Yukio Mishima , born Kimitake Hiraoka , was a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor, model, Shintoist, nationalist, and founder of the Tatenokai . Mishima is considered one of the most important post-war stylists of the Japanese language. He was considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times in the 1960s—including in 1968, but that year the award went to his countryman and benefactor Yasunari Kawabata. His works include the novels Confessions of a Mask and The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, and the autobiographical essay Sun and Steel. Mishima's work is characterized by "its luxurious vocabulary and decadent metaphors, its fusion of traditional Japanese and modern Western literary styles, and its obsessive assertions of the unity of beauty, eroticism and death", according to author Andrew Rankin.

Seppuku , also called harakiri , is a form of Japanese ritualistic suicide by disembowelment. It was originally reserved for samurai in their code of honour, but was also practised by other Japanese people during the Shōwa era to restore honour for themselves or for their families.