The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

A haunting portrait of a young man's obsession with idealized beauty and his destructive quest to possess it fully--and the book that "established Mishima's claim as one of the outstanding writers of the world" (The New York Times).

Because of the boyhood trauma of seeing his mother make love to another man in the presence of his dying father, Mizoguchi becomes a hopeless stutterer. Taunted by his schoolmates, he feels utterly alone and develops a childhood fascination with Kyoto's famous Golden Temple. While an acolyte at the temple, he fixates on the structure's aesthetic perfection and it becomes his one and only object of desire. But as Mizoguchi begins to perceive flaws in the temple, he determines that the only true path to beauty lies in an act of horrific violence. Based on a real incident that occurred in 1950, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion brilliantly portrays the passions and agonies of a young man in postwar Japan, bringing to the subject the erotic imagination and instinct for the dramatic moment that marked Mishima as one of the towering makers of modern fiction.

Author: Yukio Mishima
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 10/04/1994
Pages: 288
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.53lbs
Size: 8.01h x 5.22w x 0.62d
ISBN: 9780679752707

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 8
Point Value: 17
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 70918 / Temple of the Golden Pavilion


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 02/01/1995 pg. 104

About the Author
YUKIO MISHIMA was born in Tokyo in 1925. He graduated from Tokyo Imperial University's School of Jurisprudence in 1947. His first published book, The Forest in Full Bloom, appeared in 1944 and he established himself as a major author with Confessions of a Mask (1949). From then until his death he continued to publish novels, short stories, and plays each year. His crowning achievement, The Sea of Fertility tetralogy--which contains the novels Spring Snow (1969), Runaway Horses (1969), The Temple of Dawn (1970), and The Decay of the Angel (1971)--is considered one of the definitive works of twentieth century Japanese fiction. In 1970, at the age of 45 and the day after completing the last novel in the Fertility series, Mishima committed seppuku (ritual suicide)--a spectacular death that attracted worldwide attention.