tvcal
Arena

Arena

1975Returning Series1 Season687 Episodes6.9TMDB
BBC FourBBC Two

Arena is a British television documentary series, made and broadcast by the BBC. Voted by leading TV executives in Broadcast as one of the top 50 most influential programmes of all time, it has run since 1 October 1975 with over five hundred episodes made, directed by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Alan Yentob, Roly Keating, Frederick Baker, Volker Schlondorff and Vikram Jayanti. Arena's subjects are a roll-call of the world's best known cultural figures from the 20th and 21st centuries, from singers Bob Dylan and Amy Winehouse to academics Edward Said and Eric Hobsbawm, from writers Jean Genet and V S Naipaul to artists Francis Bacon and Louise Bourgeois. The current series editor is Anthony Wall.

Season 1 · Episode 262

The Strange Case of Yukio Mishima

Dec 3, 1985

Yukio Mishima was one of the outstanding writers of his generation. Nominated three times for the Nobel Prize, he was the author of 40 novels and 18 plays. But his legend rests less on his literary output than on his bizarre suicide 15 years ago by ritual hara-kiri. Mishima's life was filled with contradictions. An intellectual, he was also a right-wing militarist who maintained his own private army. A nationalist who wished to restore the Emperor to power, he was obsessed with Western culture and offended his own people by adopting the image of a Western-style celebrity. In Tokyo, Arena reconstructs the story of this complex and contradictory figure against the background of Japan's wartime humiliation and astonishing post-war recovery.

Where to Watch

Loading...

Streaming data provided by JustWatch

Episode FAQ

Direct answers for episode-level questions and details.

When did Arena Season 1 Episode 262 air?

Arena Season 1 Episode 262 aired on December 3, 1985.

How long is Arena Season 1 Episode 262?

Runtime information for this episode is not available yet.

Comments

Comments coming soon

Discuss episodes with other viewers