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The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
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Kyoto, 1940s–1950. Mizoguchi, a stammering and isolated young man, enters the Zen temple of Kinkaku-ji after his father’s death. He has idealised the Golden Pavilion since childhood, but its beauty increasingly dominates his imagination and separates him from ordinary relationships. Wartime expectations that it might be destroyed, followed by its survival and Japan’s defeat, deepen his belief that beauty has become an oppressive rival.
As a student and acolyte in postwar Kyoto, Mizoguchi moves between religious discipline, sexual frustration and a cynical friendship with Kashiwagi. His obsession culminates in the decision to burn the pavilion, fictionalising the 1950 arson committed by Hayashi Yōken. The novel is less a documentary reconstruction than a psychological study of alienation, beauty, destruction and moral vacancy in occupied Japan.
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