He was the most famous Japanese writer of the 20th century. He was a bodybuilder, a movie star, a playwright, and a political radical who died by ritual suicide after a failed coup in 1970. But decades later, people still find themselves asking one specific question: was Yukio Mishima gay?
It’s not a simple yes-or-no thing. Not really.
If you look at his life through a modern Western lens, the answer feels like a screaming "obviously." He spent nights in Tokyo’s underground gay bars. He wrote Confessions of a Mask, which is basically the definitive novel about growing up with "atypical" desires in Japan. But Mishima was a man of contradictions. He married a woman, Yoko Sugiyama, and had two kids. He became a champion of hyper-masculine, right-wing nationalism. He was a guy who lived in a house filled with Rococo furniture while preaching the return of the samurai spirit.
Honestly, the "was Yukio Mishima gay" debate usually misses the point of how he actually lived. He didn't use modern labels. He lived in a tension between his public persona as a family man and a private reality that he teased, flaunted, and hid all at the same time.
The Smoking Gun: Confessions of a Mask
Most people start the "was Yukio Mishima gay" investigation with his 1949 breakthrough novel, Confessions of a Mask. It’s barely fiction. The protagonist, Kochan, realizes at a young age that he isn't like other boys. He’s obsessed with the image of Saint Sebastian—a man pierced by arrows. He’s fascinated by the smell of sweat and the sight of muscular laborers.
This wasn't just some creative exercise.
Mishima wrote about "the mask." He believed that his public life—the marriage, the suits, the formal literary events—was a performance. The "mask" was the straight man the world saw. The "confession" was the attraction to men.
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Early on, his peers knew. His contemporaries in the Tokyo literary scene, like the Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata, weren't oblivious. They saw a young man who was deeply invested in the aesthetics of the male body. But in post-war Japan, there wasn't a "coming out" culture. You just lived your life. You had your "hobbies," and as long as you fulfilled your duty to your family, society mostly looked the other way.
The Gay Bar Scene in 1950s Tokyo
Mishima wasn't just a theorist. He was a regular at a bar called Brunswick in the Ginza district. This was a well-known spot for men who liked men.
Jiro Fukushima, another writer, actually published a book in the 1990s that included letters allegedly from Mishima. These letters were pretty explicit. They talked about their relationship and Mishima's preferences. Mishima’s family actually sued to stop the publication because they wanted to protect his legacy—or at least the version of it they preferred. They won, too. The book was pulled.
But you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.
People who knew him, like the translator John Nathan, have been pretty open about Mishima's sexuality. Nathan, who spent a lot of time with him, basically said that Mishima's "gayness" was an open secret among his inner circle. It wasn't something they sat around and debated. It was just a fact of his existence.
Why the Marriage?
If he was gay, why get married?
You have to remember the era. Japan in the 1950s was conservative. Mishima was obsessed with his image. He wanted to be the "perfect" Japanese man. In his mind, a perfect man has a wife and children. He was also deeply devoted to his mother, Shizue. Some biographers think he got married largely to please her and to provide a stable front for his increasingly radical political activities.
His wife, Yoko, was no fool. She was the daughter of a famous painter. She knew who she was marrying. She was fiercely protective of him, even after his death. She spent years scrubbing his image, trying to make sure the world remembered him as a patriot and a literary giant, not a "deviant."
Bodybuilding and the "Cult of the Body"
Around 1955, Mishima changed. He got tired of being a "weak, sickly intellectual." He started lifting weights. Hard.
He transformed his body into a temple of muscle. He took hundreds of photos of himself—often nearly naked, posing as a gladiator or a martyr. Some people see this as an extension of his sexuality. Others see it as a political statement—a rejection of the "soft" Westernized Japan that emerged after World War II.
In reality, it was probably both.
Mishima’s sexuality and his politics were tangled up together. He was obsessed with the "beauty of a violent death." He loved the idea of the shishi—the man of action. For him, the male body wasn't just something to be attracted to; it was a tool for national revival. He created his own private army, the Tatenokai (Shield Society). He hand-picked the members. They were all young, fit, handsome men. They wore uniforms he designed himself.
Was there a homoerotic element to his private army? Most historians say yes. It was a brotherhood. A brotherhood built on physical perfection and a shared willingness to die.
The Final Act: Morita and the Coup
On November 25, 1970, Mishima and four members of the Tatenokai took a general hostage at the Japan Self-Defense Forces headquarters. Mishima gave a speech from a balcony, urging the soldiers to rise up and restore the Emperor to power.
The soldiers laughed. They heckled him.
Mishima went back inside and committed seppuku (ritual disembowelment). But here’s the kicker: his "kaishakunin" (the person who performs the decapitation at the end of the ritual) was Masakatsu Morita.
Morita was Mishima’s closest student. There are strong rumors—and some evidence from those close to the group—that Mishima and Morita were lovers. After failing to behead Mishima correctly, Morita also committed suicide. They died together.
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It was a "love suicide" in the most traditional, brutal Japanese sense. In the old samurai traditions (like nanshoku), relationships between an older mentor and a younger student were common and even celebrated. Mishima was deeply influenced by this history. He didn't want to be a "modern gay man." He wanted to be a samurai who loved his brothers-in-arms.
Misconceptions and Nuance
People often try to put Mishima in a box.
- Misconception 1: He was "closeted."
- Not exactly. He wrote about his desires openly in his books. He went to gay bars. He just didn't view his sexuality as his primary identity.
- Misconception 2: He hated women.
- Mishima had many close friendships with women and wrote some of the most sensitive female characters in Japanese literature. His issues were more about his own identity than a hatred of the feminine.
- Misconception 3: His death was only about politics.
- His death was a piece of performance art. It was about beauty, aging, and the fear of his body decaying. He wanted to die while he was still beautiful.
What Experts Say
Henry Scott-Stokes, who wrote The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima, argues that Mishima’s sexuality was the "key" to his psychology. Without understanding his attraction to the male form, you can't understand his obsession with the military or his final suicide.
On the flip side, some Japanese scholars argue that focusing too much on "was Yukio Mishima gay" is a Western obsession. They argue it ignores the cultural context of 1960s Japan, where the lines between friendship, mentorship, and eroticism were often blurred in ways that don't map perfectly onto "Gay" or "Straight."
The Legacy of the Mask
So, where does that leave us?
Mishima was a man who lived a double life by choice. He found a strange kind of freedom in the "mask." He was a husband, a father, a right-wing fanatic, and a man who loved men.
He remains a hero to some and a villain to others. To the LGBTQ+ community in Japan, he is a complicated figure. He’s an icon of queer literature, but his far-right politics make him a difficult "hero" to claim.
Ultimately, Mishima’s life tells us that human identity is messy. You can't separate the artist from the man, and you can't separate the man from his desires. He was everything all at once.
Actionable Insights for Exploring Mishima
If you want to understand the man beyond the headlines, you've got to go to the source material. Don't just take a biographer's word for it.
- Read Confessions of a Mask: It’s the closest thing you’ll get to his internal monologue. It’s haunting and raw.
- Watch Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters: This Paul Schrader film is a masterpiece. It weaves his life together with dramatizations of his books, perfectly capturing the "aesthetic" of his sexuality and his death.
- Look at the photography: Check out Ba-ra-kei (Ordeal by Roses) by Eikoh Hosoe. Mishima posed for these photos. They are highly eroticized and show exactly how he wanted the world to see his body.
- Ditch the labels: When reading about him, stop trying to decide if he was "100% gay." Accept that he existed in a gray area that he cultivated himself.
Mishima didn't want to be understood easily. He wanted to be a myth. And myths don't have sexual orientations—they just have passions. Whether he was at a bar in Ginza or leading a group of young men in drills, he was chasing a version of beauty that most people are too scared to look at directly. He was a man who lived and died for his own private truth, whatever you want to call it.