The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima
"The Temple of the Golden Pavilion" is a novel by Yukio Mishima, published in 1956, that explores themes of beauty, alienation, and the struggle for identity through the story of Mizoguchi, a young man who is the son of a Zen Buddhist monk. Mizoguchi grapples with feelings of inadequacy, stemming from his stutter and self-perceived ugliness, as he becomes increasingly obsessed with the beauty of the Golden Pavilion, a famous Buddhist temple. His fascination leads him down a path of destructive behaviors, including envy and nihilism, as he struggles to reconcile his artistic aspirations with his personal demons.
Set against the backdrop of post-war Japan, the novel delves into Mizoguchi's relationships with others, including his friendships and encounters with women, which are marked by a deep sense of isolation and a longing for connection. Ultimately, Mizoguchi's internal conflict culminates in a radical decision to burn down the temple, symbolizing his rejection of unattainable beauty and the futility of existence. Mishima’s narrative challenges readers to reflect on the nature of beauty, the impermanence of life, and the complexity of the human experience. The novel is considered a significant work in Japanese literature and offers profound insights into Mishima's own philosophical views.
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The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima
First published:Kinkakuji, 1956 (English translation, 1959)
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Mid-twentieth century
Locale: Kyoto, Japan
Principal characters
Mizoguchi , a Zen Buddhist acolyte and student at the Golden TempleTsurukawa , his friend and fellow studentKashiwagi , another friend and fellow studentFather Dosen , the superior at the temple
The Story:
The son of a Zen Buddhist monk, Mizoguchi is haunted by his father’s admiration of the beautiful Temple of the Golden Pavilion. Mizoguchi himself is not beautiful. He is a stutterer and describes himself as ugly, but he considers himself a great artist. When a naval cadet visits Mizoguchi’s middle school, the boy scratches the fine scabbard of the cadet’s sword for no particular reason other than envy.
When Mizoguchi tries to confront Uiko, an attractive young woman who lives nearby, she teases him about his stuttering, and he curses her. A few months later she hides in a temple with her lover, a deserter from the navy, and when the military police find them, the lover shoots her and then kills himself. Mizoguchi, however, is not especially disturbed by the tragedy.
When his father takes him to visit the Golden Temple, Mizoguchi is disappointed; he finds that he actually prefers a model of the temple to the real thing. His ailing father’s main intent, however, is to introduce his son to the temple’s superior, Father Dosen, who will become Mizoguchi’s teacher. Shortly afterward, his father dies, and Mizoguchi feels no particular grief, nor does he feel sorry for his mother, who, he knows, had once been unfaithful to his father. This event, which he witnessed as a boy, caused him to despise both parents and is likely the origin of his own self-loathing.
As an acolyte or student of Zen during the last year of World War II, Mizoguchi forms a friendship with an outgoing, likable student named Tsurukawa, but he continues to feel alienated by the beauty of the temple and drawn to a life of evil. One evening, Mizoguchi sees a tea ceremony in which a beautiful woman uses milk from her breast for a young army officer’s cup, and he is struck by the mystery of the event.
During the American military occupation of Japan following the war, a drunken U.S. soldier insists that Mizoguchi step on the stomach of a prostitute outside the temple. Mizoguchi finds a strange pleasure in doing so, and he maliciously passes on to Father Dosen the carton of cigarettes that the soldier gives him. After the prostitute has a miscarriage, she extorts money from the superior, and later she commits suicide. Mizoguchi feels no guilt over what has happened; in fact, he takes a certain evil pleasure in it.
Although Father Dosen knows what happened, he sends Mizoguchi to attend Otani University, where the young man meets the cynical, clubfooted Kashiwagi, an intellectual who detects immediately that Mizoguchi is a virgin and afraid of women. When Mizoguchi tries to have sex with a woman Kashiwagi provides for him, the image of the Golden Temple intervenes and leaves him impotent. Upon returning from that outing, Mizoguchi learns that Tsurukawa has been killed in an accident (later revealed to be a suicide).
Kashiwagi enjoys flower arranging and playing the flute, and he despises literature and architecture because they represent lasting and immutable forms of beauty. In fact, Kashiwagi prefers art forms noted for their “uselessness.” One afternoon, the beautiful woman whom Mizoguchi had long ago seen offering her breast milk to a soldier (who was later killed in the war) turns up at Kashiwagi’s apartment, and he treats her brutally. Mizoguchi follows her to her home and tells her about seeing her years before, but when she offers him her breast, he sees it transformed into the Golden Temple and is again struck impotent. The eternal beauty of the temple stands between him and mortal beauty, but it also stands as a challenge to him, and after this Mizoguchi resolves to “rule” over the temple.
Increasingly, Mizoguchi feels no kinship with anyone or anything but the temple, which becomes his focus in life. When he discovers Father Dosen with a geisha, he tries to blackmail the superior, but to no avail, and he begins to do poorly in his studies. He takes delight in not being understood, and in the fall of 1948 he runs off. As he faces the wildness of the Sea of Japan, he realizes his mission in life is to burn down the Golden Temple.
At age twenty-one, in the spring of 1950, Mizoguchi has a run-in with Kashiwagi when he presses Father Dosen on one of Mizoguchi’s IOUs, but the superior pays it. The superior’s threat to expel Mizoguchi frees him to pursue his scheme, and Kashiwagi’s malicious revelation that Tsurukawa’s death was a suicide prompted by an unhappy love provides an additional incentive. Subsequently, Mizoguchi takes the superior’s money and pays for a prostitute with it instead of paying off Kashiwagi. He is able to consummate the sexual act, but it offers him no satisfaction, as he can see the beauty of the day changing before his eyes and realizes that everything, including the woman, is destined to die.
Shortly after the outbreak of the Korean War, Mizoguchi buys arsenic and a knife, intending to set fire to the temple and then commit suicide. Just before he lights the fire, Mizoguchi contemplates the beauty of the temple one last time and recognizes that it is a dream of perfection that can never be completed; it will always pursue the next unknown beauty. Paradoxically, then, nothingness is “the very structure of this beauty.” The beauty of the Golden Temple never ceases, and it is unsurpassed. Mizoguchi also recalls a Buddhist proverb: When you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha. He sees that he must burn the temple “precisely because it [is] so futile” to do so. Sitting on a hill overlooking the burning temple, Mizoguchi discards the knife and arsenic, lights a cigarette, and tells himself he wants to live.
Bibliography
Keene, Donald. Five Modern Japanese Novelists. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Examination of the lives and works of five Japanese novelists presents Keene’s personal recollections of the writers as well as literary and cultural analyses of their works. Devotes a chapter to Mishima.
Nathan, John. Mishima: A Biography. 1974. Reprint. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2000. Reprint of a classic biography includes a new preface. Nathan knew Mishima personally and professionally, and he provides a detailed and balanced portrait of the writer.
Piven, Jerry S. The Madness and Perversion of Yukio Mishima. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2004. Psychological study of Mishima traces the events of his life—most notably his early childhood, spent largely in his grandmother’s sickroom—to provide a better understanding of the author and his works. Chapter 6 is devoted to a discussion of The Temple of the Golden Pavilion.
Scott-Stokes, Henry. The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1974. Biography provides ample material for readers interested in exploring the parallels between Mishima and Mizoguchi.
Starrs, Roy. Deadly Dialectics: Sex, Violence, and Nihilism in the World of Yukio Mishima. Folkestone, England: Japan Library, 1994. Discusses Mizoguchi as “rising heroically from passive to active nihilism” and argues that there is “relief and catharsis” in the ending of The Temple of the Golden Pavilion.
Ueda, Makoto. Modern Japanese Writers and the Nature of Literature. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1976. Includes discussion of The Temple of the Golden Pavilion that focuses on the work as a philosophical novel and on the role of the novelist as psychiatrist. Provides information on many details of Mishima’s life.
Wolfe, Peter. Yukio Mishima. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1989. Includes commentary on The Temple of the Golden Pavilion that discusses Mizoguchi’s act as one of self-betrayal.
Yamanouchi, Hisaaki. The Search for Authenticity in Modern Japanese Literature. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978. Argues for the separation of Mishima from his protagonist in The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, even though Mishima himself was nihilistic and often felt estranged from life.
Yourcenar, Marguerite. Mishima: A Vision of the Void. 1986. Reprint. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Yourcenar, herself a novelist, analyzes Mishima’s works and argues that the author’s life was “an exhausting climb” toward what he perceived as its proper end. Includes discussion of The Temple of the Golden Pavilion.