Review
"Beautifully translated... Mishima re-erects Kyoto, plain and mountain, monastery, temple, town, as Victor Hugo made Paris out of Notre Dame."

-- The Nation

"An amazing literary feat in its minute delineation of a neurotic personality."

-- Chicago Tribune

Translated from the Japanese by Ivan Morris


Review
"Beautifully translated... Mishima re-erects Kyoto, plain and mountain, monastery, temple, town, as Victor Hugo made Paris out of Notre Dame."

-- The Nation

"An amazing literary feat in its minute delineation of a neurotic personality."

-- Chicago Tribune

Translated from the Japanese by Ivan Morris


Language Notes
Text: English
Original Language: Japanese


Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Japanese


The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature
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 Kyoto 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 bleak poverty, he stutters badly and holds himself aloof from others. His obsessive feelings for the Golden Temple vary from disappointment to reverence to identification with the structure. Mizoguchi resembles other tormented Mishima heroes who become obsessed with unattainable ideals: realizing the profound lack of beauty in his own life, he decides he must destroy the temple.


From the Inside Flap
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 until he becomes an acolyte at a famous temple in Kyoto. He quickly becomes obsessed with the beauty of the temple. Even when tempted by a friend into exploring the geisha district, he cannot escape its image. In the novel's soaring climax, he tries desperately to free himself from his fixation.


From the Back Cover
"Beautifully translated... Mishima re-erects Kyoto, plain and mountain, monastery, temple, town, as Victor Hugo made Paris out of Notre Dame."-- The Nation"An amazing literary feat in its minute delineation of a neurotic personality."-- Chicago TribuneTranslated from the Japanese by Ivan Morris

ANNOTATION

A hopeless stutterer, taunted by his schoolmates, Mizoguchi feels utterly alone until he becomes an acolyte at a famous temple in Kyoto. But he quickly becomes obsessed with the temple's beauty, and cannot live in peace as long as it exists.

FROM THE PUBLISHER