THE LIFE AND DEATH OF YUKIO MISHIMA...

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF YUKIO MISHIMA by Henry Scott Stokes (Noonday: $15; 313 pp., illustrated). In this newly revised biography, Henry Scott Stokes argues that Mishima embodied the militaristic and aesthetic strains that run through Japanese culture. A former correspondent for the London Times, Stokes knew Mishima personally during the final, bizarre phase of his life, when he toyed with a personal army of young cadets, completed his epic “Sea of Fertility” tetrology and planned his flamboyant suicide. An insider’s knowledge of Japanese society enables him to trace the ties between the hyper-patriotic novelist and right-wing politicians. “Life and Death” is best read in conjunction with Jon Nathan’s more literary biography and Marguerite Yourcenar’s intense psychological study.