The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

novel by Mishima

Also known as: “Kinkaku-ji”

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The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, novel by Mishima Yukio, first published in Japanese as Kinkakuji in 1956. The novel is considered one of the author’s masterpieces. A fictionalized account of the actual torching of a Kyōto temple by a disturbed Buddhist acolyte in 1950, the novel reflects Mishima’s preoccupations with beauty and death. The narrator, Mizoguchi, a young Zen acolyte, is alienated from the world around him; born physically unattractive and frail and into...