The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

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Book: Read The Temple of the Golden Pavilion for Free Online
Authors: Yukio Mishima
illuminated them from below. Quietly and proudly the temple thrust forth its empty hall into the red-leaved valley.
    I stood up, shivered, and rubbed myself to stimulate my circulation. The chill alone remained in my body. All that remained was the chill.
    During the spring holidays of the following year, Father visited my uncle's house. Over a wartime civilian uniform he wore his robe. He said that he would take me to Kyoto for a few days. Father's old illness had become much worse and I was shocked to sec how he had declined. Not only I, but my uncle and aunt all tried to dissuade Father from the trip, but he would not listen to us. When I thought about it afterwards, I realized that Father wanted while he was still alive to introduce me to the Superior of the Golden Temple.
    To visit the Golden Temple had of course been my dream for many a long year, but I did not enjoy the idea of going on a journey with Father, who, for all his stouthearted efforts, was bound to impress anyone who saw him as being extremely ill. As the time approached for me to come face to face with the Golden Temple, which I had never yet seen, a certain hesitation grew within me. Whatever happened, it was essential that the Golden Temple be beautiful. I therefore staked everything not so much on the objective beauty of the temple itself as on my own power to imagine its beauty.
    I was thoroughly versed concerning the Golden Temple, in so far as it was possible for a boy of my age to understand it. In an art book, I had read the following perfunctory account of the history of the temple.
    â€œAshikaga Yoshimitsu (1358-1408) took over the Kitayama Mansion of the Saionji family and turned it into a large-scale villa. The main buildings consist of Buddhist structures, such as the Reliquary, the Hall of the Sacred Fire, the Confessional Hall, and the Hosui-in; and residential apartments, such as the Shinden, the Hall of the Lords, the Assembly Hall, the Tenkyo Tower, the Kohoku Turret, the Izumi Hall, and the Kansetsu Pavilion. The Reliquary was the most carefully constructed of all these buildings, and later came to be called the Golden Temple. It is difficult to determine exactly when it first acquired the name of the Golden Temple, but it would appear to have been subsequent to the Ojin War (1467-77), In the Bummei Period (1469-87) the name was in current use.
    "The Golden Temple is a three-storied tower structure overlooking a pond in a garden (the Kyoko Pond). It was probably completed in about the fifth year of Oei (1398). The first two stories were built in the shinden-zukuri style of domestic arehitecture and equipped with folding-shutters, but the third story consists of an eighteen-foot-square apartment built in pure Zen style. The roof, which is covered with cypress bark, is in the hokei-zukuri style, and is surmounted with a copper-gold phoenix. The Tsuri Hall with its gable roof jutted out facing the pond and broke the monotony of the surrounding arehitecture. The roof of the Golden Temple is gently sloped, and made of fine-grained wood. The structure is both light and elegant. This is a masterpiece of garden arehitecture, in which the residential style has been made to harmonize with the Buddhist style. Thus the temple expresses the taste of Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, who so wholeheartedly adopted the culture of the Imperial Court, and it perfectly conveys the atmosphere of the period.
    "After Yoshimitsu's death, the Kitayama Hall was made into a Zen temple, according to Yoshimitsu's wishes, and was known as the Rokuonji. Later, these structures were transferred elsewhere or allowed to fall into dilapidation. By good fortune, the Golden Temple itself remains,..”
    Like a moon that hangs in the night sky, the Golden Temple had been built as a symbol of the dark ages. Therefore it was necessary for the Golden Temple of my dreams to have darkness bearing down on it from all sides. In this darkness, the beautiful, slender pillars of the building

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