The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

by Yukio Mishima

  "Well," said Kasniwagi, “you mustn't hold it against me, you know. After all, it's your own fault that I had to go about it this way. Well, so much for that!” He extracted from his pocket an envelope, on which I could see the imprint of the temple, and counted the bank notes that were inside. There were only three thousand-yen notesbrand-new ones that had clearly been issued since January.

  "The bank notes at this temple are nice and clean, aren't they?” I said. “Our Superior is so fastidious that he makes the Deacon go to the bank every three days to get clean money for all our small change.”

  “Look at this!" said Kashiwagi. “Only three of them. You've got a really stingy priest running this temple, don't you? He says he won't recognize the interest on loans between fellow students. Though he's profited to his heart's content from that sort of thing himself"

  To see Kashiwagi overcome by this unexpected disappointment cheered the cockles of my heart. I laughed without reserve and Kashiwagi joined in. For a moment there existed a sort of harmony between us, but almost at once Kashiwagi stooped laughing and, fixing his eyes somewhere about my forehead, spoke as if he was casting me off. “I know,” he said. "You've got some destructive scheme in your mind these days, don't you?"

  I had the greatest difficulty in supporting the weight of his gaze. Then I realized that his understanding of “destructive” was entirely different in nature from what I was planning, and I regained my composure. There was not the trace of a stutter in my reply. "No, nothing," I said.

  "Really? You're a strange fellow. You're about the strangest person I've ever met."

  I knew that this remark was inspired by the friendly smile that still did not fade from my mouth. It was quite certain that Kashiwagi would never realize the meaning of the gratitude that had sprung up within me, and this thought made my smile spread even further of its own accord.

  "Will you be going back to your home town now?" I asked in a manner that normal friends might use in speaking to each other.

  "Yes, I'm going home tomorrow. Summer in Sannomiya, It's pretty boring there too, though.”

  "Well, we shan't be seeing each other at the university for some time."

  "What? You're never there yourself any way.”

  As he spoke, Kashiwagi hurriedly unbuttoned the front of his uniform and felt for the inside pocket.

  “I decided to bring you these before I left for home,” he said. “I thought they'd please you. You had such an absurdly high opinion of him, didn't you?"

  He dropped a small bundle of letters on my table. I was amazed to read the sender's name on the envelope.

  "Please read them,” said Kashiwagi in a matter-of-fact tone. "They're a memento from Tsurukawa."

  "Were you friends with Tsurukawa?” I asked.

  "Well, let's sec. Yes, I suppose I was a friend in my own way. Tsurukawa himself hated to be thought of as my friend. At the same time I was the only person to whom he ever confided. He's been dead three years now, so I suppose it's all right to show these letters to people. You were so rnendly with him that I thought I'd let you see them and no one else. I've been meaning to let you look at them some day."

  The dates on the letters were all from the period in May 1947 just before his death. They had been written from Tokyo almost every day and were addressed to Kashiwagi. He hadn't sent me so much as a single letter, but he had written Kashiwagi regularly from the day after he returned to Tokyo. The letters were certainly from Tsurukawa-there was no mistaking the square, childish writing. I felt slightly envious. Tsurukawa, who had never seemed to make the slightest effort to hide his transparent feelings from me, who had sometimes spoken badly about Kashiwagi and who had tried to discourage my friendship with him, had himself been carrying on this secret relationship.

  I started reading the letters in the order of their dates. They were written in small characters on thin sheets of note paper, The style was peculiarly clumsy. His thought seemed to bog down constantly and it was hard to follow. Yet from behind his confused sentences a vague suffering soon began to emerge, and when I reached the final letters the agony that Tsurukawa had experienced stood before me in all its clarity. As I continued reading, the tears came to my eyes, and at the same time I was astounded at the banal nature of Tsurukawa、 unhappiness.

  It had been no more than a commonplace, little love affair -the unhappy love of an inexperienced young man for someone of whom his parents did not approve. Then a certain passage in the letter brought me up short. It may have been an unintentional exaggeration on Tsurukawa's part in describing his feelings, but the effect was none the less startling.

  "When I think of it now,” he had written, "this unhappy love of mine may have been the direct result of my own unhappy nature. I was born with a gloomy nature. I do not think I have ever known what it is to be cheerful and at ease."

  The final letter broke off on a tumultuous note and when I read it I was struck by a suspicion that had never occurred to me until then.

  "Could he possibly...” I began.

  Kashiwagi nodded and interrupted me: "Yes, indeed. It was suicide. I'm quite sure it must have been. His family probably smoothed things over to save appearances and came out with that story about the truck and the rest of it.”

  “You wrote him an answer, didn't you?" I was stuttering with indignation as I pressed this question on Kashiwagi.

  "Yes, but I understand that it didn't arrive until he was dead.”

  "What did you write?”

  “I wrote that he mustn't die. That's all:

  My deep-seated conviction that I could never be betrayed by my own feelings had proved to be false. Kashiwagi gave this illusion of mine its quietus.

  "Well, what does it feel like?” he said. "Have these letters changed your outlook on life? Your plans have all been smashed now, haven't they?”

  It was clear to me why Kashiwagi had shown me these letters now after three years. Yet, despite my shock, a certain memory still remained with me-the memory of the morning sun streaming through the trees and dappling the white shirt of the young man who lay there in the thick summer grass. Tsurukawa had died and three years later he had been transformed like this. It might have seemed that what I had entrusted to him would nave vahished with his death, but instead at that very moment it was reborn with a new type of reality. It had come about that I believed in the substance of the memory, rather than in its actual meaning. And the conditions of my belief were such that, if I were now to stop believing in that memory, life itself would automatically coir lapse. As Kashiwagi stood there looking down on me, however, he was full of satisfaction at having so boldly carricd out this butchery of my feelings.

  "What about it?" he said. "Something broke inside you just now, didn't it? I can't bear to see a friend of mine living with something inside him that is so easy to break. My entire kindness lies in destroying such things.”

  "And what if it still hasn't broken?" I asked.

  “Enough false pride!" said Kashiwagi with a scornful smile. “I just wanted to make you understand. What transforms this world is-knowledge. Do you see what I mean? Nothing else can change anything in this world. Knowledge along is capable of transforming the world, while at the same time leaving it exactly as it is. When you look at the world with knowledge, you realize that things are unchangeaole and at the same time are constantly being transformed. You may ask what good it does us. Let's put it this way—human beings possess the weapon of knowledge in order to make life bearable. For animals such things aren't necessary. Animals don't need knowledge or anything of the sort to make life bearable. But human beings do need something, and with knowledge they can make the very intolerableness of life a weapon, though at the same time that intolerableness is not reduced in the slightest. That's all there is to it.”

  "Don't you think there's some other way to bear life?"

  "No, I don't. Apart from that, there's only madness or death."

  "Knowledge can never transform the world,” I blurted ou
t, skirting along the very edge of confession. "What transforms the world is action. There's nothing else."

  Just as I had expected, Kashiwagi parried my statement with a chilly smile, which looked as if it had been plastered on his face.

  "There you go!” he said. "Action, you say. But don't you see that the beauty of this world, which means so much to you, craves sleep and that in order to sleep it must be protected by knowledge? You remember that story of "Nansen Kills a Kitten” which I told you about once. The cat in that story was incomparably beautiful, The reason that the priests from the two halls of the temple quarreled about the cat was that they both wanted to protect the Kitten, to look after it, to let it sleep snugly, within their own particular cloaks of knowledge. Now Father Nansen was a man of action, so he went and killed the kitten with his sickle and had done with it. But when Choshu came along later, he removed his shoes and put them on his own head. What Choshu wanted to say was this, He was fully aware that beauty is a thing which must sleep and which, in sleeping, must be protected by knowledge. But there is no such thing as individual knowledge, a particular knowledge belonging to one special person or group. Knowledge is the sea of humanity, the field of humanity, the general condition of human existence. I think that is what he wanted to say. Now you want to play the role of.Choshu, don't you? Well, beauty-beauty that you love so much—is an illusion of the remaining part, the excessive part, which has been consigned to knowledge. It is an illusion of the “other way to bear life” which you mentioned. One could say that in fact there is no such thing as beauty. What makes the illusion so strong, what imparts it with such a power of reality, is precisely knowledge. From the point of view of knowledge, beauty is never a consolation. It may be a woman, it may be one's wife, but it's never a consolation. Yet from the marriage between this beautiful thing which is never a consolation, on the one hand, and knowledge, on the other, something is born, It is as evanescent as a bubble and utterly hopeless. Yet something is born. That something is what people call art!"

  “Beauty..." I said and broke off in a fit of stuttering. It was a limitless thought. The suspicion had just crossed my mind that it might be my very conception of beauty that had given birth to my stuttering. "Beauty, beautiful things,” I continued, "those are now my most deadly enemies.”

  "Beauty is your most deadly enemy?” said Kashiwagi, opening his eyes wide. Then the usual philosophical, exhilarated look returned to his flushed face. “What a change to hear that from you! I really must refocus the lenses of my understanding.”

  We continued to talk for a long time. It was the first time for ages that we had exchanged our views in such an intimate way. The rain still had not stopped. As he was leaving, Kashiwagi told me about Sannomiya and Kobe Harbor. I had never been to any of these places and he now described the great ships leaving the harbor in summertime. The scenes came alive for me as I recalled Maizuru. For once our opinions coincided. We two indigent students shared the same daydreams and agreed that nothing, neither understanding nor action, was likely to equal the joy of sailing away into the distance.

  CHAPTER NINE

  IT WAS probably no mere chance that, instead of admohishing me as he usually did, the Superior should now, at the very time when admonition was called for, have granted me a favor. Five days after Kashiwagi had come to collect his debt, the Superior called me to his study and handed me three thousand four hundred yen for my university fees during the first term, three hundred and fifty yen for my transport and five hundred yen for my stationery expenses. It was a rule at the University that We had to pay our fees before the summer holidays, but after what had happened I had not for a moment imagined that the Superior would give me the money. Even if he decided to pay the fees, I thought that, knowing as he now did how little I was to be trusted, he would send the money directly to the University.

  I knew better than he that, even though he handed me the money now, his confidence in me was false. In a certain way this favor that the Superior accorded me without saying a word reminded me of his soft, pink flesh. Flesh that is replete with falsehood, flesh that trusts what deserves to be betrayed and that betrays what deserves to be trusted, flesh that is attacked by no corruption, warm, light-pink flesh that propagates itself in silence.

  Just as when I had seen the policeman in the inn at Yura I had been terrified of being found out, now I was overcome by the fear, which came close to being a delusion, that the Superior had seen through my plans and was trying to make me miss my opportunity for decisive action by giving me money. I felt that I could never possibly sum up the courage to commit my action so long as I was nursing that sum of money which he had given me. As soon as possible I had to find some way to spend the money. I had to find some way of spending it so that, if the Superior should find out what I had done, he could not possibly avoid being overcome with rage and expelling me from the temple on the spot.

  It was my turn to work in the kitchen that day. While I was washing up the dishes after supper, I happened to look in the direction of the dining-room. Everyone had left and the room was quiet. At the entrance was a sooty pillar which gave out a black luster. A sign, almost entirely discolored by soot, was stuck to the pillar. I read the words:

  A-TA-KO HOLY SIGN

  Beware of Fire

  In my mind I could see the pale form of the captive fire that was imprisoned by this amuletic sign. Something that had once been gay hovered now behind this sign, wan and debilitated. I wonder whether I shall be believed when I say that during these days the vision of fire inspired me with nothing less than carnal lust. Yet was it not natural that, when my will to live depended entirely on fire, my lust, too, should have turned in that direction? My desire molded the supple figure of the fire; and the flames, conscious that they were being seen by me through the shining black pillar, adorned themselves gracefully for the occasion. They were fragile things-the hands, the limbs, the chest of that fire.

  On the evening of June 18 I stole out of the temple with the money in my pocket and made my way to the North Shinchi district, which is usually known as Gobancho. I had heard that it was cheap there and that they were friendly to temple novices and other such customers. Gobancho was about half an hour's walk from the temple. It was a humid evening. The moon shone dimly through a sky that was overcast with thin clouds. I was wearing a jumper, a pair of khaki trousers, and some wooden clogs. In all probability I should be returning after a few hours in exactly the same clothes. How could I have convinced myself of the idea that the I who was contained in those clothes would be an entirely different person?

  It was certainly in order that I might live that I was planning to set fire to the Golden Temple, but what I was now doing was more like a preparation for death. In the same way that a man who has determined to kill himself might first pay a visit to a brothel in order to lose his virginity, so I was now setting out for the gay quarters. But please rest assured. When such a man visits a prostitute it is like putting his signature to a prescribed form and, even though he may lose his virginity, he will never become a "different person."

  Now I did not have to stand in fear of that frustration-that frustration which I had so often experienced at the crucial moment when the Golden Temple intervened between me and the woman. For I no longer had any dreams or any aim of participating in life by means of a woman. My own life was now firmly fixed on that other thing; all my actions hitherto had merely been the cruel and gloomy processes that had brought me to my present state.

  So I told myself as I walked towards Gobancho. But then Kashiwagi's words rose within me: "Professional women don't go to bed with their customers because they like them. They'll have anyone as a customer, doddering old men, beggars, one-eyed men, good-looking men”even lepers, so long as they aren't aware of the fact. This egalitarian approach would put most men at their ease and they'd go ahead quite happily and buy the first woman they came across. But this sort of egalitariahism didn't appeal to me in the slightest. I couldn't bear the idea
that a woman should treat a perfectly normal man and someone like myself as if they were equal. It seemed to me like a terrible self-denlement.”

  It was unpleasant for me now to recall these words. My case was not, however, the same as Kashiwagi's. Apart from my stuttering, I did not suffer from any actual deformity, and there was no reason that I should not regard my lack of physical charm as being merely a conventional sort of ugliness.

  All the same, I wondered, wouldn't any woman's intuition make her recognize the marks of a born criminal on my ugly forehead? This foolish thought immediately filled me with uneasiness and my pace slowed down. Finally I became weary of tninking and I really was no longer sure whether I was intending to lose my virginity so that I could set fire to the Golden Temple or whether I was planning to burn the Golden Temple in order to lose my virginity. Then without rhyme or reason the noble phrase tempo kannan ("the troubles that lie in store for the world”) rose in my mind and as I walked along I kept on murmuring tempo kannan' tempo kannan. Before long I approached a place where the bright, bustling pinball parlors and drinking establishments gave way to a stretch of quiet darkness illuminated at regular intervals by fluorescent lights and faint, white paper lamps. From the moment that I had left the temple, I had been overcome by the fancy that Uiko was still alive and that she was living in seclusion in this particular place. This fancy filled me with strength. Since I had resolved to set fire to the Golden Temple, I had returned to the fresh, undefiled condition of my youth and I felt that it would now be all right for me to come across the people and the things that I had met at the beginning of my life.

  From now on I should be living. Yet, strangely enough, all sorts of ominous thoughts gathered force within me day by day and I felt that at any moment I might be visited by death. I only prayed that death might spare me until I had set fire to the Golden Temple. I had hardly ever been ill and I showed no signs of illness now. Yet I felt more and more strongly every day that control over the various conditions which kept me alive rested on my shoulders alone; I alone had to bear the weight of this responsibility of continuing to live.