Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters

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Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters
French movie poster
Directed by	Paul Schrader
Produced by	Mataichiro Yamamoto Francis Ford Coppola George Lucas Tom Luddy Leonard Schrader Mata Yamamoto
Written by	Leonard Schrader Paul Schrader Chieko Schrader (Original Stories) Yukio Mishima
Starring	Ken Ogata Masayuki Shionoya Junkichi Orimoto
Music by	Philip Glass
Cinematography	John Bailey
Editing by	Michael Chandler
Distributed by	American Zoetrope Lucasfilm Ltd. M Company Tristone Entertainment Inc. Warner Bros. Pictures
Release date(s)	October 4, 1985 (No official release)
Running time	120 min
Language	Japanese
Budget	$500,0000 (estimated)
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Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is an episodic, stylized 1985 film directed by Paul Schrader and written by Schrader with his brother Leonard. It is based on the life and fiction of the Japanese author Yukio Mishima.

[edit] Plot

The film features original music by Philip Glass. Ken Ogata stars as Yukio Mishima and Roy Scheider speaks an off-screen English narration, also as Mishima. The film was produced in Japan by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas (while they were involved with Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha).

The four chapters are "Beauty", "Art", "Action" and "Fusion of Pen and Sword". Each chapter features flashback scenes from Mishima's life shot in lustrous black and white, intercut with highly-stylized, theatrical scenes from three different Mishima novels and the realistically-shot, docudrama-style story of Mishima's last day and seppuku. The novels depicted in the film are The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (1956) in "Beauty"; Kyoko's House (1959) in "Art"; and Runaway Horses (1968) in "Action". In the final chapter, the protagonists of all three novels are shown achieving their destructive and/or suicidal objectives as Mishima commits suicide.

The soundtrack follows the different visual styles, accompanying the black-and-white flashbacks with a string quartet, the theatrical scenes with a string orchestra and synthesizers, and the "docudrama" scenes with a full symphonic orchestra.

Schrader has said that he considers Mishima the best film he has directed: "It's the one I'd stand by - as a screenwriter it's Taxi Driver, but as a director it's Mishima." (Schrader on Schrader and Other Writings (2004) (ISBN 0-571-22176-9))

This film has never had an official release in Japan due to the controversy around Mishima himself, and due to the wishes of Mishima's family. Despite this, it has broadcast several times on Japanese TV (with a scene in a gay bar edited out) and it is legal to import the DVD there.