Paul Schrader’s 1985 Film on Yukio Mishima Receives Belated Japan Premiere, Sells Out Multiple Screenings

By Yasuko Onda / Yomiuri Shimbun Senior Writer

10:30 JST, November 21, 2025

One of the most anticipated films at this year’s Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF), which ended on Nov. 5, was the belated Japanese premiere of “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters,” directed by Paul Schrader 40 years ago. With tickets selling out in less than 15 minutes, TIFF organizers made the unusual decision to hold two additional screenings after the festival’s closure.

The film explores the life and art of Yukio Mishima, intertwining his actions on Nov. 25, 1970, when he committed suicide at the Self-Defense Force’s base in Ichigaya, Tokyo, with biographical episodes from his early life and three plays based on his novels.

Mishima was played by late screen legend Ken Ogata. In one of the plays, singer-actor Kenji Sawada took on the role of a Mishima alter-ego, performing on a stylish theater-like set designed by Eiko Ishioka. Philip Glass provided the music, while Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas served as executive producers. For cast and crew alike, the credits are stacked with prominent, eye-catching names.

The film had its world premiere during the Cannes Film Festival in 1985, where it won the award for best artistic contribution. Its creative team hoped to screen the film at the inaugural TIFF that year, as well as at theaters in Japan, but neither materialized, nor did video or DVD releases in Japan.

The exact circumstances behind this are not clear. However, contemporaneous media coverage suggests production had been bumpy from the start. For example, on March 27, 1984, The Hochi Shimbun newspaper reported that Mishima’s widow expressed an objection to the screenplay, written by Schrader and his brother, Leonard, shortly before shooting began. There were also concerns of possible protests by certain right-wing groups.

I myself watched the film by obtaining a Blu-ray copy from the Criterion Collection several years ago.

While an iconic literary figure of his time, Mishima also became known for his bodybuilding, film appearances, founding a militia and so on. The film skillfully depicts his multifaceted nature in four chapters: “beauty,” “art,” “action” and “harmony of pen and sword.” It portrays Mishima as a someone who took on various fields, as if changing masks, before culminating with his epic final performance — a theatrical suicide.

“I was interested in the pathology of suicidal glory,” said Schrader, who was in Tokyo for the premiere. “I’d written about it in the Western context in ‘Taxi Driver’ [for which he wrote the screenplay]. In Mishima I saw an opportunity to examine the pathology from the opposite perspective.”

It is, in a nutshell, a film concerned with exploring humanity in a very Schrader-esque way.

The 40-year wait for its Japan premiere was, of course, due to unclear circumstances among involved parties. Nevertheless, I find it strange that there was no growing demand from people who wished to watch this star-studded film in Japan. Maybe there was an unspoken prejudice against a non-Japanese person helming a film about Mishima. However, we must not forget that it is thanks to brilliant non-Japanese minds with deep understanding of the culture, such as Donald Richie, that Japanese arts have spread internationally and been studied widely.

“What was Yukio Mishima?” That would take some time to figure out — or so Japanese people have been claiming. But it could be that we are just choosing to evade the question.

In any case, I hope that “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters,” increasingly sought-after thanks to its sold-out screenings, will be screening in Japanese film theaters in a not-too-distant future. At the Japanese premiere, I was thrilled with the wonderful sound design that I had not noticed when watching on Blu-ray. I insist upon the importance of experiencing films in a theater.