Status Updates From Золотой Храм

The way Mishima writes about Japanese culture often leaves the impression that he believes it is a part of the natural world. Simila to a flower or mountain. Infact each flower and mountain holds a place in Japanese culture like a temple or piece of clothing. While some aspects of the natural world are cultivated by men, such as rice or chickens, those things, like Japanese culture, are no less part of the natural

In this vast, vague world of objects the bee and the summer chrysanthemum only remained to be “put in order,” as it were. The flying of the bee and the shaking of the flower did not differ in the slightest from the rustling of the wind. In this still, frozen world everything was on an equal footing, and that form which had emitted so powerful a charm was extinct.

In my experience, therefore there was nothing in the nature of accumulation. There was no thickness of the kind that could form a mountain by piling one stratum upon another. Yet one thing I knew was that among all these experiences certain small elements-elements that were not swallowed up in the dark sea of time, elements that did not subside into meaningless and interminable repetition—would be linked together...

It was inevitable that this woman should have changed, just as the features of this earth are changed by the time that the light from a distant star has finally reached it. If at the time when I saw her from the gate of the Nanzen Temple she and I had been joined in anticipation of today’s meeting, such changes as had taken place in her since then could be effaced; with only a few small alterations,

One small decision followed another, and the effects of contrast and symmetry converged with infallible artistry. The flowers and leaves, which had formerly existed as they were,, had now been transformed into flowers and leaves as they ought to be. The cattails and the irises were no longer individual, anonymous plants belonging to their respective species, but had become terse, direct manifestations

His likings were limited to things such as music, which vahished instantly, or flower arrangements, which faded in a matter of days; the brief beauty that the player brings into being transforms a given period or time into pure continuance; it is certain never to be repeated; like the existence of dayflies and other such shortlived creatures, beauty is a perfect abstraction and creation of life itself.