The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
Vintage International · first published 1956 · 288 pages
A stuttering young acolyte at a famous Kyoto temple becomes consumed by the beauty of its golden hall.
Dense, feverish, and inward, it follows an obsession from the inside, one thought at a time.
For a night when the moon is too bright.
About this book
Mizoguchi, the stuttering son of a poor country priest, grows up hearing that the Golden Pavilion is the most beautiful thing in the world. Sent to train at the temple, he finds that its beauty comes between him and everything else, other people included. A cynical student with clubfeet leads him toward new and darker ways of thinking. What stays is the strange, close logic of a mind turning in on itself.