“The Temple of the Golden Pavilion”

By Yukio Mishima (Himitake Hiraoka)

In The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Mizoguchi narrates the story of his troubled life
from his middle school years until age twenty-one, when he commits what he considers to be an
inevitable deed. From the beginning of his narration, Mizoguchi stresses his isolation and
feelings of alienation: Born on a remote cape to impoverished parents, a physically frail only
child, he recognizes early that he is ugly and that his speech impediment—a stutter-locks him
away from easy communication with the rest of the world. He lives virtually in an inner world,
scorning the reality of the world around him. Throughout his narrative Mizoguchi stresses that
“not being understood by other people had become my only real source of pride.”
Mizoguchi comes to believe that his troubled life leads him inevitably to the destruction
of the Golden Temple. To explain this deed, Mizoguchi alerts the reader “that the first real
problem I faced in my life was that of beauty.” Mizoguchi’s father, a tubercular country priest,
taught his young son that nothing was more beautiful than the Golden Temple in Kyoto. When
he feels death approaching, Mizoguchi’s father takes his young son to see the Zen temple and to
meet Father Tayama Dosen, an old friend and the Superior of the Golden Temple. Having
nurtured the idea of the temple’s beauty for years in his inner world, Mizoguchi is initially
disappointed with the temple. The reality does not satisfy his ideal vision. Yet once away from
Kyoto, he again visualizes the temple as beautiful. After his father’s death in the summer of
1944, Mizoguchi goes to Kyoto to finish his education under the care of Father Dosen. The
young acolyte continues his lonely and alienated life: At his father’s cremation, he sheds no
tears; a flashback describing an incident when Mizoguchi is thirteen explains his hatred for his
mother; and even after a year with Father Dosen, Mizoguchi feels no personal connection to him.
Only the temple holds fascination for the young Zen acolyte. While studying at the temple,
Mizoguchi is befriended by another youngacolyte, Tsurukawa. The two students seem quite
different: Tsurukawa comes from a prosperous Tokyo family, has a promising future as a priest,
and in Mizoguchi’s eyes has a cheerful and carefree disposition. During these years, only
Tsurukawa is aware of Mizoguchi’s special feeling toward the Golden Temple.
Mizoguchi’s feelings about the temple are always strong, but they vary with time.
Initially, he is troubled to learn that the temple embodies so much beauty because this makes him
realize the lack of beauty in his own life on the remote cape. During the late war years when
Mizoguchi lives near the temple, he feels the strongest affinity with it. He feels akin to the
temple rather than estranged from it because he believes that both the temple (through air raids)
and he (once he reaches conscription age) will be destroyed by the war. Strangely, this belief that
they would perish together comforts him. After the defeat of Japan, however, he again feels
estranged from the temple and unable to see any beauty in his own life. With the defeat of Japan,
his renewed estrangement from beauty, and his continued isolation from reality, Mizoguchi
decides, “I shall plunge as deep as I can into an inner world of evil.” He enjoys lying to
Tsurukawa and refuses to confess his part in a prostitute’s miscarriage.
 After Tsurukawa and Mizoguchi enter Otani University, they drift apart. Tsurukawa
easily makes new friends, but Mizoguchi finds it more difficult to do so. He eventually begins a
relationship with Kashiwagi, a clubfooted student who quickly asserts that he has faced the same
problems as Mizoguchi but with more intensity and with better results. Both students believe that
because of their handicaps they have been placed in an antagonistic relationship to the rest of the
world. While Mizoguchi struggles to attain a normal life, Kashiwagi seems content with his
misanthropic attitude and his willingness to use people to provide himself with as much comfort
as possible. Kashiwagi urges Mizoguchi to experience life, although to experience it selfishly,
nihilistically. Yet the influence of the Golden Temple continues to draw him away from reality.
Mizoguchi wavers: At times, he tries to participate more in life, but at other times he prays that
the beauty of the temple will protect him from the ugly realities of life. Trying to reconcile these
two positions has always been Mizoguchi’s problem, the problem of beauty. Mizoguchi cannot
simultaneously function in the real world and fully appreciate beauty; he senses that a choice
between the two must be made.
Prompted by the knowledge that Father Dosen will no longer consider Mizoguchi his
successor as priest of the Golden Temple, Mizoguchi flees from the temple and travels to his
birthplace. Here, by the rough sea, Mizoguchi realizes that he must set fire to the Golden Temple
in order to free himself to enter the world of reality. Although Mizoguchi returns to the temple
and spends almost eight more months as a university student, he never wavers from his decision
to destroy the temple. He merely awaits the right moment. His confused logic leads him to action
when he senses that the Superior will no longer tolerate his shirking of his studies and his
disrespectful behavior. The outbreak of the Korean War also precipitates his action. Mizoguchi is
pressured into believing that if he does not act quickly, he will miss his opportunity.
In the early morning hours of July 2, 1950, Mizoguchi sets fire to the Golden Temple, the
beautiful Zen structure more than five hundred years old. He watches the burning with the
feelings of “a man who settles down for a smoke after finishing a job of work. I wanted to live.”