The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

by Yukio Mishima

  I slowed down and decided to follow the student As I walked behind him and observed that he carried one of his shoulders a little lower than the other, I felt that his back was, in fact, my own. He was far more beautiful than I, but I had no doubt that he was being impelled to commit the same act as myself because of the same loneliness, the same unhappiness, the same confused thoughts about beauty. As I followed him, I began to feel that I was witnessing my own deed in anticipation.

  Such things are liable to happen on a late spring afternoon, because of the brightness and the languid air. I became double and my other self imitated my actions in advance, thus clearly showing me the self that I should not be able to see when the time came for me to put my plan into execution.

  The bus still did not come. There was no one on the road. Gradually the great South Gate of the Myoshin Temple approached. The doors were wide open and the gate seemed to have taken in every possible type of phenomenon. Within its magnificent frame, as I observed it from my particular angle of vision, it combined the overlapping of the pillars of the Imperial Messengers' Gate and the two-storied Sammon Gate, the tiles of the Buddhist Hall, numerous pine trees, a part of the blue sky, which had been vividly cut off from the rest, and numerous tufts of faint cloud. As I approached the gate, more was constantly being added-the stone paving that ran lengthwise and crosswise within the vast temple precincts, the walls of the pagoda building, and endless other things. And once one had passed through the gate, one realized that this mysterious structure contained the entire blue sky within itself and every single cloud in that sky. Such was the nature of a cathedral.

  The student passed through the gate. He went round the outside of the Imperial Messengers' Gate and stopped by the lotus pond in front of the Sammon Gate. He then stood on the Chinese-style stone bridge that crossed the pond and looked up at the Sammon Gate, which towered above him. That gate, I thought, must be the object of his intended arson.

  The superb Sammon Gate was indeed suited for being wrapped in flames. On such a clear afternoon the fire would probably be invisible. The smoke would coil about the gate and rise into the air; but the only way in which one could tell that those invisible flames were licking the sky would be to observe how the blue heavens were bent and trembling. As the student approached the Sammon Gate, I went to one side, where I could not be seen, and watched him closely. It was the time at which the mendicant priests returned to the temple, and I noticed a group of three of them approaching along the path. They walked side by side over the stone paving, wearing straw sandals and carrying their wicker hats in their hands. As they passed me, they turned to the right. They walked along in complete silence, observing the rule of mendicant priests according to which they must not look more than a few feet ahead until they were back in their cells.

  The student still hovered hesitantly by the Sammon Gate. Finally he leaned against one of the pillars and took out of his pocket the pack of cigarettes that he had just bought. He looked round nervously. It occurred to me that he was undoubtedly going to set fire to the gate on the pretext of having a smoke. As I had envisaged, he next put a cigarette into his mouth, moved his face forward, and struck a match.

  For an instant the match gave forth a small, clear flash. It looked as if the color of the flame were invisible even to the student. This was because at that moment the afternoon sun had enveloped three sides of the gate, leaving only my side in the shadow. For only an instant the match produced something like a bubble of fire, which flared up next to the face of the student as he stood there leaning against the pillar of the gate by the lotus pond. Then he shook his hand violently and extinguished it.

  Even when the match was extinguished, the student did not seem satisfied. He threw it onto one of the foundation stones and assiduously rubbed his foot on it. Then, cheerfully smoking his cigarette, he crossed the bridge and strolled past the Imperial Messengers' Gate, utterly oblivious of the disappointment that I felt as I stood there alone and deserted. Finally he disappeared past the South Gate, through which one could see the main road and vaguely make out a row of houses stretching into the distance.

  This was no pyromaniac, but simply a student who had gone out for a walk. In all probability, a rather bored, rather poor, young man.

  I had stood watching his actions in detail and I may say that everything about him displeased me“his cowardice, which had made him look round so nervously-not because he was going to commit arson, but simply because he was going to break the rules and smoke a cigarette; the mean pleasure, so typical of students, which he obviously derived from breaking these rules; the way in which he had been so careful to rub his foot on the match although it was already extinguished; and, most of all, his “civilized culture.” It was thanks to this trashy sort of culture that his little flame had been safely brought under control. He probably took great pride in the idea that he himself was the controller of his match, the perfect, prompt controller who protected socicty from the dangers of fire.

  One boon of this culture was that since the Meiji Restoration the old temples in and about Kyoto had hardly ever burned down. Even on those rare occasions when fires did accidentally break out, the flames were immediately cut up, divided, and controlled. It had never been like that in the past. The Chion Temple had burned down in 1431 and had suffered from fire numerous times thereafter. The main building of the Nanzen Temple had caught fire in 1393, with the loss of the Buddha Hall, the Hall of Rites, the Diamond Hall, the Great Cloud Hermitage and other structures. The Enryaku Temple was turned to ashes in 1571. The Kenjin Temple was laid waste by fire during the warfare in 1552. The Sanjusangcn Hall was burned down in 1249. The Honno Temple was destroyed by fire during the fighting of 1582.

  In those days the fires used to be on intimate terms with each other. The fires were not divided into little fragments and looked down on, as they are nowadays, but were allowed to join hands with each other in such a way that countless separate fires could unite into a single grand blaze. The people of the time were probably like that also. Wherever a fire might be, it could call to another fire and its voice would immediately be heard. The reason that the temple fires mentioned in the old records were never attributed to arson, but were always described as accidental fires, spreading fires, or fires caused by warfare, is that even if there had been someone like myself in the old days, all he would have had to do was to hold his breath and wait somewhere in hiding. Every temple was bound to burn down sooner or later. Fires were abundant and unrestrained. If only he waited, the fire, which was watching for its opportunity, would break out without fail, one fire would join hands with another fire and together they would accomplish what had to be accomplished. It was truly by the rarest chance that the Golden Temple had escaped being burned down. For Buddhist principles and law had strictly governed the world-fires broke out naturally, destruction and negation were the order of the day, the great temples that had been built were inevitably burned down. Even if there were pyromaniacs, they would be bound to make so natural an appeal to the forces of fire that no historian could bring himself to believe that the ensuing destruction was the result of arson.

  The world had been an uneasy place in those days. Now, in 1950, the world was no less uneasy. Assuming that the various temples had been burned down as a result of this uneasiness, what reason was there that the Golden Temple should not be burned down now?

  Although I was avoiding the lectures, I used to go quite often to the library and one day in May I ran into Kashiwagi, whom I had been carefully avoiding. When he saw me trying to avoid him, he pursued me with an amused expression. The realization that, if I ran away from him, he could not possibly catch up with me on his clubfeet, prevented me from moving. Kashiwagi caught me by the shoulder. He was out of breath. The lectures had finished for the day and I should estimate that it was about half past five. In order not to meet Kashiwagi, I had gone round the back of the university building after leaving the library, and had taken the path between the high stone
wall and the barracks which housed the classrooms. Wild chrysanthemums grew in abundance on the waste land, interspersed with scraps of paper and empty bottles that people had thrown away. Some children had sneaked into the grounds and were playing catch. Their raucous voices drew one's attention to the emptiness of the classrooms, which one could see through the broken windows. All the students had left and row after row of dusty desks stood there silently.

  I passed the barracks and came to the other side of the main university building. I stopped outside a little hut on which the flower-arrangement department had hung a sign saying "Studio." The sun shone on the row of camphor trees that grew along the wall and the delicate shadow of the leaves was reflected across the roof of the hut onto the red brick wall of the main building. The red bricks looked gay in the evening sun.

  Kashiwagi supported his body against the wall. He was breathing heavily. The shadow of the leaves of the camphor trees lit up his cheeks, which looked as haggard as ever, and gave them a peculiarly lively air of motion. Perhaps it was the reflection of the red brick wall, so unsuited to Kashiwagi, that produced this impression.

  "It's five thousand one hundred yen, you know!" he said. “Five thousand one hundred yen at the end of this month. You're making it harder and harder for yourself to pay me back.”

  He extracted my bond of indebtedness from his breast pocket, where he always carried it, and spread it out before me. Then, evidently fearing that my hand might reach out for the document and tear it to pieces, he hurriedly folded it up again and put it back in his pocket. Nothing remained in my vision but an after-image of a poisonous, red thumbprint. It looked exceedingly cruel, that thumbprint of mine.

  “Pay me back quickly!” said Kashiwagi. "It's to your advantage. Why don't you use your tuition fee or something to pay off the debt?”

  I did not answer. Was one obliged to pay back one's debts in the face of a world catastrophe? I was tempted to give Kashiwagi the tiniest hint of what was in my mind, but I stopped myself.

  “I can't understand you if you won't say anything,” said Kashiwagi. "What's wrong? Are you ashamed of your stuttering? Surely you've got over that. Everyone knows you're a stutterer-even this. Yes, even this!” He struck the red brick wall, on which the evening sun was reflected. His fist was dyed with browhish-yellow powder.

  “Even this Hall knows. There's not a person in the university who doesn't know about it!”

  Still I stood facing him in silence. At that moment one of the children missed the ball and it came rolling between us. Kashiwagi began to bend down in an effort to pick up the ball and throw it back to them. Seeing this, I was overcome by a perverse desire to observe how Kashiwagi would manage to move the ball with his clubfeet from where it lay about a foot away, so that he could reach it with his hand. My eyes seemed to turn unconsciously towards his feet. Kashiwagi perceived this with almost uncanny speed. Before one could tell whether he had really tried to bend down, he pulled himself up straight and stared at me with a look of passionate hatred in his eyes that was most unlike him. One of the children approached us timidly, picked up the ball from where it lay between us and ran away. Finally Kashiwagi said to me: "All right. If that's your attitude, I know what to do. Before I go home next month, I'll get as much of my money back as I can. You'll sec! You'd better be prepared.”

  In June the important lectures became more and more infrequent and the students began to make preparations for returning to their home-towns. June io was a day that I shall never forget. It had been raining steaany since the morning, and in the evening it became a torrent. After supper I was reading a book in my room. At about eight o'clock I heard steps approaching along the corridor between the guest hall and the Great Library. It was one of the rare evenings on which the Superior had not gone out. Evidently he had a guest. There was something strange about those footsteps. They sounded like scattered raindrops beating against a wooden door. The steps of the novice who was conducting the guest to the Superior's quarters were soft and regular, and were almost drowned by the guest's drawn-out steps, which made the old floor boards of the corridor creak in a most peculiar fashion.

  The temple was charged with the sound of rain. The night rain poured down on the large, ancient temple and the endless, vacant, musty rooms were replete with its sound. In the kitchen, in the deacon's residence, in the sexton's rooms, in the guest hall, there was nothing but the sound of rain. Now I thought of the rain that had captured the Golden Temple. I partly opened the sliding-door of my room. The little central courtyard, which consisted only of stones, was overflowing with rain water and I could see the black, glossy back of the water as it ran along from stone to stone.

  The novice returned from the Superior's quarters and stuck his head into my room.

  "There's a student in there called Kashiwagi who's come to see the Superior. Isn't he a friend of yours?”

  I was overcome by uneasiness. The novice, who wore glasses and who worked as a primary-school teacher during the day, was about to leave, but I stopped him and asked him into my room. I was imagining all sorts of things about the conversation that was going on in the library and I could not bear to be alone.

  A few minutes passed. Suddenly the sound of the Superior's hand-bell rang out. With its commanding peal it pierced the noise of the rain; then it stopped abruptly. The apprentice and I looked at each other.

  "It's for you," he said. I forced myself to stand up.

  When I reached the Superior's room, I knelt down outside. I could see the document with my thumbprint lying on his desk. The Superior raised one end of the piece of paper and showed it to me. He kept me kneeling outside the room.

  “Is this really your thumbmark?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, this is a fine thing you've done, isn't itl If I have any more trouble of this sort from you, I shan't be able to keep you here any longer. You'd better wake up to the fact. This isn't the first time...” Perhaps because Kashiwagi was in the room, the Superior broke off. “I’ll pay back the money myself," he continued, "so you can leave now.”

  At these words I was able to look at Kashiwagi for the first time. He was sitting on the floor with the look on his face of someone who has behaved in a most laudable manner He did, however, avert his eyes. When Kashiwagi had done something evil, he always had an air of the greatest purity, as though, quite unbeknown to himself, the very essence of his nature had been extracted. It was I alone who knew this about him.

  When I returned to my room, I was conscious that tonight, in the fierce sound of the rain, in my solitude, I had been released.

  “I shan't be able to keep you here any longer”-for the first time I had heard the Superior tell me this, for the first time he had given me this pledge. Suddenly it all became clear. The Superior was already contemplating my expulsion from the temple. I must hurry to carry out my decision.

  If Kashiwagi had not acted as he did that night, I should probably not have had an opportunity to hear those words from the Superior and my plan would have been further postponed. At the thought that it was Kashiwagi who had given me the strength to break through my inertness, I was overcome by a strange sense of gratitude for him.

  The rain gave no sign of letting up. It was chilly for June and my little back room, surrounded by its wooden boards looked desolate in the feeble light of the electric bulb. This was my dwelling, from which I should probably soon be expelled. There was not a single ornament in the room The black edge of the faded straw-matting on the floor had been torn and twisted, and one could plainly see the hard threads. Often when I entered my dark room and turned on the light, my toes would catch on the torn edge of the mat, but I made no effort to repair it. My zeal for life had no concern with straw mats.

  Now that summer was approaching, my little room was redolent with the acrid odor of my body. It seemed funny that though I was a priest, my body should have the smell of an ordinary young man. This smell had penetrated the old, glossy black pillars in the four c
orners of the room and even the wooden walls. Now the unpleasant odor of a young man oozed out between the grain of the wood, to which age had managed to give a certain patina. The pillars and the walls had been transformed into living things—immovable, yet exuding a raw, fishy smell.

  Then the strange footsteps that I had heard before approached along the corridor. I stood up and went into the corridor. Kashiwagi was standing there, like a mechanical device that has abruptly come to a stop. Behind him the light from the Superior's quarters lit up the Sailboat Pine Tree in the garden and I could see the wet, blackish-green prow of the tree raising itself high in the darkness.

  A smile came to my face, and it gave me great satisfaction to realize that when Kashiwagi saw this smile he displayed for the first time an expression that was close to fear.

  "Won't you drop in for a while?” I said.

  "Well, well. Don't try to frighten me! You're an odd fellow, aren't you?"

  Kashiwagi came into my room, and eventually he managed to lower himself sideways onto the floor with that usual slow movement of his that made one think he was trying to crouch. He raised his head and looked round the room. Outside, the sound of the rain closed us in like a thick curtain. Amid the splash of the water on the open veranda one could hear the raindrops bouncing back from the paper sliding-doors in different parts of the building.