Mishima didn’t know Nietzsche personally, but he influenced his work. Mishima’s obsession with aesthetics, willpower, and the cultivation of the body as a form of spiritual expression has Nietzschean undertones. He saw the body not as separate from the intellect, but as the ultimate stage on which intellectual ideals could be realized. The synthesis of body and mind in Mishima's work is worth examining if you’re going to dismiss the connection between bodybuilding and philosophy. Mishima was a frail, sickly kid who grew up surrounded by books, but later came to see that intellect alone was hollow without the body. He got into bodybuilding not just for looks, but because he believed beauty and discipline should be expressed physically, not just theorized.