However you slice it — sorry, bad choice of words — they don’t make ’em like Yukio Mishima anymore : the epitome of the “warrior-poet” mystique made flesh and taken to its natural conclusions, his death by his own hand the only fitting capstone to a life that basically demanded nothing less for its final act, to this day he remains a revered figure in as many disparate milieus as he travelled in himself, from far-right nationalist revolutionary cells to the more extreme quarters of the queer BDSM underground. A mass of fascinating contradictions that could never be resolved, we can only really know him, perhaps, through his work, despite the best attempts of everyone from filmmaker Paul Schrader to Death In June’s Douglas P. to illuminate the enigma that was his life and art in their own art.
To that list add the name of Portuguese cartoonist/fine artist Tiago…