The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

This is Mishima's novel about the pressure of living an idealised life. It tells a fictionalised account of real events - the lonely acolyte who destroyed a famous Kyoto temple.

Mizoguchi grows up a lonely boy in a poor family, a hopeless and frustrated stutterer. Only tales of the beauty of a famous temple in Kyoto, told by his dying father, sustain him. Taunted by his schoolmates, he eventually escapes to become an acolyte at the temple. But there, witness to acts of callous viole ...