Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is a 1985 drama about the Japanese author Yukio Mishima, built around the morning of November 25, 1970, when he and members of his private militia drove to a military base in Tokyo with the aim of rallying soldiers to overthrow the government. The film moves between that day and earlier periods of his life, and it also stages passages from three of his novels, so that his writing, his public persona and his private preoccupations are shown alongside one another. Paul Schrader directed and wrote the screenplay with Leonard Schrader and Chieko Schrader. Ken Ogata plays Mishima, with Kenji Sawada, Bandō Mitsugorō X, Toshiyuki Nagashima and Masayuki Shionoya among the large credited cast.

The film was released in September 1985, the fifth of the twenty-two features Schrader has directed, following Cat People and preceding Light of Day. It was made for about five million dollars by Warner Bros., Lucasfilm, American Zoetrope and Tristone Entertainment, a production spanning the United States and Japan. On IMDb it holds 7.9 out of 10 from roughly seventeen thousand votes, and on TMDB 7.8 out of 10 from a few hundred votes; critics gave it 7.5 out of 10 across seventy-three reviews, placing it close to the audience scores.