Check out this conversation between two of Japan's literary heavyweights, Kazuo Ishiguro and Kenzaburo Oe, from Grand Street, a lit mag that no longer exists.
"The observations you just made about the reception
of Mishima in Europe are accurate. Mishima’s entire life, certainly
including his death by seppuku, was a kind of performance designed to
present the image of an archetypal Japanese. Moreover, this image was
not the kind that arises spontaneously from a Japanese mentality. It
was the superficial image of a Japanese as seen from a European point
of view, a fantasy. Mishima acted out that image just as it was. He
created himself exactly in accordance with it. That was the way he lived,
and that was the way he died" -Oe
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