The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
Yukio Mishima · 1956
Based on the real 1950 burning of Kyoto's Kinkaku-ji, Mishima's novel examines beauty, obsession, and the desire to destroy what is most perfect. His prose is baroque and hypnotic. Published in 1956, it remains his most frequently cited work and a strong argument for calling him Japan's greatest 20th-century novelist.
The case against
Mizoguchi narrates in essay-length meditations on beauty that stall the story for pages, and Kashiwagi exists chiefly to deliver nihilist lectures. Women appear as instruments of the narrator's humiliations, nothing more. Add a starched English translation and you get a hypnotic book that is also airless, a sealed jar with a fire inside.
Literary Fiction · the Pro canon
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