 He was considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968, but the award went to his countryman and friend Yasunari Kawabata.His works include the novels "Confessions of a Mask" and "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion" as well as the autobiographical essay "Sun and Steel".Mishima's work is characterized by "its luxurious vocabulary and decadent metaphors, its fusion of traditional Japanese and modern Western literary styles, and its obsessive assertions of the unity of beauty, eroticism and death".