Kinkakuji

What does it mean that seeing the place in person was not as powerful as watching the movie? Philip Glass’s haunting score for Paul Schrader’s film, Mishima, was playing in my head. Eiko Ishioka’s highly stylized set floated in my mind alongside the “real” version. I couldn’t even recall passages from Mishima’s book, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, because I haven’t read it, illiterate that I am. But I vividly remembered the young monk in the movie, obsessed with and possessed by the building’s beauty next to his own ugliness. Glass’s music churns. The gold-leafed temple looms in the frame, dwarfing the monk, then splits open as if to swallow him. Finally, as Allied planes fly overhead, he sets the temple on fire to save it from capture.
That’s it. Time to read the book.