On November 25, 1970, the Japanese writer Yukio Mishima (and four members of his Shield Society, Tatenokai, a private militia manned largely by right-wing university students) seized the general in charge of the Ichigaya military base. After an attempt to free the general was repelled, Mishima was allowed to address the base’s soldiers. But his call, given—in keeping with coup etiquette—from a balcony, to overthrow the constitution and return to an older Japanese order was greeted with jeers, not cheers.

Mishima stepped back inside and committed seppuku, ritual suicide (or, as it was topped off with beheading by a kaishakunin, assisted suicide), which was probably how he had expected the day to end. And that wasn’t so bad. His death wish was satisfied, and, despite the beheading needing some mulligans, he had staged a spectacle so dramatic and freighted with meaning that its memory would endure, he hoped, as an inspiration to future generations.