The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

Nov 28, 2011 Paquita Maria Sanchez rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literature, favorites

Oh yes, you do so want to read this novel. I would mark the following synopsis as a "spoiler," but all is revealed in the introduction, and the events that inspired the book are about as big a mystery for the Japanese as what happened to the Titanic is to Westerners anyway, so don't go getting all sore with me like I'm maliciously ruining all your fun. We are being multicultural and pretending we already knew about this major historical event before hearing of and reading Mishima's novel. Who's...more Oh yes, you do so want to read this novel. I would mark the following synopsis as a "spoiler," but all is revealed in the introduction, and the events that inspired the book are about as big a mystery for the Japanese as what happened to the Titanic is to Westerners anyway, so don't go getting all sore with me like I'm maliciously ruining all your fun. We are being multicultural and pretending we already knew about this major historical event before hearing of and reading Mishima's novel. Who's with me? Then proceed:

Mizoguchi, Zen acolyte and aspiring spiritual figurehead of the centuries-old Golden Temple in Kyoto, develops a pathological reverence for (and inevitable hatred of) his place of worship. Even well before Mizoguchi arrives in Kyoto, he positions the Golden Temple in his mind as his only gauge of beauty and divinity in the world. Not just aesthetic beauty, either; more importantly, the temple represents the potential for spiritual beauty and meaning, both his own and that of others...but mostly his own. Mizoguchi is spiritually void, arguably sociopathic, and has a major chip on his shoulder about women. He has seen some shit, man: his mother during his childhood, a neighborhood girl during his preteen years, and an elusive woman during his later teenage years all serve to twist and defile his sexual development, his views concerning the female species as a whole, and rewire his desires in such a way that they become insurmountable and hallucinatory. Added to his troubles, he has a painful speech impediment and a temperament generally divorced from the everyday social capabilities of your average red-blooded male. This paragraph could go on for days if I continued to attempt to fully explain his psychology, so I will just try and wrap things up and save the goods for your future reading experience. After many a twisted cavern is transpassed in his mind, after the Golden Temple's glory has eclipsed that of all else in his life, Mizoguchi decides it's time to get all Mark David Chapman on it. He must destroy it. He will be cleansed, he will be remembered, the world will be balanced again.

Never mind the other elements of Mizoguchi's obsession, one of the most exquisitely designed aspects of the novel is his rationalization process. Mishima pits Zen Buddhism against itself, selectively interpreting the scripture in a way that presents Mizoguchi (at least to himself) as more enlightened than his fellow practitioners, and fully justified in his actions. It's the sand mandala argument: beauty is temporary, as is everything but suffering. The temple is an object of great beauty which has stood in disharmony with this Buddhist doctrine for far too long, and Mizoguchi must make right with the world by ridding it of this almost 600 year old mockery.*

All this, and yet that isn't even the best part. The prose, the prose, oh my! I will leave it for you to discover. Read some quotes and you will see what I mean. I knew from my previous experience with Mishima (The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea) that the man could deliver a mean inner dialogue, that his paragraphs were like finely-crafted traps/dark pits, and that he was clearly a genius of style. That book sort of fell apart for me at the end, but I still read the majority of it with a gasp trapped in my throat. What a gifted, fascinating man. A plea: please stop killing yourselves, gifted, fascinating men! Fortunately, his catalog is enormous and I will probably never read it in its entirety. If you decide to try though, I suggest you start here.

*The pavilion itself was in fact so treasured (among others, of course), that the Allied forces wouldn't even touch Kyoto, which should say something; they obviously had very few qualms about large-scale, jaw-dropping destruction.(less)

27 likes · like · see review

May 08, 2013 [P] rated it 5 of 5 stars

I’ve written before about my feelings regarding spiders, and how unfortunate my phobia is as I seem to be invaded by them, en masse, every summer. They know, I’m sure of it. There have been days when I have had to smite legions of them, like Odysseus slaying Penelope’s suitors and reclaiming his home. I haven’t always been this brave, however. I remember some years ago, being in a girlfriend’s bedroom, and spending hours eyeing the [pretty small] spider on the ceiling; no joke, I couldn’t bring...more I’ve written before about my feelings regarding spiders, and how unfortunate my phobia is as I seem to be invaded by them, en masse, every summer. They know, I’m sure of it. There have been days when I have had to smite legions of them, like Odysseus slaying Penelope’s suitors and reclaiming his home. I haven’t always been this brave, however. I remember some years ago, being in a girlfriend’s bedroom, and spending hours eyeing the [pretty small] spider on the ceiling; no joke, I couldn’t bring myself to kill it and I couldn’t sleep while it was in attendance, and so I stayed up till something like 4 a.m. and only sheer exhaustion prevented me from being up all night. I told this story to my best friend a couple of days after the incident, and he responded with a load of hippy guff about how I need to learn to love the spiders, how harmless they are and how they have as much right to existence as I have. Pfft. That incident was telling though, because I realized that I was letting my phobia get the better of me. My response, as I framed it for my friend, was that I didn’t need to learn to love the spider, but to hate it with a furious and annihilating passion. Whenever I see one now, I grab my killing-shoe and rush at it, emitting a loud death-scream, and pound it until all that is left of the fucker is a brown, wet, smear.

If you were to try and understand my actions, to get to the psychological root of them, you’d likely want to pick up on the use of the word ‘invasion,’ or maybe you’d ask about any childhood experiences with arachnids, or perhaps you’d focus on the association spiders have, artistically-culturally, with evil. All of that stuff may be relevant, I don’t know, but, for me, the heart of the matter is that they are just so ugly. It’s the look of them, the way they move; there is something truly other about them, something horrific. It is this ugliness, really, that I’m attempting to destroy, to eradicate from my life. I see this attitude in other things too, my aversion to depictions of violence [which is pretty ironic considering how I treat the spiders] for example, how I try and avoid that or if I can't how uncomfortable it makes me feel. I’ve heard people, people I like and admire, talk about the aesthetics of violence, but I can’t understand that, I can’t see it. Indeed, I remember a girl once showing me a picture of a couple covered in bruises, and telling me how much she loved the picture, how beautiful it was, but for me it was horrible, ugly.

You’re wondering, I guess, if you’re still with me and haven’t gone in search of less rambling reviews, what any of this has to do with Mishima and The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. Mishima, as most people know, committed seppuku, which is a ritualized [isn’t it always?] form of suicide, that involves disemboweling yourself with a sword. Crucially, in terms of this review, he was said to have claimed prior to the act that one should only commit seppuku on a beautiful body. It’s clear from this, and from his writing in general, that he, unlike myself, bought into that idea about the aesthetics of violence [indeed, the most violent act in this novel is eroticised, is directed towards a beautiful woman], and that he, in direct contrast to me, had an interest in [an active interest in, it seems] the idea of the need or desire to destroy something beautiful. More than anything else he wrote, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion is a philosophical exploration of man’s relationship with beauty, but, more specifically, one man’s premeditated destruction of a beautiful object, and by extension beauty itself; and that, that need or desire to destroy something that is beautiful is such an alien frame of mind, something that I don’t ever think I can come to grips with, that writing this review will be extremely difficult for me. As a further barrier to my understanding I know very little about Buddhism and Zen and all that malarkey, so the following is my ignorant attempt to say something interesting about the book.

The book, as the back cover will tell you, is based on a historical incident, when a man burned down a famous Japanese temple. Mishima’s novel isn’t a strict re-telling of that story, but he uses it as a basis to explore his themes. In The Golden Pavilion, as noted earlier, Mishima is concerned with man’s relationship with beauty, and the desire to destroy it/an example of it, but as far as I know the real arsonist was not impelled by the same desire or at least didn’t justify his behaviour in that way. In Mishima’s novel the temple acts as a symbol of beauty, despite not necessarily being all that beautiful, even to his protagonist. The boy, Mizoguchi, is brought up by his father, a priest, to consider the temple as an example of supreme beauty, even before he has seen it. There’s a great scene when he does eventually visit it, and how he turns his initial disappointment around by giving the temple almost a human personality; he speaks of it hiding its beauty from him etc as though it is aware of his existence, as though it consciously interacts with him. Although Mishima doesn’t give much space to it, I thought this raised an interesting point about the tension between how one sees something imaginatively and the reality of that thing; the poet Fernando Pessoa wrote that imagination is superior to reality, because one can imagine anything but reality can only be what it is. I feel this kind of disappointment all the time, especially when on holiday. Some time ago I was in Rome and my idea of Rome - the Colosseum, etc – was more impressive than what I saw with my own eyes. In fact, the whole time I couldn't shed the feeling that I would've been happier had I stayed in the hotel room and read a book about Rome instead.

All this is well and good, of course, but it doesn’t explain why he would want to destroy the beautiful [or symbolically beautiful] temple. It starts to make sense, however, when one considers that Mishima’s protagonist is a stutterer, not only that but the author makes repeated references to his ugliness. One could say that instead of turning upon himself, Mizoguchi's self-loathing, in relation to what he sees as his imperfection, his unattractiveness, is directed towards the temple, which he idealizes, and which is perfection. This appears to be quite straightforward psychology: it is beautiful; I am not; so I want to destroy it. Similarly: I am beautiful, quite stunningly so; the spider is not; so I want to destroy it. Bingo! But hold on, because the temple makes him happy [at least initially], he appreciates its beauty. In that case, is the destruction of it a way of possessing it? Possibly, but then he claims to already posses it, and that, conversely, it possesses him. So, is it an act of self-sabotage? I’m not sure. If he is the temple, and the temple is him, to destroy it is to destroy himself, yes, but this muddies all those arguments, lovely clear arguments, about ugliness annihilating beauty. There has been some discussion, in the bits and pieces I have read around the book, of permanence being the key; the idea being, I guess, that lasting beauty is the issue, not beauty per se, that lasting beauty is somehow an affront or is not real beauty, because it is something that ought to be fleeting; certainly, the boy’s friend, the club-footed Kashiwagi, voices this idea. Towards the end of the book Mizoguchi states something along the lines of wanting to decrease the level of beauty in the world and how that can only be done by removing an example of permanent beauty. But then one could equally say that the only way to preserve beauty is to destroy it, because all beautiful things are subject to eventual decay or disrepair etc, yet this idea is never expressed in the book. Ack, who knows? I could probably keep at this forever, but I won’t.

Before concluding this review I’d like to make a point of highlighting just how amazing Mishima’s writing is, his prose. For me he is Japan’s Tolstoy, not their Dostoevsky as is more popularly claimed; his prose is rich, his characters have great depth and his imagery is immensely satisfying and novel. His ideas, because he is, as you might have guessed, an ideas man, are always engaging. One of my favourite parts of the novel is a line about how the beautiful girl and the cripple are alike, because they are constantly subjected to observation, to judgement, to being stared at; Mishima makes almost nothing of this line, doesn’t develop it any further, but I loved it. In any case, if you compare Mishima’s style and psychological and philosophical depth to Endo, Tanizaki, Oe, Abe, Murakami [chortle], or any of the other so-called major Japanese novelists, they come off looking like amateurs. Their prose is often bland, their characters, for me anyway, frequently tedious, and their ideas either clumsily explored or just plain crap. As far as I am concerned there are only two truly great Japanese novelists, at least in translation which I accept may be the real issue, and they are Mishima and Kawabata; Yukio just shades it though. (less)

19 likes · like · see review

Apr 26, 2013 Jimmy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: japanese-literature-poetry

On 1 July 1950, during the Allied Occupation of Japan, a Buddhist monk by the name of Yoken Hayashi set fire to the Kinkaku-ji, or, as it is known in English ‘The Temple of the Golden Pavilion’ (Keene ix). Yoken was a man of little consequence; a character in history, who, had he not committed such an acrimonious act, would not have been remembered today. He suffered from a debilitating stutter, and was considered ugly by many of his peers.

It is often conjectured that Yoken was either schizophr...more On 1 July 1950, during the Allied Occupation of Japan, a Buddhist monk by the name of Yoken Hayashi set fire to the Kinkaku-ji, or, as it is known in English ‘The Temple of the Golden Pavilion’ (Keene ix). Yoken was a man of little consequence; a character in history, who, had he not committed such an acrimonious act, would not have been remembered today. He suffered from a debilitating stutter, and was considered ugly by many of his peers.

It is often conjectured that Yoken was either schizophrenic or suffered from some degree of mental illness. And yet some observers, such as the Japanese literary scholar Donald Keene, think that Yoken’s motives to destroy the Kinkaku-ji were inspired by feelings of indignation regarding the commercialization of Buddhist temples during the Occupation (Keene ix). The only known insight that Yoken has offered on his crime was “ … I do not believe that I have done anything wrong. It is said that a national treasure has been burned, but that seems more or less meaningless.” (Hashi 1). To this day, his true motives cease to be completely understood. Some years later, the iconoclastic Japanese novelist Mishima Yukio, researched the burning of the Kinkaku-ji, using it as source material for a deeply philosophical novel entitled The Temple of the Golden Pavilion.

The Kinkaku-ji – its proper name was the Rokuon-ji – is a by-product of Muromachi culture, and was originally a villa built by the statesman Saoinji Kintsune. It was subsequently purchased by Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (Mason 205). After the death of Yoshimitsu, what was once intended as a relaxing place to escape the pressures of the administrative duties of Shogunate, was converted into a Zen Buddhist temple. The particular sect of Buddhism practiced was Rinzai Buddhism. It was in this building that Yoken trained to become a Zen priest as his father had. Bathed in the luster of its gold covering, embodying aspects of Chinese-style architecture and Heian aesthetics, this three-storied double-roofed structure located at the edge of a pond, surrounded by lush forestry, is truly an image of cultural beauty.

In developing the character of Mizoguchi, who is based on Yoken, Mishima wanted to create a figure whose personal deformities – his stutter and his ugliness – provoke an obsession with a symbol of pure beauty. Early in the novel, Mizoguchi’s fascination with the Kinkaku-ji is inspired by, what he sees as its permanence in a world full of death and constant decay, “I knew and believed that, amid all the changes of the world, The Golden Temple remained there safe and immutable.” (Mishima 20). Against the historical backdrop of the Pacific War, Mizoguchi sees a good deal of death around him. Uiko a local girl he knew in Maizuru, is killed by the Kempeitai (Japanese military police) for sleeping with a deserter, his father passes, as well as his close friend Tsurukawa (later revealed to be a suicide), and he witnesses the devastation reaped by the Pacific War, specifically the air raids throughout Japan.

Kyoto, where the Kinkaku-ji is located, was an exception during this time. During the strategic aerial bombings orchestrated by Curtis Lemay, Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s one request was that Kyoto not be destroyed, as it was the cultural heart of the Japan, and it’s former Imperial capital; the focus was on the more industrialized areas such as Tokyo and Osaka (Hastings 298). It is this quality of immutability that Mizoguchi sees in the Kinkaku-ji that eventually inspires feeling of hatred. Initially, he decides to burn down the temple because he assumes that it will eventually be destroyed as many lives around him have, but the resilience of this ancient structure is what motivates him into action.

And ultimately, action, not words, is what is truly important to both Mizoguchi and Mishima. Later in the novel, Mizoguchi befriends a fellow deformed student with ‘clubbed feet’ named Kashiwagi. He admires Kashiwagi because as he sees it, “I understood that he disliked lasting beauty. His likings were limited to things such as music, which vanished instantly, or flower arrangements, which faded in a matter of days; he loathed architecture and literature.” (Mishima 131). Though it has been commented on before, it’s tempting here to draw the ultimate artistic parallel: that of Yoken’s act of burning down the Kinkaku-ji, and Mishima’s attempted coup d’etat in 1970 resulting in his suicide.

In this light, the question becomes one of whether the dramatic actions of these men were motivated by political realities, or it was because both of them were so disturbed by the impermanent nature of beauty in the real world that they felt the need to destroy it in order to free themselves from the oppressive philosophical weight of transient beauty. Considering his reverence for the Heian aesthetic, Buddhism, and nationalism, it’s likely that Mishima saw in Yoken, an act of protest against the increasing modernity prevalent in Japanese culture and social life after the war. In spite of Mishima’s apparent fondness for European literature and philosophy, as well as his interest in American culture, he saw Japan’s situation as relatively hopeless. In the years leading up to his death, he confided in his close friend, the Japanese film scholar Donald Richie that, for Japan “there is nothing to save.” This leads Richie to speculate on Mishima’s motives for his suicide, “When I learned of his suicide that is what I first remembered-that he already knew that there was nothing more to save. His may have been a political statement, an aesthetic statement, but it was also a despairing personal statement.” (Lowitz 150). This last line is the most striking, “a despairing personal statement.”

It’s questionable that Yoken’s character was as deeply philosophical as he is portrayed by Mishima. Rather, in The Temple of the Golden Pavilion Mizoguchi comes off as a literary mouthpiece for Mishima’s thematic obsession with the fleeting nature of existence. This melancholy preoccupation with the transient nature of life was first articulated with precision by the 18th century philosopher and literary critic Motoori Norinaga whose interpretation of the Heian period classic The Tale of Genji viewed the book in the context of mono no aware , or “ a sensitivity to things” (Keene 489). This same thematic concept, one seemingly more poetic and artistic than political, is also embodied in Mishima’s rendition of the famous Noh play “Sotoba Komachi”, which is more of an aware take on femininity. In his book on Noh theater, William T. Vollmann opines that, “Mishima continually implies that the beauty of femininity’s mask is not merely delusory, but dangerous, distracting, voracious: the ruination of male energy” (Vollmann 325). Again, there is a clearly defined thematic concern with ageing and transience in Mishima’s take on the destruction and passing of beauty; this time on the grotesque Noh figure of Komachi. Mishima was also very fond of Lady Murasaki’s classic tale of the “shining prince.”

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion is a rich, complicated novel, as are many of Mishima’s other books. While the theme of mono no aware is predominant throughout this fictional account of a crazed Buddhist acolyte, there are metaphysical Aristotelian musings; Mizoguchi’s distinction between the world of words that creates his inner world, and the outer world of reality. The hypocrisy of Zen Buddhism is called into question; the Superior courting a geisha, which is reminiscent of the character of Redshirt in Natsume Soseki’s Botchan. And above all else, a Japan that was experiencing the American influence of the military, postwar poverty, and a diminishing faith in the “kokutai” after Emperor Hirohito renounced his divinity.

While all of these historical details add depth to the story of a man who many thought was insane, if not just painfully dull, the most powerful theme is the hatred of beautiful things. This hatred and cruelty, as Mizoguchi describes it, are, again, inspired by the unattainable nature of beauty. As Mizoguchi declares, in conversation with Kashiwagi, right before he’s about to finally put his words into action and tap into that “outer reality”, “Beauty, beautiful things,’ I continued, ‘those are my most deadly enemies” (Mishima 204). And for Mishima, this is also true. His life, in its many guises and forms, was a continuous pursuit of, and battle with, the transient essence of beauty. Whether he found it in the literary classics of Japan, ancient temples, femininity, or the beauty of the kokutai, the profound effect that beauty had on Mishima’s life, in the end, made living unbearable.
(less)

14 likes · like · see review

Dec 05, 2011 Jeremy added it · review of another edition

Shelves: japanese-literature

How wonderfully freaked out is this book? It's about a young, introverted zen priest who becomes obssessed with a six hundred year old temple to the exclusion of everything else in his life, and then decides it has to be burned down to the ground. And it actually happened! Mishima is just brilliant at sucking you into the world of Mizoguchi's damaged neurosis. And almost every paragraph has at least one mind-fuck brilliant observation about beauty, ugliness, love, obsession, destruction, what ha...more

6 likes · like · see review

Jan 13, 2012 Stephen M rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 3-cheers-4-complex-characters

This book made me think of a term I learned in a psychology class called eidetic memory; a short look over at wikipedia will give a bit of a misleading definition. Eidetic memory, at least in the form that I learned it, is the short-term, instantaneous memory of visual images that, under certain theories, is stored for a very brief period of time before transferring into long term memory store. The effects of eidetic memory can be shown in a number of ways, but most famous is the optical illusio...more

16 likes · like · see review

Feb 17, 2009 Black Elephants rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Beauty is a concept which seems indefatigable in all genres of art. People love all its guises and facets, and Yukio Mishima is no different in his homage to the ideal in his novel The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. There is one slight contrast, however; whereas most other authors praise the uplifting quality of Beauty, Mishima and his protagonist are obsessed with its dark side and destructive powers.

Mizoguchi is a serious man who becomes an acolyte at the famous Kyoto Golden Temple wherein he...more Beauty is a concept which seems indefatigable in all genres of art. People love all its guises and facets, and Yukio Mishima is no different in his homage to the ideal in his novel The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. There is one slight contrast, however; whereas most other authors praise the uplifting quality of Beauty, Mishima and his protagonist are obsessed with its dark side and destructive powers.

Mizoguchi is a serious man who becomes an acolyte at the famous Kyoto Golden Temple wherein he becomes obsessed with its beauty. In Mizoguchi's mind, the unattainable perfection of the Golden Temple obstructs everything that he might enjoy in his life—human relations, women, studies and even food. It is in the end that Beauty, as Mizoguchi states himself, becomes his greatest enemy and to be free of it, he must destroy the temple.

Despite the dark tones of this story, its pathos and philosophical exploration on themes that an artistic soul usually finds quite seductive, I found the entire book to be tedious. I should perhaps warn those reading that I have a particular initial intolerance for many melancholic protagonists: Holden Caulfield, Hamlet and Heathcliff to name a few. Mizoguchi seems to be stricken with the same paralysis that these other characters have: They are all talk with lots of brooding (well, excepting Heathcliff) until the very end when you, as the reader, want to stand up and shout, "GET ON WITH IT ALREADY!"

There's a lot of passivity in this book that gets darker and darker. Mishima makes his protagonist, who is really the antagonist, too, feel ugly inside and out. Mishima also takes away Mizoguchi's ability to express himself by giving him a stutters. The author continually deconstructs anything that is good and beautiful in Mizoguchi's life. For example, Mishima kills off his best and most moral friend. Mishima cripples and makes Mizoguchi's best influence amoral. He destroys the piety of the monks. He maligns Mizoguichi's parents, and he topples all the beautiful female characters from their pillars. And it's all done in front of the backdrop of two wars. In the end, the only thing that is a representative of Beauty in Mizoguchi's world is the Golden Temple, which is cold, unattainable and something that exists more in the imagination than anything else. In fact, when Mizoguchi first sees the Temple, he's disappointed with the reality of it, but later he admits that the building grows in greatness and stature in his mind.

I found myself thinking on John Keats' famous lines, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,-- that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." To me, these lines discuss the all-encompassing aspect of Beauty in the world, and if Beauty is so important in truth, then Mishima has a very skewed vision of the world. Like D.H. Lawrence, he's sapped all life and love from his Japan, until those last pages. Maybe. It seems to me that in the end, Mishima is hinting that to live in this world, we have to be free of our conceptions of what makes it up, and perhaps those conceptions are what we deem as true and beautiful.(less)

2 likes · like · see review

Oct 21, 2007 Art rated it 4 of 5 stars

This was the first book by Mishima for me. It is poetic and complex with beautifully written passages and deep multilayered but unlikable characters. The psychological dynamics of the central protagonist seem unfathomable at times, and I have to wonder whether this is the result of a cultural difference (from the original Japanese -- and my wife read it in that language, her native tongue, but we still don't know) or the fact that the character is, by definition, messed up. Based on a true story...more

1 like · like · see review

Nov 24, 2012 Mikael Kuoppala rated it 4 of 5 stars

Yukio Mishima's odd examination on beauty and the way aesthetics play a role in all of human existence and interaction. The book has an air to it that reminded me of the French existentialists- a common trait in many classic Japanese works of literature I have read.

Through a first person narrative Mishima builds a personal history of Mizoguchi, a man obsessed with beauty in all its forms, enchanting and destructive alike. The culmination of all those forms of beauty is the Temple of the Golden P...more

like · see review

Aug 29, 2012 James Nicolay rated it 5 of 5 stars

The concept of beauty has always captivated my interest. Being a photographer, artist, and writer, I am always in awe of any work that defines, explores, contradicts, extrapolates, extends, and even deconstructs the notion of beauty---and this is probably the reason why reading Yukio Mishima’s “The Temple of the Golden Pavilion” was a very enriching experience. This is not my first exposure to Mishima and his works; I have seen the film “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters” a few years ago and can...more The concept of beauty has always captivated my interest. Being a photographer, artist, and writer, I am always in awe of any work that defines, explores, contradicts, extrapolates, extends, and even deconstructs the notion of beauty---and this is probably the reason why reading Yukio Mishima’s “The Temple of the Golden Pavilion” was a very enriching experience. This is not my first exposure to Mishima and his works; I have seen the film “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters” a few years ago and can distinctly remember the portrayal of his suicide, and I have already enjoyed reading “The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea” (whose themes and ideas complement many of those found in the assigned novel) and I have already taught a few times his story “Swaddling Clothes” where he exposes his vague but important statement about his feelings about the modernization of Japan. I could still remember my experience of reading “The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea” because it was such a thrilling experience---I was on the edge of my seat fearful for the impending demise of the titular character about to be murdered by his stepson mainly because of the latter’s disappointment with the sailor’s change in values and virtues. Little had I known that the experience of reading that novel would pale in comparison with the experience of reading “The Temple of the Golden Pavilion.” It was like eating a ridiculously expensive ice cream: extremely embarrassing to admit the guilty pleasure that goes with doing it.

I don’t, in any way, wish to emulate Mizoguchi’s actions, disposition, values (or lack of them), and beliefs. I find myself pausing reading some pages and expressing out loud to my office mates the craziness of the ideas swirling in the heads of Mizoguchi and Kashiwagi. They reminded me of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn and even Holden Caulfield but these three Westerners cannot hold a candle in terms of the strangeness of these Japanese duo. Their conversations about beauty and the truth about human nature are very thought-provoking, if not shocking. Kashiwagi’s statement about beauty being “like a decayed tooth” and his Nansen cat story point out the strange way Japanese sense of aesthetics is different from Westerners’. Beauty is found in ephemeral and broken things; a thing that lasts forever cannot be beautiful, and so like the kitten in the story, it should be beheaded. The golden temple even from the first chapter has been doomed to be annihilated as it has survived beyond its youth and is therefore ripe for shaking or destruction.

One question that bothered me initially while reading the novel is the extent of the influence of the other people on Mizoguchi. His characterization is a good subject for the study of the roles of nature vs nurture in one’s sense of morality. The influence of his parents, his Superior, Tsurukawa and Kashiwagi, and even minor female characters as Uiko and Mariko are all relevant in the actions and decisions of Mizoguchi. But is he ultimately a product of these social influences? Or is Mizoguchi by himself already evil?

The crucial scene of his running away from the temple going back to his birthplace attempts to answer this. From this scene onwards, when he’s alone and, in an ultimate moment, decides to burn down the Golden Temple, he is no longer affected by anybody else as he was in the earlier parts of the novel and starts to finally come home to himself by not heeding to anybody else’s philosophy or doctrine or ambitions. When he goes back (or when he is forced to go back with the police officer), he shows his rejection of his mother, who has been waiting for him as notified by the Superior, whom he equally rejects and no longer cares about; he also distances himself from Kashiwagi, who initially thought he knew him well and wrongly thought that Mizoguchi is planning to commit suicide like his friend Tsurukawa, and eventually he goes on and finally holds the rein of his life by visiting the brothel twice. His careful planning and execution of the burning of the golden temple shows this profound chance in his identity and he becomes free from the clutches of the golden temple which has haunted him all his life. He no longer has to wait for the war or natural calamity to destroy the temple but he takes it on himself to destroy the temple not just for him but for the entire nation of Japan, who has been held captive by this long imposing presence of the temple.

Beauty can be a terrifying thing. Mizoguchi’s obsession with the temple’s beauty has imprisoned him all his life, as early as his father’s fascination with it. The world around him has slowly been being destroyed by beauty: Tsurukawa’s suicide is for his unrequited love for someone (most likely a beautiful person who rejects him), Uiko’s rejection and humiliation of him is because of her beauty standards, and his trauma of seeing his mother having sex with another man in his and his father’s presence (beauty as a female entity, being ravaged in a sexual act), all of these express how beauty has been trumping him all his life with his imperfection as a stutterer. Through the aid of Kashiwagi, a fellow victim of beauty because of his natural defect, he realizes for himself in the end that he could take beauty in his hands and spit on its face. By doing so, he becomes free and this is evident in the last sentence in the novel: I wanted to live.
(less)

like · see review

Jan 15, 2012 Sophie rated it 2 of 5 stars

"Sometimes we see such a face on the stump of a tree that has just been chopped down. Though the cross section of the tree is young and fresh in color, all growth has ceased at this point; it is open to the wind and the sun, to which it should never have been opened; it is exposed suddenly to a world which was not originally its own--and on this cross section, drawn with the beautiful grain of the wood, we see a strange face. A face that is held out to this world just so that it may reject it."

"...more

like · see review

Aug 28, 2011 Karlo Mikhail Mongaya rated it 4 of 5 stars

Yukio Mishima’s The Temple of the Golden Pavilion is a novel that gives the reader remarkable insights into the convoluted realm of the human psyche. The story of a Buddhist acolyte who burned one of Japan’s historical and cultural landmarks shortly after the Second World War gives us a glimpse of what an extreme instance of an individual’s failure of integration into society might bring.

One is never naturally born into reality. In order for one to live and act as a normal individual who interac...more Yukio Mishima’s The Temple of the Golden Pavilion is a novel that gives the reader remarkable insights into the convoluted realm of the human psyche. The story of a Buddhist acolyte who burned one of Japan’s historical and cultural landmarks shortly after the Second World War gives us a glimpse of what an extreme instance of an individual’s failure of integration into society might bring.

One is never naturally born into reality. In order for one to live and act as a normal individual who interacts with others, one should first and foremost be properly installed in the social order. As a child, one needs to recognize one’s own image as oneself, as “I”, and later learn this “I”’s place in society with one’s acquisition of language.

In The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Mizoguchi’s ugly physical features and tendency to stutter prevented his assimilation into traditional Japanese society, a society which is especially obsessed with beauty and perfection.

Mizoguchi’s severance from the social space was further escalated by his lack of a father figure. He perceived his own father, a lowly Buddhist monk, as physically and morally weak. Not only was Mizoguchi’s father sickly, his father also tolerated his mother’s having sexual relations with a visitor in their house in Mizoguchi’s presence.

Consequently, in relation to the loss of the biological father’s symbolic efficiency as father figure, we see the correlative rise of the Temple of the Golden Pavilion as a substitute symbol of authority. In the same breadth, we see how the temple becomes the central point of Mizoguchi’s mother’s desire in her wish to make Mizoguchi the head the temple. For Mizoguchi, the temple, which for him is the picture of perfection, beauty, and power, gradually occupied the place of the father.

Mizoguchi’s final act of burning the temple then can be interpreted as classic example of the oedipal imbroglio of killing the father, “the root of everyone else’s powerlessness.” He only wanted to get rid of the symbolic strictures (as crystallized in the figure of Temple of the Golden Pavilion) that blocked his access to his desires. He only “wanted to live.”

From The Death of the Father (less)

1 like · like · see review

Jul 09, 2011 John rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Yukio Mishima's The Temple of the Golden Pavilion is a meditation on the relationship between words and action, beauty and ugliness, and Being and nothingness. In this book, which is one of Mishima's best novels, these themes are treated with considerable patience and depth, giving readers great insight into the philosophical issues that preoccupied Mishima for the entirety of his writing career; all the way up to his own ritual suicide by seppuku in 1970.
The plot of the story concerns a Japan...more Yukio Mishima's The Temple of the Golden Pavilion is a meditation on the relationship between words and action, beauty and ugliness, and Being and nothingness. In this book, which is one of Mishima's best novels, these themes are treated with considerable patience and depth, giving readers great insight into the philosophical issues that preoccupied Mishima for the entirety of his writing career; all the way up to his own ritual suicide by seppuku in 1970.
The plot of the story concerns a Japanese college student, named Mizoguchi, who serves as an acolyte at a Zen Buddhist temple in Kyoto during and shortly after World War II. Mizoguchi is a stutterer; a disability that is symbolic of his separation from the world around him. He is preoccupied with the incongruity that exists between his own inner, subjective experience, and the world that exists beyond his subjectivity. He is alienated from everything and everyone outside of himself, feeling alone and misunderstood until he becomes friends with Kashiwagi, a club-footed student who attends the same college. Mizoguchi's friendship with Kashiwagi pushes Mizoguchi to confront his own alienation and to finally overcome it through an act of destruction: the torching of the Temple of the Golden Pavilion.
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion represents the impossibility of all abstract notions of idealized perfection. When Misoguchi was a child, his father described the Golden Temple to him as the most beautiful thing on earth. This description, which resides only in the mind, set a criterion against which the actual, concrete temple was doomed to fall short once Misoguchi was finally to see it in actuality. His disappointment with the appearance of the actual temple provoked a desire to explore further, to look harder, and to expend more effort in order to discover what he had missed. Misoguchi is not satisfied with only the ideal of perfection; he wants to see that idea reflected in the world of objective reality. His frustration with this quest comes to an end only when he discovers the logic of destruction and nothingness.
The beauty of the Golden Temple rests in its lifelessness. Living things, like humans, cannot be truly beautiful since they lack the quality of being eternal and "rigid." Beauty is infinite, and so nothing finite can be absolutely beautiful. The Temple, then, is only beautiful to the degree that it exemplifies a timeless ideal. Yet, the materials out of which the Temple was constructed are subject to decay. These physical materials -- the timbers and the gold foil, the nails and the planks -- provide a medium through which the eternal may speak, but they also hold back the infinite by binding it to something that is itself finite. This was the source of Misoguchi's disappointment upon first seeing the Golden Temple, and he comes to realize that it is only through destruction of the physical manifestation of the Temple that it's essence can be liberated and finally achieve immortality.
The theme of nihilism permeates the entirety of this novel, as it does all of Mishima's work. In one of his other, non-fiction books, titled Sun and Steel, Mishima explicitly applauds the kind of nihilism that Nietzsche called "active nihilism," which strikes out at the void in order to create, destroy and act. The character Misoguchi is an exemplar of just this sort of nihilistic impulse. His only other option would be passive acquiescence to reality as it exists in a fractured condition stretched between the real and the ideal. In the destruction of the physical Temple, he symbolically eradicates his slavery to the real, and thus frees himself to dive into the flow of life, regardless of its imperfections.
My personal feeling is that while Misoguchi's act of rebellion in The Temple of the Golden Pavilion may be emotionally cathartic, metaphysically it changes nothing. Ideals are inescapable for human existence, and though they may cause us distress insofar as we inevitably fall short of their absolute standards, they also spur us on toward the goals and projects that make life worth living. Nihilism, in my view, is not something to be overcome, but something that is part of the human condition. To overcome nihilism is either to die or to become something other than a human.
(less)

2 likes · like · see review

Nov 16, 2010 77ships rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Mishima attempts to reconstruct the thought patterns and life of the young Buddhist acolyte who burned down the Golden Pavilion (a very beautiful and old Buddhist temple). It is interesting to know how much of his life story and ideas are of his real life doppelganger. I really don’t know but I assume that quite a bit of it can be true since Mishima appears to have done his best in order to reconstruct his actions & life, even visiting him in prison.

I wasn’t all that exited by the book at fi...more

like · see review

Dec 05, 2012 umberto rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, japan

I simply didn't agree with a review somewhere that mentioned this novel in terms of its 'philosophical' view as cumulatively initiated, grasped and executed by setting fire to demolish the Golden Temple, the unique, historic, national temple of unsurpassed elegance and beauty in Japan. From its 10-chapter, 247-page content, we can read and see that it's started from Mizoguchi's mind, therefore, this is a matter of 'psychological' abnormality leading to the unthinkable arson.

1 like · like · see review

Jul 26, 2012 Karen Mead rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: stuff-i-read-to-feel-intelligent, life-changing-novels

My first thought after finishing The Temple of The Golden Pavilion was that Yukio Mishima had killed himself after the wrong book.

If you're familiar with Mishima's life at all, then you know that he famously committed suicide right after he finished his Sea of Fertility tetralogy. Now, the tetralogy was okay, but to me, this book was Mishima's masterpiece; he could have committed suicide after this book and the literary world would not have been much poorer for it.

I apologize if I seem flippant...more

like · see review

Jul 26, 2011 Eddie Watkins rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

To make one Mishima take one dehydrated Dostoevsky; remove all hair and whiskers (go all the way! give old Dos a full Brazilian!) then polish to a steely sheen; carefully remove the heart and brain; take the heart between both hands and squeeze, using occult Buddhist techniques, until the heart’s emotional essence is drop by drop converted into intellectual conceits; collect these drops and add to brain; replace squeezed-out Dostoevsky heart with something pitiless; rehydrate with fanaticism and...more To make one Mishima take one dehydrated Dostoevsky; remove all hair and whiskers (go all the way! give old Dos a full Brazilian!) then polish to a steely sheen; carefully remove the heart and brain; take the heart between both hands and squeeze, using occult Buddhist techniques, until the heart’s emotional essence is drop by drop converted into intellectual conceits; collect these drops and add to brain; replace squeezed-out Dostoevsky heart with something pitiless; rehydrate with fanaticism and disembodied compassion and send it on its way through a convoluted and deterministic universe. This recipe good for only one side of Mishima, as he appears to have been a man who, even as he refined his mind and body to a single point of final intensity, kept his myriad contradictions in solution to serve as goad and fuel for that single-minded intensity. The more I think about it the less sense the recipe makes (as in even this one aspect of mercurial Mishima has already slipped through its measurements and proportions), so scrap the recipe, but let its memory linger in the mind as a kind of partial ghost image, an echo of a meaning that never quite was; which is appropriate as Mishima was - at times (as in this book) - an anti-intellectual intellectual, a man for whom words, thoughts, ideas were thoroughly plastic and manipulable, able to fill-out and justify any cockamamie idea, and so in a way meaningless, though still of course powerful enough to exert an inexpugnable sway. What does one do when faced with such an intellectual dilemma? Burn what is perceived as the wellspring of intellectual aesthetic permanence down to the ground so as to more directly access the infinite root network of instinctual reality, if only for a moment… Mishima must have delighted in the idea of writing this book, as working from an existing true story fulfilled his needs, even at the meta level, of a determined world, of fate as the driving force, even as his natural intensity and intellectual fire attempted to transcend the actual flames and convoluted messiness of this world to present a fleeting image of perfection, as a glance through an infinitely-faceted crystal, of an apotheosis, a single moment that briefly encapsulates a hydra-headed life. (less)

15 likes · like · see review

Sep 09, 2012 Tea Coopz rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'd really give this 3.5 if I could. I think the success of a heavily philosophical novel is how well that novel conveys the tenets of its preferred ideology without spoiling my immersion in the text. Crime and Punishment is probably the most successful at this, having long speeches that, for some reason, to not jar me.

The difference, I guess, lies in the way each author conveys the characters' philosophies throughout the novel. In C&P, we get them in conversations. In Temple of the Golden P...more

like · see review

Apr 20, 2010 Mad Russian the Traveller rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: physical-shelf

I finally finished Yukio Mishima's "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion" translated by Ivan Morris. As all the commentators have pointed out, this a fictionalized account of the person who burned down the the Golden Temple in Kyoto, Japan.

This story is told in first-person narrative style which is appropriate considering that the main character, the narrator, a Buddhist priest in training, obsesses about himself. My limited understanding of Buddhism is that one must empty oneself of self to attain...more

like · see review

Jul 25, 2012 Ametista rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: ebook, giappone

"Una volta, d'estate, durante una pausa del lavoro nel campo dietro agli alloggiamenti, osservai il modo con cui un'ape visitava un piccolo crisantemo giallo. Venne ronzando con le sue ali dorate nella luce piena, scelse un crisantemo tra i tanti, e parve che immobile vi si sospendesse innanzi, nell'aria.
Mi sforzai di guardare con gli occhi dell'ape. I petali aperti del crisantemo erano impeccabili, perfetti. Il fiore era bello come un piccolo Padiglione d'oro: sì, era bello quanto il Padiglione...more "Una volta, d'estate, durante una pausa del lavoro nel campo dietro agli alloggiamenti, osservai il modo con cui un'ape visitava un piccolo crisantemo giallo. Venne ronzando con le sue ali dorate nella luce piena, scelse un crisantemo tra i tanti, e parve che immobile vi si sospendesse innanzi, nell'aria.
Mi sforzai di guardare con gli occhi dell'ape. I petali aperti del crisantemo erano impeccabili, perfetti. Il fiore era bello come un piccolo Padiglione d'oro: sì, era bello quanto il Padiglione ma mai ne avrebbe potuto assumere l'aspetto, sarebbe sempre rimasto soltanto un crisantemo d'estate. Sì, sarebbe ineluttabilmente rimasto un crisantemo, un'"entità" floreale, una singola forma priva di qualsiasi suggestione metafisica. Ma obbedendo alla legge dell'esistenza, il crisantemo esercitava un continuo ed efficace richiamo, e costituiva per l'ape un oggetto adeguato di desiderio. Che mistero si nascondeva palpitante sotto l'oggetto di quel desiderio informe, volubile, volatile, fluido!
A poco a poco la sua forma si andò dissipando, parve frantumarsi, vibrò. Ed era assolutamente giusto così, giacché era una forma creata per il desiderio dell'ape, e la sua bellezza era sbocciata in previsione di quel desiderio, e proprio in quel supremo attimo interamente risplendeva la sua ragion d'essere. La forma è in sé lo stampo della vita eternamente fluente senza forma; e, al tempo stesso, l'informe vita che vaga nello spazio è lo stampo d'ogni forma esistente... L'ape s'addentrò profondamente nel fiore, sempre più giù, più giù, finché, cosparsa di polline, s'immerse nell'ebbrezza. Il crisantemo che consenziente s'era offerto a quell'atto d'amore, sembrò mutarsi interamente a sua volta e parve esso una gialla ape rivestita d'una stravagante armatura di petali; lo vidi scuotersi con violenza come se da un istante all'altro dovesse distaccarsi dallo stelo e librarsi a volo.
Rimasi stordito da quel connubio consumato in piena luce. E poi, quando finalmente cessai di guardare con gli occhi dell'ape e cercai di recuperare i miei, ebbi la sensazione che fossero adesso non più i miei occhi, ma quelli del Padiglione d'oro.
Proprio così. Appena feci per tornare ai miei occhi e riprendere contatto con la vita, gli occhi non furono più i miei occhi. E fu esattamente in quell'attimo che il Padiglione d'oro si levò come un sipario tra me e la vita." (less)

like · see review

Aug 13, 2011 Jasminka rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion is an excellent psychological novel, complex, disturbing, perceptive, with Zen references and metaphors. Sometimes I felt depressed and really bored reading almost repetitive details and paragraphs, but I really enjoyed the Mishima's beautiful writing style (that is the reason why I gave the book 4 instead of 3 stars!). Also, it is a slow read, mainly because I found the main character so distasteful and irritating, so I couldn't sympathize with him. I found abs...more

2 likes · like · see review

Sep 04, 2012 Cecilia rated it 2 of 5 stars

This was the first book I've read by Mishima, and I'm not sure if it was the story or Mishima's writing that didn't appeal to me.
Mishima's writing is very poetic and allegorical, to the point where I sometimes found it over the top and wishing that he would just get on with it and move on with the story.
The main character, Mizoguchi, is a Zen priest and spends most of his time brooding and philosophizing about the world and especially the concept of beauty. Mizoguchi is beyond obsessed with the...more

like · see review

Oct 02, 2011 Mario Liesens rated it 4 of 5 stars

On the first of juli 1950 Hayashi Shoken set fire to the golden pavilion in the Rokuonji temple complex. Mishima tries to reconstruct the psycholigical process Hayashi went through from the day he saw the pavilion for the first time till the day he set fire to it. Mishima does an excellent job in describing the disturbed views of the protagonist. The writing style is anything but sec and the result is hard to swallow at times, especially when things go metaphysical. If zen and psychology is your...more

like · see review

Jan 25, 2010 Veronika KaoruSaionji rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is my (till today - I don´t read all his works) least favorite book of Mishima. I like him and his work. And this is good book. But, Mishima was gay. I love his books from viewpoint of gay hero, or confused possibly gay boy :o) or female heroine, he is great in it! But there is main hero heterosexual boy/young man, who loves only women. And he is psychopat. This plot was about real person, young monk Hayashi who was in love/hate relationship with beautiful building of Golden Pavillon in Kyo...more This is my (till today - I don´t read all his works) least favorite book of Mishima. I like him and his work. And this is good book. But, Mishima was gay. I love his books from viewpoint of gay hero, or confused possibly gay boy :o) or female heroine, he is great in it! But there is main hero heterosexual boy/young man, who loves only women. And he is psychopat. This plot was about real person, young monk Hayashi who was in love/hate relationship with beautiful building of Golden Pavillon in Kyoto and burnt him down in attempt of their (he and this temple) double love-suicide. He want to die in flames with Golden Pavillon, because he could not have it´s beauty and it´s love. Pure tragedy and person mentally ill, I mean. But not unsimilar to Mishima´s thinking - when he was unloved by certain boy/man, he wish to hurt him and maybe his death, too (Mishima was real bad boy :o) - only wild dreams, he was not murder, but jealous, arrogant and dominant little beast :o)). And he very fancy double love suicide - his death was of this sort, he was beheaded by his young admirer who as rumoured as his lover, and he allowed (from many his admirers who wanted to die with him) only this young man to die with him.
But Mishima´s hero there is not real Hayashi, he renamed his to Mizoguchi and made him to very different person. Strictly heterosexual (real Hayashi was monk and it is nothing known about him and women!), he hates Golden Pavillon and he wants to burn it because he wants be free from it´s evil charm.... This is not what Hayashi was. And this is not what Mishima was (he was much more similar to real Hayashi, but not so much twisted :o)). This is about what (gay) Mishima thinks that heterosexual psychopat may be. Only Mishima´s fantasy - and not much realistic. :o)But language is poetical and sometimes very beautiful. Because it is it worth of reading.
But certainly not best of Mishima´s book! Maybe the most heterosexual of them (what is pleasant for heterosexual male readers) and attempt of viewpoint of (twisted) heterosexual man, yes, this was brave and sure very hard for him. But when I read work of gay man, I prefer that I can see that this is the work of gay man.
That book would be much more better, when he would write about real Hayashi and when he would give into arsenist´s doing his own (Mishima´s)way of thinking, his ability to love and hate together, his madly passion, his interesting hurtful jealous adoration... Which I love in his works. This is very different from other his books. And not really my cup of tea. But still beautil language and pictures of beauty.(less)

1 like · like · see review

Mar 28, 2013 Bobby Albrecht rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

An exploration of beauty, the chasm between idea and action, and the dark depths of a youth trapped in isolation. The protagonist and narrator, Mizuguchi, finds himself enthralled by the beauty of the famous Kinkakuji (Temple of the Golden Pavilion), and feeling a shame stemming from his own ugliness, decides he must destroy it.

Though this is certainly a fictional work, Mishima based his story on a real event, namely the incineration of the Kinkakuji on the same day as told in the book by a monk...more

like · see review

Apr 27, 2013 Rowena rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

“To be sure, there are times when the reality of the outer world seems to be waiting for me, folding its arms as it were, while I was struggling to free myself. But the reality that is waiting for me is not a fresh reality. When finally I reach the outer world after all my efforts, all that I find is a reality that has instantly changed colour and gone out of focus- a reality that has lost the freshness that I had considered fitting for myself, and that gives off a half-putrid odour."

Mishima is...more

7 likes · like · see review

Mar 03, 2013 Jay McNair rated it 3 of 5 stars

Well into the book, I almost decided to stop reading because I just didn't like the main character. He was just kind of twisted. But there had been moments of promise early on, it had received convincing praise, and it was largely set in a Zen temple. So I stuck with it. And I'm glad I did. Certain scenes, such as the acolytes watching their master set out from the temple at dawn, were marvelous. And the ending was so delightful. In the lens of society, it was a tragedy; but through the lens of...more

like · see review

Feb 12, 2013 Andrew rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: japanese

I took a Japanese literature course back in college. I remember little of it except the professor (a very Caucasian fellow) was of the belief that all cultures outside of Japan were inferior and Japanese literature the crowning achievement of mankind. If I could take such a course again, with more content and less enthusiasm, this is a book I'd like to read for it.

This book reminded me a little of Dostoyevski in its treatment of psychology and moral decisions. The prose is much like other post-w...more

like · see review

Mar 20, 2013 Jacopo rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Nell'estate del 1950 il tempio più importante del Giappone, il meraviglioso Padiglione d'oro, viene raso al suolo da un incendio doloso. Ad oggi le circostanze di questo atto insensato sono avvolte da un alone di mistero ed il criminale venne etichettato come "malato di mente".

Yukio Mishima immagina che ad appiccare l'incendio sia stato un giovane monaco zen e prova a raccontarne la storia. Il risultato è un romanzo complesso e sfaccettato che ha per protagonista un ragazzino balbuziente, oppres...more

like · see review

Apr 24, 2013 Nam Pham rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: japanese-literature

I first knew Yukio Mishima as the subject matter of Eikoh Hosoe's Ordeal by Roses, a dark and surreal photo book and a great representative of Butoh movement.

In 'Golden Pavilion', I seem to catch the same dramatic imagery of Mishima. This discourse on beauty is fused with connection to destruction, confusion and dualism - to the extent that it is necessary to translate one extreme by meaning of the other. There I can feel the insecurity and an ever changing perception of beauty - as I questione...more

1 like · like · see review

Mar 15, 2012 Daniel Lovins rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: japan

Based on the true story of a young Zen Buddhist monk who torched the Kinkakuji (Golden Temple) in 1950, the protoganist Mizoguchi is a tortured soul who struggles through his formative years with a case of severe stuttering and the conviction that he is too physically ugly to be loved. It's a beautifully written book, if also sometimes stilted in its many florid descriptions (though this may be due to the translation). It's an interesting exercise of trying to get inside a deranged person's head...more

like · see review

title link	preview: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
avg rating	preview: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion Goodreads rating: 3.96 (3182 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62798.The_Temple_of_the_Golden_Pavilion?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1342696904l/62798.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62798.The_Temple_of_the_Golden_Pavilion?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima[/url]

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

Friend Reviews

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topic
Discuss This Book

combine
Other Editions (47)

Genres

Readers also enjoyed similar books

About Yukio Mishima

Books by Yukio Mishima

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website

Trivia About The Temple of the...

Quotes from The Temple of the Gold...