Temple of the Golden Pavilion

In Kyoto we visited what may be the most famous temple.  It is not the oldest or most important place of worship; however the Golden Pavilion is one of the most photographed temples with an interesting story and movie made about it.

Kinkakuji is covered in gold leaf, and it was built as a retirement villa for a powerful shogun, and includes beautiful gardens and a lake.  After the shogun’s death in the early 1400’s it was converted to a zen temple and has remained in use since.

Kinkakuji was burnt to the ground in 1950 by a monk, who immediately attempted to commit suicide on the grounds, but survived.  Yukio Mishima wrote a book titled The Temple of the Golden Pavilion in 1956 and several movies and operas were subsequently made based on the novel.

The story written is a piece of fiction and quite bizarre.  A bullied, mentally ill child is taken to the temple during World War II by his Buddhist priest father, and the temple is described to him as the most beautiful in the world. The son has visions of the temple being burned by U.S. bombing raids.  The boy’s father dies and the young man takes over his father’s responsibilities.  The young man is conflicted by the need to protect the temple as a monk and his visions of the burning.  The war ends with the Japanese surrender which further tortures the young monk.  After the war, a U.S. soldier visits the temple with his pregnant Japanese girlfriend, and the GI orders the young monk to stomp on the woman’s stomach to abort the fetus.  As you can imagine, this causes great stress for the young monk. The story continues with women putting their breast milk in tea for service to others, priests involved with geishas and lovers committing suicide due to shame of their affair.   There is further shame and confusion for the young monk by numerous other strange events.  Finally he is haunted by words from a famous zen master “When you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha”.  The young monk had enough going on in his head and now with the need to kill Buddha, combined with the visions of a burning temple, he had no choice but to burn it down.  I have seen some very dark Japanese movies in the past and this story fits well.

In reality nobody knew why the monk actually burned the temple.  It was rebuilt and looks better than ever.  A phoenix tops the building, which seems appropriate.  I was hoping for some snow for my photographs, but the weather didn’t give me that chance.  I will return when it snows.