One late evening in 1970, the scholar Geoffrey Bownas was working with the writer Yukio Mishima on their anthology "New Writing in Japan." The noted author excused himself, and when he returned, the scholar noticed with alarm that he had stripped down to his loincloth and was carrying a sword.
Positioning himself in front of his collaborator, Mishima drew himself up and, with his weapon, posed in a Kabuki-like mie. "Those three theatrical minutes," remembers Bownas in his entertaining recollections, "were like years. I was scared -- an almost naked man with a drawn sword, no one else in the room!"
After a time, the noted author calmed down and announced, apparently in explanation, that Japan's culture faced a challenge more threatening than ever before. Then he put his clothes back on and they continued anthologizing.
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