NEW YORK -- In 1958 there was a political upheaval in Iraq, which, as far as that country at that particular juncture in history was concerned, was the final rejection of Western rule. But Japan's reaction was shifty and muddled. Or so writer Yukio Mishima (1925-70) thought.
I didn't know anything about "the July 14 Revolution" until recently when I read an article by Mishima that was so quirky -- "politically incorrect" -- that a major daily for which he wrote it would not print it. How quirky was it?
To start with, Mishima commended Gamal Abdal Nasser for saying, "We warn our enemies that we aren't even afraid of atomic bombs." The Egyptian president, upon returning from Moscow, had given a speech and said that.