The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

by Yukio Mishima

  "How shall I put it? Beauty-yes, beauty is like a decayed tooth. It rubs against one's tongue, it hangs there, hurting one, insisting on its own existence, finally it gets so that one cannot stand the pain and one goes to the dentist to have the tooth extracted, Then, as one looks at the small, dirty, brown, blood-stained tooth lying in one's hand, one's thoughts are likely to be as follows: ‘Is this it? Is this all it was? That thing which caused me so much pain, which made me constantly fret about its existence, which was stubbornly rooted within me, is now merely a dead object. But is this thing really the,same as that thing? If this originally belonged to my outer existence, why-through what sort of providence-did it become attached to my inner existence and succeed in causing me so much pain? What was the basis of this creature's existence? Was the basis within me? Or was it within this creature itself? Yet this creature which has been pulled out of my mouth and which now lies in my hand is something utterly different. Surely it cannot be that?'

  "You see,” continued Kasniwagi, "that's what beauty is like. To have killed the kitten, therefore, seemed just like having extracted a painful decayed tooth, like having gouged out beauty. Yet it was uncertain whether or not this had really been a final solution. The root of the beauty had not been severed and, even though the kitten was dead, the kitten's beauty might very well still be alive. And so, you sec, it was in order to satirize the glibness of this solution that Joshu put those shoes on his head. He knew, so to speak, that there was no possible solution other than enduring the pain of the decayed tooth."

  This interpretation of Kashiwagi's was completely original, but I could not help wondering whether he himself, having seen into my inmost heart, was not being the satirist at my expense. For the first time I became really frightened of him. I was afraid to remain silent and hastened to ask: "So which of the two are you? Father Nansen or Joshu?"

  "Well, let's see. As things are now, I am Nansen and you're Joshu. But some day you might become Nansen and I might become Joshu. This problem has a way of changing -like a cat's eyes."

  While Kashiwagi was talking,his hands had been moving delicately, first arranging the little, rusty flower holder in the bowl, then inserting the cattail, which occupied the role of Heaven in the arrangement, next adding the irises, which he had adjusted into a three-leaf set. Gradually a flower arrangement of the Kansui school had taken shape. A pile of tiny, well-washed pebbles, some white and some brown, lay next to the bowl, waiting to be used for the fihishing touches.

  The movement of Kashiwagi's hands could only be described as magnificent. One small decision followed another, and the effects of contrast and symmetry converged with infallible artistry. Nature's plants were brought vividly under the sway of an artificial order and made to conform to an established melody. The flowers and leaves, which had formerly existed as they were, had now been transformed into flowers and leaves as they ought to be. The cattails and the irises were no longer individual, anonymous plants belonging to their respective species, but had become terse, direct manifestations of what might be called the csscncc of the irises and the cattails.

  Yet there was something cruel about the movement of his hands. They behaved as though they had some unpleasant, gloomy privilege in relation to the plants. Perhaps it was because of this that each time that I heard the sound of the scissors and saw the stem of one of the flowers being cut I had the impression that I could detect the dripping of blood.

  The Kansui flower arrangement was now complete. On the right-hand side of the bowl, where the straight line of the cattail blended with the pure curve of the iris leaves, one of the flowers was in bloom and the other two were buds that were about to open. Kashiwagi placed the bowl in the alcove; it filled almost the entire space. Soon the water in the bowl became still. The pebbles concealed the flower holder, and at the same time gave precisely the pellucid impression of a water's edge.

  “Magnificent!” I said. "Where did you learn it?”

  "There's a woman living nearby who gives lessons in flower arrangement. She'll be coming here any minute now, I expect. I've struck up a friendship with this woman and at the same time she's been teaching me flower arrangement. But now that I can make this sort of arrangement by myself, I'm getting a bit bored with it all. She's still quite young, this teacher, and good-looking. I understand that during the war she had an affair with an officer and became pregnant. The child was still-born and the lover was killed in the war. Since then she's been constantly running after men. She's got a snug little nest of money of her own and evidently only gives these lessons as a hobby. Anyhow, if you want to, you can take her out somewhere this evening. She'll go anywhere.”

  As I heard this, I was overcome with the most confused feelings. When I had seen her from the top of the gate of the Nanzcn Temple, Tsurukawa had been next to me. Now, three years later, she was to appear before me and I was to see her, instead, through Kashiwagi's eyes. Hitherto I had viewed this woman's tragedy with a bright look of mystery; but from now on I would sec it with the dark look of someone who believed in nothing. For the stark reality was that her breast, which I had seen in the distance like a white moon in the daylight, had since then been touched by Kashiwagi's hands, and that her legs, enveloped then in that magnificent, flowing kimono, had been touched by Kashiwagi's clubfeet. The reality was that she had already been defiled by Kashiwagi, that is to say, by knowledge.

  This thought tormented me greatly and made me feel that I could no longer stay where I was. Yet curiosity kept me from leaving. I could, in fact, hardly wait for the arrival of this woman, whom I had originally seen as a reincarnation of Uiko, but who was now to appear as the discarded mistress of a crippled student. For, having become Kashiwagi's accomplice, I was prepared to indulge in the illusory pleasure of defiling my precious memories with my own hands.

  When the woman arrived, I did not feel the slightest tremor of excitement. I still vividly remember that moment. That faintly husky voice of hers, her ceremonious manners and her formal way of speaking, which contrasted so strikingly with the wild expression that flashed in her eyes, the sadness that emerged from her tone when she spoke to Kashiwagi, despite her obvious embarrassment at my presence—I saw all this and then for the first time I understood why Kashiwagi had asked me to his room that evening: he intended to use me as a barrier.

  There was no connection between this woman and the heroine of my vision. She gave me the impression of a completely different individual whom I was seeing for the first time. Although she did not alter her polite manner of speech, I could tell that she was gradually becoming distraught. She did not pay the slightest attention to me.

  Finally her misery seemed to become unbearable, and I had the impression that she had decided for a while to abandon her efforts to make Kashiwagi change his mind. She made a pretence of having suddenly calmed down, and looked round the room. Although she had been there for half ail hour, she now evidently for the first time noticed the flower arrangement that was so conspicuously installed in the alcove.

  "That's a wonderful Kansui arrangement," she said. "You've really done it well, you know."

  Kashiwagi, who had been waiting for her to say this, now brought things to their conclusion.

  "Not too bad, is it?" he said. ‘‘Now that I've reached this point, there's really nothing more that you can teach me. I don't need you any longer. Yes, I mean it!"

  Kashiwagi spoke with formal emphasis. I noticed the color draining from the woman's face and I turned away. She seemed to be laughing slightly; but still she did not abandon her ceremonious manner as she advanced on her knees towards the alcove. Then I heard her say: "What? What sort of flowers are these? Yes, what are they?" In a moment, the water had all been spilled on the floor, the cattails had fallen over, the blossoms of the open irises had been torn to shreds: all the flowers that I had procured by my theft lay in utter disorder. I had been kneeling on the floor, but now I automatically jumped to my feet. Not knowing what to do, I leaned against the window. I s
aw Kashiwagi seize the woman by her slender wrists. Then he grasped her hair and slapped her across the check. Kashiwagi's succession of rough actions revealed exactly the same quiet cruelty that I had observed not long before when he was cutting the leaves and the stems of the flowers; they seemed, indeed, to be a natural extension of his earlier movements.

  The woman covered her face with both hands and ran out of the room. As for Kashiwagi, he looked up at me as I stood there with a stupefied expression. He gave me a strangely childish smile and said: "Now's your chance. Run after her! Try to console her! Go on, quick!"

  I do not know whether it was because I was impelled by the authority of Kashiwagi's command or because in my heart I felt some sympathy for the woman, but my legs instantly started to move and I chased the girl. I caught up with her a few houses away from the lodging-house. It was in a corner of Itakuramachi behind the Karasumaru streetcar shed. Under the cloudy night sky I could hear the rattle of a streetcar as it entered the shed, and the light purple sparks shaded off into the darkness. The woman hurried away from Itakuramachi towards the east and went up a back street. Without saying a word, I walked along beside her. She was crying. Before long she noticed that I was there and came close to me. Then, in a voice made even huskier than usual by her tears, she began to complain to me at great length about Kashiwagi's misdeeds.

  How long she and I walked together through the streets that night! As she drummed Kashiwagi's misdeeds into my ears and told me of all the cloying sordidness of his behaviour towards her, the single word that I heard resounding in the night air was-"life." His cruelty, his little plots, his betrayals, his heartlessness, his tricks for extorting money from women -all this merely served to explain his subtle charm. The only thing in which I myself needed to believe was Kashiwagi's sincerity regarding his clubfeet.

  After Tsurukawa's sudden death I had existed for a long time without touching life itself. Then finally I had been stimulated by touching a new form of life-a darker, yet less unhappy, life that involved constantly hurting other people as long as one lived. Kashiwagi's simple words: "There's more to killing than that!” came to life once more and captivated me. And what I also recalled at that moment was the prayer which I had uttered when I had climbed the mountain behind the temple at the end of the war and looked down at the multitudinous city lights: "Let the darkness that is in my heart become equal to the darkness of the night that surrounds those innumerable lights!”

  The woman was not walking back to her house. Instead she wandered aimlessly through the back streets, where there were few passers-by and she could talk freely. When finally we arrived in front of the house where she lived by herself, I had no idea what part of the city we were in.

  It was already half past ten. I wanted to return to the temple, but the woman persuaded me not to leave her and so I went into the house with her. She led the way and turned on the light.

  "Have you ever cursed someone and wished he was dead?” she said abruptly.

  "Yes,” I answered at once. Strangely enough, I had not thought about it until that moment, but now it was clear to me that I had been hoping for the death of the girl in the lodging-house, who had been a witness of my shame.

  "It's a terrible thing," she said, collapsing on the straw-matted floor and placing herself in a sideways position. “I have too"

  Her room was lit with a brilliance that was unusual in these days of power restriction. The bulb must have been about one hundred watts, three times as strong as that in Kashiwagi's room. For the first time I saw the woman's body clearly illuminated. Her Nagoya-style sash was a brilliant white, and the purple mist of the wisterian trellis that formed the pattern of her Yuzen kimono stood out clearly.

  The top of the gate at the Nanzen Temple was separated from the Tenjuan guest room by a distance that only a bird could cover, but now I felt that during all these years I had gradually been moving across this distance and that now I was finally approaching the destination. Since that afternoon on the gate I had been chopping time into minute particles and now I was really approaching the meaning of that mysterious scene in the Tenjuan. It had to be like this, I thought. It was inevitable that this woman should have changed, just as the features of this earth are changed by the time that the light from a distant star has finally reached it. If at the time when I saw her from the gate of the Nanzen Temple she and I had been joined in anticipation of today's meeting, such changes as had taken place in her since then could be effaced; with only a few small alterations, things could be restored to their earlier state and the former I could come face to face with the former she.

  Thereupon I told her the story. I told it breathlessly and with constant stuttering. As I spoke, the green leaves once more began to glitter, and the angels and the fabulous Hóo bird that were painted on the ceiling of the temple sprang back to life. A fresh color came into the woman's cheeks and the former wild light in her eyes changed to an uncertain and confused expression.

  "So that's what happened?" she said. "My goodness! So that's really what happened, is it? What a strange karma! Yes, that's what a strange karma means."

  As she spoke, her eyes filled with tears of proud joy. She forgot her recent humiliation and instead cast herself back into memories. From one excitement she had moved directly into another excitement, and she became almost crazed. The bottom of her kimono with its wisteria pattern was in complete disorder.

  "I don't have any milk now,” she said. "Oh, my poor little baby! No, I don't have any milk, but all the same I'll do for you now what I did that other time. Since you've loved me ever since then, I'll consider that you are the same as that man. So long as I can think that, I have nothing to be ashamed of. Yes, really, I'll do exactly what I did that time.”

  She spoke as if she were handing down a great decision. Her action that followed seemed to come from an overflow of ecstasy,or else from an overflow of despair. I suppose that consciously it was ecstasy that drove her to that passionate deed, but that the real impelling force was the despair which Kashiwagi had given her, or at least a persistent after-taste of that despair.

  Thus it was that she unfastened her sash-bustle before my eyes and untied the various cords. Then with a silky shriek the sash itself came undone, and, released from this constriction, the neck of her kimono opened up. I could vaguely make out the woman's white breasts. Putting her hand into her kimono she scooped out her left breast and held it out to me.

  It would be untrue to say that I did not feel dizzy. I looked at her breast. I looked at it with minute care. Yet I remained in the role of witness. That mysterious white point which I had seen in the distance from above the temple gate had not been a material globe of flesh like this. The impression had been fermenting so long within me that the breast which I now saw seemed to be nothing but flesh, nothing but a material object. This flesh did not in itself have the power to appeal or to tempt. Exposed there in front of me, and completely cut off from life, it merely served as a proof of the dreariness of existence.

  Still, I do not want to say anything untrue, and there is no doubt that at the sight of her white breast I was overcome by dizziness. The trouble was that I looked too carefully and too completely, so that what I saw went beyond the stage of being a woman's breast and was gradually transformed into a meaningless fragment.

  It was then that the wonder occurred. After undergoing this painful process, the woman's breast finally struck me as beautiful. It became endowed with the sterile and frigid characteristics of beauty and, while the breast remained before me, it slowly shut itself up within the principle of its own self. Just as a rose closes itself up within the essential principle of a rose. Beauty arrives late for me. Other people perceive beauty quickly, and discover beauty and sensual desire at the same moment; for me it always comes far later. Now in an instant the woman's breast regained its connection with the whole, it surmounted the state of being mere flesh and became an unfeeling, immortal substance related to eternity.

  I hope th
at I am making myself understood. The Golden Temple once more appeared before me. Or rather, I should say that the breast was transformed into the Golden Temple.

  I recalled the night of the typhoon at the beginning of autumn when I had stood watch in the temple. Much as the building may have been exposed to the moonlight, a heavy, luxuriant darkness had settled over it and this darkness had penetrated into the nocturnal temple, into the shutters, into the wooden doors, under the roof with its peeling gold-foil. And this was only natural. For the Golden Temple itself was simply a nihility that had been designed and constructed with the most exquisite care. Just so, although the outside of this breast gave forth the bright radiance of flesh, the inside was filled with darkness. Its true substance consisted of the same heavy, luxuriant darkness.

  I was certainly not intoxicated by my understanding. My understanding was trampled underfoot and scorned; naturally enough, life and sensual desire underwent the same process. But my deep feeling of ecstasy stayed with me and for a long time I sat as though paralyzed opposite the woman's naked breast.

  I was sitting there when I met the woman's cold, scornful look. She put her breast back into the kimono. I told her that I must leave. She came to the entrance and closed the door after me noisily.

  Until I returned to the temple, I remained in the midst of ecstasy. In my mind's eye I could sec the Golden Temple and the woman's breast coming and going one after the other. I was overcome with an impotent sense of joy.

  Yet when the outline of the temple began to emerge through the dark pine forest, which was soughing in the wind, my spirits gradually cooled down, my feeling of impotence become predominant and my intoxication changed into hatred-a hatred for I knew not what.