Abstract

Yukio Mishima, inspired by the 1950 burning of the sacred Kinkakuji in Kyoto, fictionalizes this account in his novel Kinkakuji (translated as The Temple of the Golden Pavilion). Many people have read this novel as depicting a nihilistic and horrofic act of destruction motivated by maliciousness and madness. However, this type of reading does not take into account several sociocultural elements of the author, his cultural heritage and the historical moment. Mishima’s use of the Japanese Zen Buddhist Tradition, in particular linguistic puzzles called kōans, coupled with the author’s reaction to the after-math of World War II suggest a different conclusion—one that expresses morally, logically and aesthetically shocking events as acts of heroism.