Philippine Normal University Taft Avenue, Manila The National Center for Teacher Education College of Languages, Linguistics

and Literature Department of Linguistics, Bilingual Education and Literature

THE TEMPLE OF THE GOLDEN PAVILION BY: YUKIO MISHIMA

I. About the Author

Yukio Mishima ( ) was the pen name of Kimitake Hiraoka ( ) born on January 14, 1925. He was the most famous, gifted and prolific young Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor and film director. He is also famously remembered for his ritual suicide by seppuku on November 25, 1970, after a failed coup d'tat. He was nominated three times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and is considered one of the most significant Japanese authors of the 20th century. He was famous for writing The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. II. About the Book

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (Kinkaku-ji) was published in 1956 and translated into English by Ivan Morris in 1959. It is based on a true event in Japan in 1950. This novel seems to be the most interesting book of Mishima. Two months after its initial release, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion sold over 300,000 copies making it Mishimas most commercially successful novel to date. Two years later in 1958, the novel was made into a feature length film entitled Enjo by the accomplished director Kon Ichikawa. The film has become one of the modern classics of Japanese cinema. The novel is loosely based on actual events, the burning of the Reliquary (or Golden Pavilion) of Kinkaku-ji in Kyoto by a young Buddhist acolyte in 1950. The pavilion, dating from before 1400, was a national monument which had been spared destruction many times throughout history, and the arson shocked Japan. The story is narrated by Mizoguchi, who is afflicted with an ugly face and a stutter, and who recounts his obsession with beauty and the growth of his urge to destroy it. III. About the Golden Pavilion The golden pavilion is a rare masterpiece of Buddhist garden architecture. The history of the Golden Pavilion began in 1397 when Ashikaga Yoshimitusu, a great Shogun, abdicated in favor of his son and began to build this villa as a retreat. By 1407 it was a large complex with a three story pagoda, a seven story pagoda and numerous temples. Upon his death a year later the Golden Pavilion itself became a Zen temple, renamed Kinkaku-ji. The temple was destroyed

during a civil war in 1467, rebuilt, and destroyed again in 1567. By now only the pavilion and an annex survived. The Golden Pavilion survived intact until July 3rd, 1950, when a novice monk, who apparently believed the aesthetic qualities of the pavilion detracted from religious concentration, burned it to the ground. It was rebuilt in 1957 and renovated in 1987. As for now, the Kinkaku-ji serves as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. III. Characters and Plot A. Characters: 1. Mizoguchi He was a son of a Buddhist priest and a young Buddhist acolyte in question. He was afflicted with and ugly face and stutter. He was so much obsessed with the beauty of the Golden Pavilion and because of that; the urge for him to destroy the temple grew. It ended up that he found himself setting the temple afire. 2. Tsurukawa He came from a prosperous temple in the suburbs of Tokyo. He was rich and his parents provided his school expenses, pocket money and provisions. He talked smoothly in a splendid Tokyo accent. 3. Uiko a pretty girl who had large eyes and a rich family. She was the woman whom Mizoguchi had sensual feelings for. 4. Kashiwagi son of a Zen priest who happened to be club-footed. 5. Father Tayama Dosen the Superior of the Temple, a friend of Mizoguchis father when they had studied at a Zen temple. He was a plump man; his face was wrinkled and round yet he had a long nose. 6. Kurai a relative of Mizoguchis mother who had returned to Nariu from Osaka, where he had failed in business. His wife would not take him back into their house and he was obliged to stay in Mizoguchis fathers temple until the affair subsided. He had an extramarital affair with Mizoguchis mother. B. Plot The protagonist, Mizoguchi, a stammering boy is the son of a consumptive Buddhist priest who lives and works on the remote Cape Nariu on the north coast of Honsh. Throughout his childhood he is assured by his father that the Golden Pavilion is the most beautiful building in the world, and the idea of the temple becomes a fixture in his imagination. His ill father takes him to the Kinkaku-ji for the first time in the spring of 1944, and introduces him to the Superior, Tayama Dosen. After his father's death, Mizoguchi becomes an acolyte at the temple. It is the height of the war, and there are only three acolytes, but one is his first real friend, the candid and pleasant Tsurukawa. In May 1945, he and Tsurukawa visit Nanzen-ji. From the tower, they witness a strange scene in a room of the Tenju-an nearby: a woman in a formal kimono gives her lover a cup of tea to which she adds her own breast milk. On the first anniversary of his father's death, his mother visits him, bringing the mortuary tablet so that the Superior can say Mass over it. She reveals her wish that he should succeed Father Dosen as Superior at Rokuon-ji. The two ambitionsthat the temple be

destroyed, or that it should be his to controlleave him confused and ambivalent. On hearing the news of the end of the war and the Emperor's renunciation of divinity, Father Dosen calls his acolytes and tells them the fourteenth Zen story from The Gateless Gate, "Nansen kills a kitten", which leaves them bemused. During the winter of that year, the Temple is visited by a drunken American soldier and his pregnant Japanese girlfriend. He pushes his girlfriend down into the snow, and orders Mizoguchi to trample her stomach, giving him two cartons of cigarettes in exchange for doing so. Mizoguchi goes indoors and obsequiously presents the cartons to the Superior, who is having his head shaved by the deacon. Father Dosen thanks him, and tells him he has been chosen for the scholarship to Otani University. A week later the girl visits the temple, tells her story, and demands compensation for the miscarriage she has suffered. The Superior gives her money and says nothing to the acolytes, but rumours of her claims spread, and the people at the temple become uneasy about Mizoguchi. In the spring of 1947 he leaves with Tsurukawa for Otani University. He starts to drift away from Tsurukawa, befriending Kashiwagi, a cynical clubfooted boy from Sannomiya who indulges in long "philosophical" speeches. Kashiwagi boasts of his ability to seduce women by making them feel sorry for him in his words, they "fall in love with my clubfeet." He demonstrates his method to Mizoguchi by feigning a tumble in front of a girl. She helps him into her house. In May, Kashiwagi invites him to a "picnic" at Kameyama Park, taking the girl he tricked, and another girl for Mizoguchi. When left alone with the girl, she tells him a story about a woman she knows who lost her lover during the war. He realises that the woman she is talking about must be the same one he saw two years before through a window of Tenju Hermitage. Mizoguchi's mind fills with visions of the Golden Pavilion, and he finds himself impotent. That evening a telegram arrives at the university bearing news of kindly Tsurukawa's death in a road accident. For nearly a year, Mizoguchi avoids Kashiwagi's company. As Mizoguchi's mental illness worsens, he neglects his studies. He sets off northwest the next morning, to the region of his birth, and spends three days at Yura (now Tangoyura), where the sight of the Sea of Japan inspires him to destroy the Kinkaku. Kashiwagi is angry, and comes to suspect that Mizoguchi is considering suicide. On June 10 Kashiwagi complains to Father Dosen, who gives him the principal; afterwards, Kashiwagi shows letters to Mizoguchi that reveal the fact that Tsurukawa did not die in a road accident, but committed suicide over a love affair. He hopes to discourage Mizoguchi from doing anything similar. For the last time, they discuss the Zen story of Nansen and the kitten. On June 15, Father Dosen takes the unusual step of giving Mizoguchi 4250 in cash for his next year's tuition. Mizoguchi spends it on prostitutes in the hope that Dosen will be forced to expel him. But he quickly tires of waiting for Dosen to find out, and when he spies on Dosen in the Tower of the North Star, and seems him crouched in the "garden waiting" position, he cannot account for this evidence of secret shame, and is filled with confusion. A strange interview with the visiting Father Kuwai Zenkai, of Ryuho-ji in Fukui Prefecture, provides the final inspiration, and in the early hours of July 2, Mizoguchi sneaks into the Kinkaku and dumps his belongings, placing three straw bales in corners of the ground floor. He goes outside to sink some non-inflammable items in the pond, but on turning back to the

temple he finds himself filled with his childhood visions of its beauty, and he is overcome by uncertainty. Finally he remembers the words from the Rinzairoku, "When you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha", and he resolves to go ahead with his plan. He enters the Kinkaku and sets the bales on fire. He runs back downstairs and out of the temple, choking on the smoke. He continues running, out of the temple grounds, and up the hill named Hidari Daimonji, to the north. He throws away the arsenic and knife, lights a cigarette, and watches the pavilion burn. IV. Novel Analysis A. Beauty in the Japanese context The novels main concern is beauty of the Golden Pavilion and Mizoguchis disappointment that this temple is made up of physical material. In the Japanese context, beauty is something that would last forever like the nature and environment. When his father used to glorify the Golden Pavilion in Mizoguchis eyes, the mind of the young boy made the temple his standard of beauty. However, when he came to see the Golden Temple face-to-face, he was disillusioned. The beauty that he thought would last a lifetime is made out of materials that would decay when it gets old. V. VI. Conclusion References