Five Modern Noh Playsbrilliantly revives a great art form that has long fascinated audiences and readers throughout the world. In his introduction, Donald Keene calls these the first genuinely successful modern No plays and adds, oIf the medium is given a new lease on life it will be because of Mishima and his work.o Marvelously successful in preserving the weird and haunting mood of classical No, Mishima's characters and situations also encompass the directness and hardness of a modern city street.

Yukio Mishima was born in Tokyo in 1925. Upon his graduation from the Peers' School in 1944, he received a citation from the Emperor as the highest honor student. He was graduated from Tokyo Imperial University School of Jurisprudence in 1947; his first novel was published in 1948. After that he wrote constantly: ten novels, many successful plays, and a travel book. His "lesser writings" include fifty short stories, ten one-act plays, and several volumes of essays. The Sound of Waves, a novel published in Japan under the title of Shiosai, won the 1954 Shinchosha Literary Prize. It was published in English in 1956.

Donald Keene was born in New York City in 1922. He was educated at Columbia, Harvard, and Cambridge universities. From 1948 to 1953 he taught at Cambridge, after which he spent two years in Japan as a Ford Fellow. In 1955 he became an Assistant Professor of Japanese at Columbia. His published works include two anthologies of Japanese literature, a general introduction to the subject, and studies of Japanese literary and historical themes. In 2002, he was awarded one of Japan's highest honors, the title "Person of Cultural Merit" (Bunka Koro-sha), for his distinguished service in the promotion of Japanese literature and culture.