The temple fire
The Temple Fire ( Japanese 金 閣 寺 , Kinkaku-ji ) is a 1956 novel by Yukio Mishima . In it, the young Buddhist monk Mizoguchi becomes more and more obsessed with the beauty of the Golden Hall that stands in the temple district in which he lives. Finally he sets fire to this hall. The novel is based on an actual incident: On July 2, 1950, the Golden Pavilion of the Rehgarten Temple in Kyoto was destroyed by a monk's arson. To do research, Mishima visited the perpetrator in prison and spoke to him. The original title Kinkaku-ji ("Golden Pavilion") as well as the English translation ( The Temple of the Golden Pavilion ), unlike the title of the German translation, focus on the object itself and not on its destruction.
content
Chapters 1 to 3
The young Mizoguchi is designated by his father as a child to enter the Deer Garden Temple in Kyoto. Again and again the father tells of the beauty of the golden hall. He is sickly and dies early. Mizoguchi suffers from stuttering and ugliness. He falls in love with Uiko, a girl from the neighborhood who doesn't want to know anything about him. Upon entering the temple, he met another novice, Tsurukawa, who initially became his only friend.
Chapters 4 to 6
In addition to serving in the temple, Mizoguchi is admitted to Otani University. There he met Kashiwagi. Kashiwagi is described as club-footed. In contrast to Mizoguchi, who tends to suffer from his stuttering, he calculatively uses his physical impairment to his advantage, for example to arouse pity and manipulate women.
Mizoguchi observes the prior of his monastery visiting geishas in the entertainment district . He toyed with the idea of blackmailing him and smuggled a photo of the geisha in question into the prior's papers. He is becoming ever more estranged from his superior.
Chapters 7 to 10
The fixation on the beauty of the Golden Hall takes up more and more space in Mizoguchi's thinking. During an escape from the monastery, he makes the decision to burn her. After some preparation and deliberation, he actually sets a fire at night and the hall burns down.
interpretation
Contrasting influences
Mizoguchi is under the opposing influence of different people several times. His school friend Tsurukawa is characterized by a friendly and optimistic nature. Again and again he reinterprets negative or hurtful statements and actions of Mizoguchi in positive terms. B. by assuming sadness or modesty as motives. In this respect, it softens certain hardships in Mizoguchi's being. In contrast to this, Kashiwagi, in which he explains and exemplifies his own egoistic and calculating attitude, intensifies Mizoguchi's character, his increasing rejection of his surroundings.
Both Mizoguchi's father and the prior of the monastery appear relatively soft and indulgent. The father is sickly and lets the mother have it when she cheats on him with a distant relative, the prior is described as fat and negligent, visits entertainment districts and initially investigates Mizoguchi for various transgressions. In contrast, a priest by the name of Zenkai, who visited the monastery shortly before Mizoguchi's assassination, appears masculine and authoritative. "Priest Zenkai had a simplicity that the old teacher lacked and a strength that the father did not have". Without him being able to explain why, his conversation with Zenkai almost kept Mizoguchi from his act. However, Zenkai appears too late to gain sufficient influence over him.
As an essay on beauty
Throughout the novel, new reflections on beauty in general and that of the Golden Hall in particular are made. Aspects are, for example, whether it has a timelessness that is independent of the viewer, whether it arises only in the perception of people, whether it can be understood as a task approaching people from outside, and the like.
As a psychogram of an obsession
The obsession for the beauty of the Golden Hall occupies more and more space in Mizoguchi's thinking. Soon the thought torments him that this exists timelessly and independently of him, he believes that it exists in a different world than him, whose life is ephemeral. Already in chapters 2 and 5 he wishes that the hall should be destroyed in a bomb attack during war or in an announced storm. He does not succeed in becoming intimate with women, incomprehensible to him too, the thought of the Golden Hall intrudes into his consciousness and makes it impossible for him to deal with women. Only when he has made the decision to destroy the hall can he visit a prostitute and sleep with her. It seems to him that the entire world is divided into two fundamentally different states, the one in which the Golden Hall still existed and the one in which it no longer exists.
As an allegory of the change in Japan
The burning of the Golden Hall can also be understood as an allegory of Japan's modernization and increasing orientation towards the West. The burned temple then stands for the traditions from which one turns away. The novel is set partly before and during the war, and partly during the occupation of Japan . It is noticed how much the traditional clothing of the monks now differs from that of the rest of the population; occupation soldiers occasionally appear. In the light blue eyes of an American soldier who visits the temple, Mizoguchi believes he can recognize a particular cruelty. In such an allegory, however, it is strange that the destruction is not carried out by a supporter of orientation towards the West, but by a carrier of traditional culture.
reception
The novel is generally regarded as one of the main works of Mishima alongside the tetralogy Sea of Fertility (including: Snow in Spring ).
In 1956 the novel was awarded the Yomiuri Literature Prize.
expenditure
- The temple fire, from d. Japan. transfer by Walter Donat . List, Munich 1961
- Der Tempelbrand, Goldmann, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-442-08933-6
- New translation under the title "The Golden Pavilion", from d. Japan. transfer by Ursula Gräfe. No & But, Zurich, 2019, ISBN 978-3-0369-5807-1