The Temple of the Golden Pavillion

This novel is based on a spectacular true crime. In 1950, a Zen priest, Hayashi, burned down Kinkaku, a beautiful sixteen century temple in Kyoto. The motives of the arsonist priest, like the motives of the student killers at Virginia Tech and Columbine, remain murky. Mishima turned Hayahsi into the fictional priest Mizoguchi in order to dive deeper into the thinking that would prompt such an act. His success is mixed.Mizoguchi sees himself as ugly and transient and sees the temple as beautiful and eternal. Just as thermodynamics is about lessening the physical gradients between objects, nihilism is an attempt to degrade the psychological distance between the nihilist's inner reality and the outer world that torments him. At first Mizoguchi defines his problem as finding the proper response to beauty, as personified by the Golden Temple; later, he's tormented by his growing distance from all that beauty promises in this world.Mizoguchi tells the story in the first person, and this challenges the author because Mizoguchi is graceless, inarticulate and resentful toward a world he can't fit into. His transactions with the Superior at the temple, his interactions with his friends Tsurukawa and Kashigawi and his intermittent, mostly impotent brushes with women are all refracted though Mizoguchi's distorted perspective. In fact, Mishima has to cheat and give this unsophisticated country boy the ability to bat around zen dialectics to explain himself and his actions. Mizoguchi's philosophical musings are the least convincing aspect of the novel.For the novel to work, whether or not we understand Mizoguchi, we at least have to feel sorry for him. For three quarters of the story he's neither interesting enough nor likable enough nor recognizably human enough to pity. In the last two chapters, though, as Mizoguchi makes his final preparations to destroy the temple, the book rises to another level, and we can feel compassion for him, mainly because we feel his painful, irrevocable turning away from any hope of a normal human existence.Some critics think this is Mishima's finest novel. I don't, partly because Mizoguchi's inner life is only partly believable, partly because the prose reflecting that inner life is often as clotted and plodding as Mizoguchi himself, partly because the inner lives of people who fold their arms and say no to life often aren't compelling. Although it's not an easy book to read, it's worth sticking with for the cumulative effect of the ending, and the complicated reactions Mizoguchi's final actions at the temple stir up in the reader.Even if the results are mixed in this book, Mishima was a great novelist. For a western reader, his Sea of Fertility tetralogy is perhaps a more interesting and compelling take on Japanese society.

This isn't an easy or light read. The tortured main character elicits no sympathy from the reader, but his preoccupation with beauty, that he both worships and loathes, and its dramatic consequences are fascinating. The translation is excellent and faithfully renders the voice of the author.

I purchased this edition for a university class, and while I am not having too much difficulty reading it, there are so many typos it's a little ridiculous for the price paid. Sometimes I can't tell if a word is typed correctly or not because it's a Romanji version of a Japanese word. If there were far fewer mistakes, then I wouldn't have to constantly check to see if certain words were correctly written or not.As for the story itself, this is something everyone should read.

5 Star Book.1 Star Kindle Edition.The Kindle edition of this book is AWFUL. At least one typo per page, often several typos per page. I probably spent 45% more time reading this book simply because I felt compelled to report each typo I came across. Mishima is an author who uses complicated sentence structure, plus he is in translation here. It is extremely difficult to concentrate when you're not always sure whether Mishima is challenging the reader, or the text has simply been poorly transcribed.

As Advertised.. Arrived earlier then expectedThanks!

‘The Temple of the Golden Pavilion’, is one of the most known books of Yukio Mishima. It presents a dark vision, and is a purely beautiful and utterly disturbing novel. It shows beauty and destruction, dedication and cruelty, sacrifice and betrayal; all whilst containing incredibly vivid descriptions. ‘The Temple of the Golden Pavilion’ is a book that haunts you ever since one starts reading it and continues haunting one long after finishing it. Despite it having been the first book of the author which I’ve really read, and despite the close attention I had to pay to it whilst reading due to my unfamiliarity with the topic and culture at hand, I adored it.‘The Temple of the Golden Pavilion’ focuses on the life of a young Zen Buddhist acolyte named Mizoguchi after the end of WW2, who because of the boyhood trauma of seeing his mother make love to another man in the presence of his dying father, is a hopeless stutterer. Taunted by others, he feels alone until he eventually becomes an acolyte at a famous temple in Kyoto, where he develops a consuming obsession with the temple’s beauty. It ends with the man deciding to set fire to the temple despite his obsession with its beauty, all whilst showing a fascinating study of depression and madness.The story itself is based on the real-life event of the burning of the Golden Pavilion (the temple Kinkakuji) by Buddhist acolyte Hayashi Yoken in 1950. Though not much information exists about him outside of Japanese literature – much of this not being very detailed itself in turn to avoid the events being memoralised – Mishima researched the events carefully, and even interviewed Hayashi in prison before Hayashi passed away. Thus the novel is very closely linked on these real-life events, though with some changes added for philosophical and dramatic effects. The prose reads easily, neither being too cold or dense, and shows great understanding and sensitivity. The voice is deeply original, and makes this a hypnotic book, and proved to be really hard to put down.‘The Temple of the Golden Pavilion’ shows a dark story and vision that affects the protagonist at every turn, also showing and laying out the themes prevalent in the rest of Mishima’s work. The notion of beauty affected Mishima throughout his life, leading him to model himself as a bodybuilder and believing that strengthening the body was as important as strengthening the mind – particularly for an intellectual. As such it shows a fascinating insight into the author himself, who remains very much a mystery, and subject of great controversy (particularly due to his attempted coup d’état).Is ‘The Temple of the Golden Pavilion’ worth reading? Most definitely. It isn’t often that one has the chance to truly encounter literature that comes across as fascinating as the great classics, so to say, and this part of Mishima’s work definitely achieves to really stand out. Easy and a fascinating read, it is definitely a worthy book to read as both an introduction to the author and a look at the overarching themes of this three-times-nominated Nobel Literature Prize author’s work. It definitely earns the highest rating, and it’d be a shame for any person interested in this particular period of time or author to miss it.

An interesting portrait of a disturbed person, but it reminded me of reading existentialist philosophy, which I find maddening. I'm glad I finished but can't say I loved it.

Great book, but the kindle edition has so many typos it is distracting to read. Amazon needs to do a better job than this.

The book is interesting at times, and well constructed story. But it also tends to drag.

Personally I love Mishima and this is one of the most subtle translations that I have had chance to come upon, fine tread of the story and multiple meanings should give any bookworm hours of joy and recollections. Again Everyman's Library delivers perfect binding and paper for truly fair price.

Not as accessible as some of Mishima's work, but a great novel, serious in substance, psychologically penetrating and articulated in the author's exquisite, refined style.