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Mishima's family originally cooperated with the making of this film but when their request that the gay bar scene be removed was denied, they withdrew their help.
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Has never been officially released in Japan even to this day (2005) theatrically or on video because of the controversy over both Yukio Mishima's politics and the film itself. However, it has been shown on television (albiet with the gay bar scene removed) and the U.S. DVD can legally be imported there.
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The painting in the art book is one of six pictures of St. Sebastian by Guido Reni. This particular one was painted circa 1615 and is the Capitoline Museum in Rome.
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A substantial amount of the finance was Japanese although, bizarrely, the Toho studio and their partners have persistently denied that they sunk $2 million dollars into the film. Director Paul Schrader : " I moved to Japan and we had a Japanese producer who was able to raise half of the budget through his own money and from Fuji Television and Toho-Towa. Then, of course, the Japanese financiers tried to pull out at the last minute because of pressure from the widow. There was another drama involving that and the end result was that they gave us the money but claimed that they didn't. To this day, they claim that they did not finance the film."
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There are two versions of the film, one with English narration by Roy Scheider, the other with Japanese narration by Ken Ogata. The Ogata version also has scenes added by Paul Schrader that were cut out from the original 1985 release. These scenes were added by Schrader to the Criterion DVD release. Paul Schrader : "We did quite a bit of work on it--John Bailey and I worked a week redoing the D.I. and balancing the color. We did great work to the soundtrack. We added a short little scene that I had cut out featuring Chishu Ryu, the Ozu actor, that I always regretted cutting out--we found the original negative and I put that back in. I did some sky replacement at the end of "Runaway Horses" because I wasn't really happy with the shots at the end. We were able to go back and replace the natural sky with an artificial sky. Then we went back to the original digital on Philip Glass' soundtrack and so the sound is much better on the Criterion version. We also put Ken Ogata's narration in, so now it finally has Japanese narration."
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Mishima's actual words are used as narration, in Japanese by Ken Ogata in the restored version, and in English by Roy Scheider in the original theatrical release.
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Based on the (Mishima's) works : Sun and Steel (1970), Confessions Of A Mask (1948), Runaway Horses (1969), Kyoko's House (1959), The Temple Of The Golden Pavilion (1956).
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Spoilers
The unusual visual distortion as Mishima commits Seppuku was accomplished by simultaneously pulling the camera backwards and zooming the camera lens forward.
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