Yukio Mishima

novelist and playwright

1925 – 1970 · 45 years · Tokyo · Asia

Author of Confessions of a Mask and The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, five times nominated for the Nobel Prize. In 1970, with men of his Shield Society, he seized a commandant's office in Tokyo, urged soldiers to stage a coup and, failing, committed seppuku.

Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century

Portrait: Wikimedia Commons

Contemporaries around the world

Europe

Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 44 years older
Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 51 years older
Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 46 years older
Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 36 years older
Bertrand Russell — British philosopher, logician and public intellectual, 53 years older
Charles de Gaulle — general, leader of Free France, President of France, 35 years older

Eastern Europe & Russia

Georgy Zhukov — Marshal of the Soviet Union, 29 years older
Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 9 years younger
Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 47 years older
Nikita Khrushchev — Soviet leader who denounced Stalin's personality cult, 31 years older
Dmitri Shostakovich — composer, 19 years older
Leonid Brezhnev — Soviet leader of the Era of Stagnation, 19 years older

Middle East

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 44 years older
Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 27 years older
Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 7 years older
Richard Sorge — Soviet intelligence officer, 30 years older
Anastas Mikoyan — Soviet statesman, 30 years older
Umm Kulthum — singer, 27 years older

Africa

Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 7 years older
Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 33 years older
Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, born the same year
Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 19 years older
Kwame Nkrumah — first President of Ghana, 16 years older
Jean-Bédel Bokassa — President of the CAR, then Emperor of Central Africa, 4 years older

Asia

Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 32 years older
Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 56 years older
Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, 24 years older
Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) — WWII-era emperor who announced Japan's surrender, 24 years older
Mother Teresa — nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, 15 years older
Indira Gandhi — Prime Minister of India, 8 years older

Americas

Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 36 years older
Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 5 years younger
Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 4 years younger
Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 69 years older
Harry S. Truman — 33rd US president, the atomic bombs and the start of the Cold War, 41 years older
Jorge Luis Borges — writer, 26 years older

Oceania

Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 54 years older
Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 6 years older
Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 27 years older
Eddie Mabo — land-rights campaigner, 11 years younger
Don Bradman — cricketer, 17 years older
Sālote Tupou III — Queen of Tonga, 25 years older

The world in their lifetime

1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 3, Europe
1928–1932 First Five-Year Plan — aged 3, Eastern Europe & Russia
1929 Wall Street Crash — aged 4, Americas
1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 4, Eastern Europe & Russia
c. 1930–1936 Dust Bowl — aged 5, Americas
1930–1933 Asharshylyk, the Kazakh famine — aged 5, Asia
1931 China floods — aged 6, Asia
1931 Mukden Incident — aged 6, Asia
1932–1933 Holodomor — aged 7, Eastern Europe & Russia
1932 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia proclaimed — aged 7, Middle East
1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 8, Europe
1933–1939 New Deal — aged 8, Americas
1934–1935 Long March — aged 9, Asia
1935–1937 Italy invades Ethiopia — aged 10, Africa
1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 11, Eastern Europe & Russia
1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 11, Europe
1936 Death of the last thylacine — aged 11, Oceania
1936 Turing's universal machine — aged 11, Europe
1937–1938 Nanjing Massacre — aged 12, Asia
1938 Discovery of nuclear fission — aged 13, Europe
1938 Munich Agreement — aged 13, Europe
1938 Anschluss — aged 13, Europe
1939–1945 World War II — aged 14, Whole world
1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact — aged 14, Eastern Europe & Russia
1939–1940 Winter War — aged 14, Eastern Europe & Russia
1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 16, Eastern Europe & Russia
1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 16, Europe
1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 17, Eastern Europe & Russia
1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 20, Asia
1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 20, Eastern Europe & Russia
1947–1991 Cold War — aged 22, Whole world
1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — aged 23, Whole world
1949 Founding of NATO — aged 24, Whole world
1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — aged 28, Europe
1953 First ascent of Everest — aged 28, Asia
1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — aged 32, Eastern Europe & Russia
1961 Gagarin's flight — aged 36, Eastern Europe & Russia
1966–1976 Cultural Revolution in China — aged 41, Asia
1969 Moon landing — aged 44, Americas
c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — aged 45, Americas