The Temple of the Golden Pavilion: Introduction by Donald Keene [Hardcover]

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). 

Mizoguchi, an ostracized stutterer, 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.

With an introduction by Donald Keene; Translated from the Japanese by Ivan Morris.“Established Mishima’s claim as one of the outstanding writers of the world.” —The New York Times

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 TribuneYUKIO 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 ConfessilC.