he’d written 40 novels, 18 plays, and 20 short story collections.

Have a fine cold Monday, take a little something to settle your stomach if necessary after all that samurai business, and stay scrupulously honest to the data.