The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Mishima Yukio

The last of three Japanese novels in my library The Temple of the Golden Pavilion requires giving what some readers may consider a spoiler; however, the storyline should not be the only reason to read a book.  This novel is historical fiction: information included on the cover and discussed in the Introduction by Nancy Wilson Ross:

In 1950, to the distress ad horror of all art-loving and patriotic Japanese, the ancient Zen temple of Kinkakuji in Kyoto was deliberately burned to the ground.  This Golden Pavilion, a rare masterpiece of Buddhist garden architecture, dated back over five hundred years to the days of the great Shogun, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, military leader, aesthete, and powerful patron of the Zen cult. . . So revered was this historic and religious shrine that it enjoyed in Japan the status of a National Treasure.  It was willfully set fire to and destroyed by an unhappy and unbalanced student of Zen Buddhism. (vi)

But this knowledge should not stop anyone from reading The Temple of the Golden Pavilion.  Readers do not refuse to read historical fiction because they know the time period; that is precisely why we read historical fiction.  Readers enjoy reading a story that takes place with familiar markers or markers of interest.  I read this novel knowing it was Mishima’s interpretation of history; he used the incident and built a story around the perpetrator of the crime.

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion is told from the first person point of view of Mizoguchi, the student.  (This is not the real name of the student who burned down the temple). The novel is a confession and reads with the believability of non-fiction.  Things happen which the reader may or may not be able to connect as important to the story, but that is real life.  Every moment or action in life is not necessarily important, but it is all part of a complete life.  Mizoguchi is faced with situations that are problematic to him; individuals get in the way of his plans, but there is no one clearly taking the role of antagonist.  Mizoguchi is the antagonist in this novel; the temple is the protagonist.  Even as he prepares to set the fire, Mizoguchi contemplates its beauty:

Yet I did not know whether beauty was, on the one hand, identical with the Golden Temple itself or, on the other, consubstantial with the night of nothingness that surrounded the temple.  Perhaps beauty was both these things.  It was both the individual parts and the whole structure, both the Golden Temple and the night that wrapped itself about the Golden Temple.  (254)

A quick Google of the author made more interesting connections.  Mishima Yukio was far right politically.   He was short-listed for the Nobel Prize for Literature three times, and his political views probably kept this award from him.  He committed ritualistic suicide after his failure to overthrow the Japanese government in 1970. 

My brief foray into Japanese literature has been challenging and rewarding.  Having read a couple of books by Kenzaburo Oe after he was awarded the Nobel in 1994, I will probably return to them for a second reading.  Although I am ready for some lighter reading now, I have greatly enjoyed reading three very different novels, all considered to be classics from the literature of Japan.

Mishima, Yukio. The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. Translated by Ivan Morris. Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1987. Print.