YDS READING PASSAGES / TEST 3 31. Soru

- 11. OWNER OF A SAMURAI ARMY

He was a novelist who had his own samurai army, and he was an intellectual who worked at body building. The brilliant Japanese writer Yukio Mishima was a man torn between Japanese tradition and the westernization of his culture. He was born as Hiraoka Kimitake on January 14, 1925, in Tokyo, Japan, but as an adult, he published under the name Yukio Mishima. He attended Tokyo's Peers School and the University of Tokyo. Mishima's writing career took off with the 1949 publication of his first novel, Confessions of a Mask. A man of discipline and great energy, he usually wrote from midnight until dawn, and in his lifetime, produced more than 100 works, including novels, short stories, traditional Japanese No and Kabuki plays and screenplays. He even starred in a film version of his short story Patriotism. One of his best-known novels is The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, published in 1958. Although Mishima enjoyed many benefits from the westernisation of Japan, he was troubled by the changes wrought on traditional Japanese ways. This was a common theme in his stories. His last work, Sea of Fertility, compares modern Japan to the barren landscape of the moon. In an effort to recapture the samurai tradition, Mishima organised a private army called the Shield Society. On November 25, 1970, Mishima and four society members took control of an office at military headquarters in Tokyo. He gave a speech attacking Japan's post-World War II constitution and then committed suicide.

It is clear from the passage that Yukio Mishima ------ .