Temple of the Golden Pavilion

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima, 262 pages

"Ever since my childhood, Father had often spoken to me about the Golden Temple."  From an early age, then, the ideal of the Golden Temple of Kinkaku-ji dominated Mizoguchi's imagination, but what is a portal for the father becomes a barrier for the son.  Distanced from others by his stutter, convinced of his own essential unloveliness, Mizoguchi comes to hate the Golden Temple more the more he is captivated by its beauty.  After the death of his father, he becomes a novice at the Temple, and it becomes the ultimate symbol of his father, his religion, his country, his traditions, his future, and everything that stands in the way of his freedom to be a beast.

Based on the true story of the novice priest who burned down the Golden Temple in 1950, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion is full of Mishima's characteristic alternately achingly beautiful and shockingly brutal enigmatic vignettes.  The novel - part biography, part prose poem, part koan - is an enchanting tragedy both personal and civilizational.