Yukio Mishima, born Kimitake Hiraoka, published 40 novels, 18 Noh and Kabuki plays, and dozens of story and essay collections before his death became as famous as his fiction. This 1985 BBC film uses John Hurt reading Mishima's own words to trace how a shy, closeted young writer built himself into a public figure obsessed with samurai discipline, physical strength, and the Emperor system. It follows him through his literary rise in postwar Japan and into the private militia he formed, the Tatenokai, whose members trained alongside him for a cause the film treats as sincerely felt and self-dramatizing at once. The account closes on November 25, 1970, when Mishima and four followers took a general hostage at Tokyo's Self-Defense Forces headquarters, and Mishima addressed the assembled soldiers from a balcony trying to incite a coup. The soldiers jeered him. He went back inside and committed seppuku. The film treats the speech and the ritual death that followed it as the final, staged act of a life he had been composing all along.