Yukio Mishima (or vice versa if we want to do more Japanese) started from a real event, namely the burning of the famous and venerable Golden Pavilion in Kyoto by a somewhat unbalanced novice in 1950, to initiation into a novel of great subtlety and absolutely free of Manichaeism. Remember that Mishima was 25 years old at the relevant time and that the arsonist was 21, so they almost belonged to the same generation, which enabled the author to inject multiple influences that he was able to tap home or some of his knowledge to forge a credible character based on some real elements of novice monk's biography that was guilty of this sacrilege. So it is a slow and unsteady path which invites us Mishima in the footsteps of a teenager struck a speech disability, who knows ugly, who hates his mother and lost his father, who, himself a priest zen it conveyed a real sense of reverence for the incomparable beauty of the Golden Pavilion. On the death of his father, the prior (main religious temple which contains the Golden Pavilion) collects the young adolescent, being a friend of the father and who assured him to watch over him. Thus, our tortured teen became a novice at the temple and can contemplate at leisure this refinement of jewelry and fascination that is the Golden Pavilion. It will bind to two friends, who symbolize the yin and yang of the young man. Tsurukawa the one hand, a kind of benevolent genius who manages to perceive the good sides of the young monk behind his infirmities and his frustrations in an attempt to magnify. Moreover, Kashiwagi, a sort of dark side, evil genius, which under the pretext of liberation pushing his friend into depravity. So we will see the young monk pulled to the depths of his soul between the light side and the dark side, evil teenager in his skin, complexed in his flesh evil in the world, enamored of beauty but feeling excluded, receiving the same as an insult, bringing out his own ugliness, both physical and spiritual until it becomes unbearable. The Golden Pavilion crystallizes all that, in his opinion, is the epitome of beauty, so what prevents him from living. In short, a beautiful novel form of first-person narrative, very emotional where, detours of some passages we guess a post-war Japan, economically ruined, corrupted by the black market and humbled by the presence of the US military. I conclude by offering two passages that emphasize to me the main substance of the work:
"The sick, like pretty women, are tired of being watched and have nausea live continually identified by the eyes of others, and it is their very existence they load the look they relate to others . "
"Kashiwagi, he had taught me the first roundabout way and where to take the dark side to life At first glance, it seemed right to carry out destruction. In reality, it abounded unexpected stratagems, metamorphosed into cowardice Courage: it was a kind of alchemy by which what we call vice originally became again what it is: Energy at its purest. "
