“Human life is limited, but I would like to live forever,” wrote Yukio Mishima in a short note placed on top of his final manuscript, left in the office at his Tokyo home, on November 25, 1970, precisely fifty years ago. Later that day, this remarkable figure of modern Japan would lead a small paramilitary organization called “The Shield Society” (Tate no kai) — complete with snug uniforms designed by Tsukumo Igarashi, the tailor for Charles de Gaulle — in a peculiar, rather contrived coup d’état at the headquarters of the Japanese Self Defense Forces in the Ichigaya neighborhood.

On the pretense of a simple visit, Mishima and his young militants took the local commander hostage. After barricading themselves in his office, they demanded the assembly of the garrison to hear Mishima deliver a brief manifesto for the spiritual restoration of Japan and specifically the emperor.

Largely uninterested and even annoyed by this staged and confusing harangue, the soldiers more or less shouted him down, and Mishima retreated to the commander’s office where, along with his alleged lover Masakatsu Morita, he committed ritual suicide, stabbing himself in the abdomen with a knife, before being decapitated by one of the Shield Society militants.