Masakatsu Morita Junkichi Orimoto as General Kanetoshi Mashita Hiroshi Mikami as Cadet #1 Junya Fukuda as Cadet #2 Shigeto Tachihara as Cadet #3 Flashbacks Naoko Otani as Shizue Hiraoka Haruko Kato as Natsuko Hiraoka Yuki Kitazume as Dancing Friend Kyûzô Kobayashi as Literary Friend Alan Mark Poul as American Reporter Roy Scheider as Narrator (voice) Paul Jasmin as Narrator (uncredited, voice) The Temple of the Golden Pavilion Yasosuke Bando as Mizoguchi Kōichi Satō as Kashiwagi Hisako Manda as Mariko Chishū Ryū as Monk Naomi Oki as First Girl Miki Takakura as Second Girl Kyoko's House Kenji Sawada as Osamu Reisen Lee as Kiyomi Setsuko Karasuma as Mitsuko Sachiko Hidari as Osamu's Mother Tadanori Yokoo as Natsuo Yasuaki Kurata as Takei Runaway Horses Toshiyuki Nagashima as Isao Hiroshi Katsuno as Lieutenant Hori Jun Negami as Kurahara Hiroki Ida as Izutsu Naoya Makoto as Kendo Instructor Ryō Ikebe as Interrogater Production Mishima dramatizes three of the writer's novels and also uses segments from his autobiographical novel Confessions of a Mask. At least two scenes, one showing the young Mishima being aroused by a painting of the Christian martyr Sebastian, and another where a young Mishima purposefully exaggerates his illness at a military draft health checkup, appear in this book. The use of one further Mishima novel, Forbidden Colors, which describes the marriage of a homosexual man to a woman, was denied by Mishima's widow. As Schrader wanted to visualize a book illustrating Mishima's narcissism and sexual ambiguity, he chose the novel Kyoko's House (which he had translated for him exclusively) instead. Kyoko's House contains four equally ranking storylines, featuring four protagonists, but Schrader picked out only the one which he considered relevant. Mishima used various colour palettes to differentiate between frame story, flashbacks and scenes from Mishima's novels: the scenes set in 1970 were shot in naturalistic colours, the flashbacks in black-and-white, the Temple of the Golden Pavilion-episode is dominated by golden and green, Kyoko's House by pink and grey, and Runaway Horses by orange and black. Pre-production began in February 1984. Cinematographer John Bailey instructed the Japanese crew to set up a screening of Hideo Gosha's film Goyokin, which was screened as an important reference for the "look" of the film. Roy Scheider was the narrator in the original movie version and on the early VHS release. On the 2001 DVD release, Scheider's voice-over was substituted with a narration by an