A foreign correspondent is drawn into the suicidal death spiral of Japan's foremost author.

On November 25, 1970, YUKIO MISHIMA (45), Japan’s foremost author and an international celebrity, takes over an Army barracks and holds a General hostage at swordpoint. Mishima makes an impassioned, but ignored, speech to the assembled soldiers decrying the state of Modern Japan and appealing for a return to Japanese values and Emperor worship. The soldiers ignore him and Mishima commits a bloody ritual suicide.

THE MISHIMA INCIDENT tells the story of the events leading up to Mishima’s suicide through Mishima’s relationship with HENRY SCOTT STOKES(28), an upper middle-class foreign correspondent for the London Times. Henry arrives in Japan in 1967 with his artist friend Peter Jones. Henry doesn’t want to be in Japan. He would rather be in Vietnam, where the war is developing. Henry is suddenly promoted to Bureau Chief and covers the Tokyo student riots with CAESAR (24), his disheveled cockney photographer. Henry is shocked by the violence and seeks answers. A few days later Henry’s American wife CHARLY (21) arrives in Japan. She is insecure and doesn’t like Japan. Despairing at the lack of news in Japan, Henry agrees to accompany Caesar to one of Mishima’s speeches, where he is enthralled by Mishima, an eccentric nationalist bisexual whose work expounds romantic visions of death and suicide. Henry forms a co-dependent relationship with Mishima where Henry feeds information to Mishima and, in turn, learns about the Japanese way. Mishima uses Henry to get international exposure. When Henry observes Mishima’s army train on Mt Fuji he becomes convinced that Mishima is the most important story in Japan. But as his relationship with Mishima deepens he loses his reporters detachment and starts to espouse Mishima’s ideas, alienating Charly, Peter, his superiors and colleagues and the UK ambassador. Isolated, Henry seeks solace in a relationship with AKIKO (19) an uninhibited student, who is unfazed by Mishima. As Mishima becomes increasingly unstable Henry realizes he has to make choose between the old Japan and the new, between a friend and a story, and between the love of life and the love of death.