The Temple of the Golden Pavilion: Introduction by Donald Keene

A haunting portrait of a young man’s obsession with idealized beauty and his destructive quest to possess it fully—and the book that “established Mishima’s claim as one of the outstanding writers of the world" (The New York Times).

Mizoguchi, an ostracized stutterer, develops a childhood fascination with Kyoto’s famous Golden Temple. While an acolyte at the temple, he fixates on the structure’s aesthetic perfection and it becomes his one and only object of desire. But as Mizoguchi begins to...