동아시아의 평화와 화해의 정치학 Scrapbook: The Temple of Dawn 3 by Yukio Mishima

2022-06-14

The Temple of Dawn 3 by Yukio Mishima | Goodreads

The Temple of Dawn by Yukio Mishima | Goodreads

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The Temple of Dawn
(The Sea of Fertility #3)
by
Yukio Mishima,
E. Dale Saunders (Translator),
Cecilia Segawa Seigle (Translator)
3.84 · Rating details · 4,056 ratings · 309 reviews
Yukio Mishima’s The Temple of Dawn is the third novel in his masterful tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility. Here, Shigekuni Honda continues his pursuit of the successive reincarnations of Kiyoaki Matsugae, his childhood friend.

Travelling in Thailand in the early 1940s, Shigekuni Honda, now a brilliant lawyer, is granted an audience with a young Thai princess—an encounter that radically alters the course of his life. In spite of all reason, he is convinced she is the reincarnated spirit of his friend Kiyoaki. As Honda goes to great lengths to discover for certain if his theory is correct, The Temple of Dawn becomes the story of one man’s obsessive pursuit of a beautiful woman and his equally passionate search for enlightenment. (less)

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Paperback, 336 pages
Published March 11th 2001 by Vintage Classics (first published July 1970)
Original Title
曉の寺 [Akatsuki no tera]
ISBN
0099282798 (ISBN13: 9780099282792)
Edition Language
English
Series
The Sea of Fertility #3
Characters
Shigekuni Honda, Ying Chan, Shigeyuki Iinuma
Setting
Bangkok (Thailand)
Varanasi (Benares) (India)
Kolkata (India)
…more

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John Lander I strongly recommend reading them in sequence. Decay of the Angel, the final book in the series of 4, is by far the most intriguing especially when yo…more
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¿Es necesario leer primero los dos anteriores? Gracias
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Brayan Gomez Mackliff Sí, definitivamente.
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Sep 03, 2019 Jim Fonseca rated it really liked it
Shelves: japanese-americans
This is the third volume of Mishima’s tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility.

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

Honda, a lawyer and good friend of the young man in the first volume, is still following the various reincarnations of his good friend. The young man died after an ill-fated romance and illness in the first volume, Spring Snow. He was reincarnated as a young idealist rebel in the second volume, Runaway Horses. Around age 20, he committed ritual suicide.

In The Temple of Dawn, he is reincarnated as a young woman, a princess in Thailand. The young woman is isolated because she is considered mentally disturbed because she talks of having lived other lives in Japan. Honda meets with her and even quizzes her on dates and is satisfied that she is the ‘real thing.’ Other than these ‘memories,’ which disappear as she gets older, the young woman is quite normal and eventually visits Honda’s family in Japan. There he spies on her to confirm that she has the ‘three moles’ on her chest that mark the reincarnated individuals. (And for those who follow these things, it is actually common for individuals who claim to be reincarnated to lose those memories of past lives as they leave childhood.)

Honda goes to visit Benares in India and gives us a primer on various Buddhist and Hindu theories related to reincarnation.

The time frame is the late 1930’s, early 1940 when Japan has just signed an alliance with Germany and Italy. Once again a main theme, as in the earlier novels, is the westernization of Japan and how Japanese citizens react to it. Pearl Harbor is attacked and near the end of the book Japanese cities are being bombed.

A continuation of a good story and it kept my attention all the way through. On to the concluding volume - The Decay of the Angel. (less)
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Oct 07, 2017 William2 rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: 20-ce, fiction, japan, translation
This third Volume of The Sea of Fertility tetralogy moves toward travelogue more than its predecessors. Honda, now a blue-chip attorney, goes to Siam (now Thailand) in the year 1940. At the start we are well into the Japanese occupation of Manchuria but before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Honda is in Bangkok representing a Japanese firm in their dispute with a Siamese concern. It’s very hot. It’s surprising how good Mishima is at conveying the sense of a broiling sun.

Honda’s royal Siamese acquaintances—from back in his and Miyoaki’s youth in Volume 1, Spring Snow, see my review—are not in the country, but a little princess of some six years of age is. The little princess is believed by the royal family to be mad since she claims not to be Siamese at all but to be Japanese with a home and loved ones in that distant land. Honda, a dignitary, believing the princess may be another of Miyoaki’s incarnations, is able to arrange a series of audiences with her under the scrutiny of her elderly female attendants. The royal getaway Bang Pa In is richly described. Honda plays games with the little princess.

Then, his case won, Honda’s work in Bangkok is done. As a gift, his grateful employers send him on a pleasure trip to India. He goes to Calcutta (Kolkata) and thence to Benares (Varanasi). The novel here reminds me very much of Shūsaku Endō’s Deep River, See my review. And I wonder if Endo took any cues from Mishima here? They are, after all, both writing about the ghats along the Ganges in Varanasi.

I think another of Mishima’s models was E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India, see my review. I felt there was a vague semblance when Honda went to India, but when he goes to the Buddhist caves in Ajanta, the similarities with the trip to the Marabar Caves in Passage became too marked to ignore. Honda even has an epiphany in the caves, not unlike that of Miss Quested, though he doesn’t confuse it with an assault on his person.

Standing alone in the cool of the cave, Honda felt as though the darkness around him suddenly began to whisper. The emptiness of the undecorated, colorless caves awakened in him a feeling of some miraculous existence, probably for the first time since he came to India. (p. 78)

Isao’s death in Volume 2—Runaway Horses—is described here as both glorious and futile. The author uses this theme of dualism with regard to Iaso and, later, Honda. I know that dualism, the body and soul schism, is a concept opposed by some forms of Buddhism, but don’t know if that’s the connection the writer is referencing here. Sometimes you just have to press on with Mishima. This seems to be one of those times.

During the war Honda studies Greek religion as part of his investigations into samsara and reincarnation. The author’s summing up of Honda’s investigations seem oblique. Someday a scholar will probably figure out the lineage of Mishima’s thinking, perhaps even the books he read to develop it, and produce a fat annotated edition. Right now to my knowledge no such exegesis exists in English. One problem for me lies in the passage:

The immortal soul, originally holy, must traverse such a dark passage because of the original sin of the flesh: namely the Titan’s murder of Zagreus. (p. 106)

But original sin, I had learned, was a concept invented by Augustine of Hippo as an interpretation of the Expulsion from Paradise, which was later incorporated into early Christian teachings by the Church fathers where it eventually petrified into dogma. See Elaine Pagels’s Adam, Eve, and the Serpent: Sex and Politics in Early Christianity. I looked to see how the term could have been used in relation to pre-Christian, pagan myth and have been assured that none of the ancients viewed it as such; that, in fact, it is a kind of back formation created by modern scholars. See Tearing Apart the Zagreus Myth: A Few Disparaging Remarks on Orphism and Original Sin by R. G. Edmonds. Mishima died by his own hand in 1970 and Professor Edmonds essay did not appear until 1999. So Mishima’s reading of the Zagreus myth was probably the most current scholarly version available to him at the time.

There is an omnireligious and utterly confusing tapestry the author seeks to weave together. There are bits on Shintoism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Mahayana and Theraveda Buddhism, Greek mystery rites, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc. I can’t say I understand it all, but puzzling over it does set the synapses to salubriously firing. If anything I think it will demand a serious reread. Given the author’s suicide in 1970, the year this volume was published, one wonders to what extent these meditations were personal, perhaps even part of his final preparations?

Then around p. 220 something happens. Now suddenly, under the influence of the young princess from Thailand, Ying Chan, 17, Honda goes sex wild. Well, I suppose it’s not unlikely. Japan has just been relinquished to civilian control by the departing American occupiers. The communists are rioting. It’s as if the parents are out of the house for the weekend and the kids run amok. Suddenly we find Honda in a park, hiding behind some trees with others nearby, watching youngsters fuck amid the shrubberies. Absolutely nothing in his past prepares us for this.

A conspiracy is then entered into by Honda, his neighbor Keiko, and her twenty year old nephew, Katsumi, which seeks the despoliation of Ying Chan. The conspiracy against this young innocent reminds me very much of certain aspects of Choderlos de Laclos’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses. The plan is for Katsumi is to sexually initiate Ying Chan, who then will turn to her old family friend, Honda, for consolation. It’s hard to imagine what’s going through Honda’s mind. Especially after the recent period of study into samsara and reincarnation. After all, he believes, or once believed, that Ying Chan is the latest incarnation of his friend Miyoaki (Vol. 1), who was subsequently reincarnated as Isao (Vol. 2). And now he wants to bang the third incarnation, Ying Chan? Is this so the fourth incarnation might be his own son? The guy has really gone off his rocker.

Many of Anita Brookner’s characters share a disappointment that they’ve let life pass them by. Honda, coming sexually alive for the first time in his 57 years, reminds me of Brookner’s characters with this exception. Brookner's characters each possess a detailed narrative surrounding their loss, Honda doesn’t seem have one. Moreover, he doesn’t seem capable of articulating one. He suffers no depression like the Brits. He's just suddenly overwhelmed by lust. Ying Chan has apparently driven his celibate nature out of him, but we’re never sure why. Is it lost in translation?

Ah, then on p. 263 he comes to see his lust as an abomination. He resolves not to commit the violation, for then “beauty could no longer exist in this world.” Then “He was waiting for madness to take complete possession of him.” Finally, we come to what for Honda might be called his Brooknerian moment. “If Honda’s imagination let him dream that he would have been of this or that personality were he only young and thus served to protect him through the years at every dangerous emotional point, then his reluctance to recognize his present emotional condition was probably the result of such self-denial in youth. At any rate, it was impossible for him to cry. . . as he walked—not when he was young and not now.” (p.283)

Overall the book comes apart in the second half. The coherence comes and goes. There are some beautiful passages but you’ll have to wait for them. The abstractions surrounding Honda’s shift toward the flesh are far less interesting than his earlier spiritual investigations, or his travels abroad. He has no position in society anymore. That is, no pull or influence as he had when he was a judge and then a lawyer. He is made filthy rich by a propitious windfall. With the loss of his vocation and the easy money has come the loss of his raison d’être. He drifts through lustful scenarios with Yang Chin that he knows are impossible. He consorts with artists and royalty but in post war Japan they seem an oddball lot, a lost generation completely devoid of young men.

That said, this is for me the most fascinating Mishima novel of the ten or so I’ve read. I always have trouble with this author’s work and I’ve come to believe that much of this has so do with the translations. He was well known for using Japanese archaisms in his writing. God knows what snafus this has led his translators into. Reading Mishima is always to some degree a patient slog. But I’ll take what I can get. Recommended with reservations. (less)
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Jun 13, 2020 Adam Dalva rated it liked it · review of another edition
This is one of the strangest books I've read, and it totally defies the Goodreads rating system. I could give it 5 stars and believe in it, or 1 - I don't think it WORKS, exactly, but it's fascinating, and as part 3 of Mishima's Sea of Fertility Tetralogy, connects and advances the plot through 12 years of Japanese History, from Pearl Harbor all the way through American occupation.

It's a novel of two halves, in the first, Honda, the series protagonist (who only now takes the lead in a book), travels to India, ruminates extensively (and I mean extensively) on architecture, and finds the latest incarnation of his childhood friend: a seven-year-old princess. He travels to India, then back to bombed-out Tokyo (where some extraordinary scenes occur). The depth of research is fascinating in this section, but overbearing, and overwhelming, as Mishima tries to weave a tapestry of beliefs in reincarnation from around the world - I left more confused then informed.

Part two is like...I don't know, think of a 15o page Phillip Roth novella about a suddenly rich, 58 year old peeping tom with an intense desire to see a 19 year old Thai princess naked. It is entertaining, for sure, and it flies by compared to the first half - in some ways I think it might have worked better as a stand alone book, because Honda's character is so bizarrely altered from the first two books, as if Mishima had realized that the plot would only work if he was a peeping tom, and if he was rich. Coincidences string - and yet his desire to find the three small moles that will reveal that the reincarnation has occurred is genuinely narratively exciting. Excellent party scenes - bizarre conversations about mystic lands of permanent orgy - lyric depictions of Mount Fuji - a look at the indignities of post-war Japan - an extremely strange foot kiss - a lot happens.

Mishima is great because he's weird, and this book is very, very weird - one has the unfortunate sense of a writer on deadline, hurtling through his outline and his notes, relying on talent and not craft to get him through. That he even remotely pulls it off is a testament. (less)
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Sep 13, 2018 Daniel Clausen rated it liked it
Shelves: books-of-2018
This was my first Mishima book and it probably won't be my last. But, as a first book, it probably wasn't the best choice. Passages in the book were lovely, but the book was bogged down by two main problems - one, the book took long pauses to narrate the principles of Zen Buddhism and reincarnation; and two, the there didn't seem to be a clear story arc.

My writing teacher Lester Goran once said that internal narration and flashbacks were story-killers because they took time away from scenes. This is not always true in books, especially if the narration is kept to a minimum and the flashbacks are woven in with care. In this case, however, he is absolutely right. We don't need to go on the character's book-reading journey with him. Any intellectual revelations should be revealed through scenes, dialogue, and action.

As far as the story is concerned, I never felt like there was a coherent arc to what was happening. Often the book felt like loosely related scenes in the life of the character. Beautiful scenes, but unrelated scenes nonetheless. Some of the jarring aspects of the book, I think, came from being introduced to characters from earlier books in the series. For this reason, I would recommend reading the series in order.

Who knows, my own experience of the book might have been very different if I had started from Spring Snow.

(less)
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Sep 26, 2020 P.E. rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: reenchanter-le-monde, history, plot-with-a-sham, transcendentalism, vivid-dream, treasure-hunt, absurd, japanese-literature, mind-games, book-about-books
Make-believe

LITERARY TWINS:

Keen observers of transformations in their societies:
Be it political regime, the inheritance laws, mores and national values, religion, Tocqueville covers all of these in his twofold study of the United States.

Democracy in America

H.P. Lovecraft's eye for antiquated cities and the subtle changes marking them over time
I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H.P. Lovecraft
I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft, Volume 2

Akira Kurosawa's autobiographical thing, witnessing the changes informing Japanese society before and after WW2. Both Kurosawa's and Yukio Mishima's works give an account of the slander and paranoia aimed at Koreans in the time leading to and following WW2.
Something Like an Autobiography

Ougarit's quest of urban anomalies and an impossible nexus of urban identity throughout time and space.
Ougarit:

Philip K. Dick's novels and short stories, all questioning reality and the nature of our relation to it as living beings:
The Man in the High Castle
Lies, Inc.
VALIS

Stories dealing with the thorough analysis of sensations & their depletion:
Against Nature
Whatever
The Map and the Territory

Japanese 'Floating World' and decadence:
An Artist of the Floating World
No Longer Human

Elusive women:
Les Diaboliques

Erotical scenarii involving perceptions of the past (e.g. the game with the thai ring between Honda and Ying Chan):
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Identity

Infinitesimal decomposition of the flow of time:
Lolita

On a main character becoming a jaded, retired judge, impervious to anything but cynicism or mysticism.
The Death of Ivan Ilych

----

'L'homme trouve toujours des présages à son gré.'

Le juge Honda devenu conseiller en droit international est envoyé par les produits Itsui pour régler un litige en Thaïlande. Il y rencontre la jeune princesse thaï Ying Chan, qui a la certitude d'être la réincarnation d'un Japonais. Il se convainc à moitié qu'il s'agit de la réincarnation d'Isao, son jeune ami de Chevaux échappés : La mer de la fertilité II. Le procès gagné, il décide de poursuivre sa route vers l'Inde, où il visite Bénarès et Ajanta où il assiste à une forme de fin du monde. De retour au Japon, il dit s'être défait de l'altruisme et vivre dans un désintéressement, une désillusion vis-à-vis de l'inanité du monde comme avant d'entreprendre ce voyage.

'A parler franchement, ceux qui n'avaient pas les moyens de se payer un avocat n'avaient pas qualité pour enfreindre la loi.'

-----------------

Flammes et rayons

Le temple de l'aube s'ouvre sur les visions de Honda à Bangkok, toutes de peaux luisantes et lumineuses, rayonnantes d'éclats solaires et de flammes, qui me laissent une forte impression d'au-delà...

Plus tard, l'image des toits des temples de Bangkok, le miracle affreux de Bénarès, le bombardement de Tokyo et la villa de Honda en feu se confondent en une seule et même image qui parachève l'esprit de ce livre...

De ces effets d'échos et de reflets, ce livre est plein :

Image du crépuscule et du Paon roi de sagesse. Image des dames mondaines, des dames de compagnie thaï, et des grues, qui se superposent. Intrication incroyable de la vie avec les motifs des pensées et des songes de Honda.

Voyeurisme, jeux de miroirs

Dans Le Temple de l'aube, chacun est laissé en proie à ses perceptions, dans la solitude de son interprétation particulière des choses.

Honda est ici à la fois trompeur et proie de ses imaginations, de même que son épouse stérile Rié avec les spectres de la jalousie qu'elle nourrit autant qu'elle les redoute.

Ce livre, je crois qu'on pourrait le décrire assez exactement comme un immense montage complexe d'illusions superposées et confondues les unes aux autres, à l'image des figures que Honda découvre sur les temples de Bangkok.

Wat Pho, Bangkok

Finalement, ce qui apparaît dans ce livre crucial, c'est la duplicité, mieux, la complexité de toutes choses.

Honda se révèle voyeur, alors que rien ne nous y prépare vraiment dans les tomes précédents. (hormis peut-être sa fascination pour la tour creuse du palais de justice qui surplombe la ville et de laquelle il peut tout observer en contrebas, dans Chevaux échappés). Il est même reconnu par un autre voyeur dans les fourrés, qui le traite en complice lorsqu'il le reconnaît dans la rue.

J'en viens à me demander : quel rôle a Honda a réellement eu sur les vies de Kiyoaki et de Isao ?
C'est une question que je me suis posé à plusieurs reprises personnellement. Quelle est mon incidence sur les évènements dans le monde, que j'en sois conscient ou non ?

Dans cette optique de voyeur, Honda cherche à profiter de l'observation de Ying Chan sans prétendre s'insérer dans la vie d'un autre être.

Une autre question se pose tout de suite :
Pourquoi Honda ne ressent-il pas d'émotions réelles, directement, par lui-même ? Pourquoi a-t-il besoin de "s'emparer d'une vie nouvelle" ?

On a alors des aperçus déplaisants, crus et stupéfiants de Honda.
Il monte des stratagèmes inouïs pour son plaisir (la piscine), formule une combinaison avec Keiko et son neveu Katsumi pour déflorer Ying Chan. Rien moins qu'une sorte de viol organisé, observé par Honda.

Aperçus souterrains de la cruauté masochiste de Rié.

C'est alors qu'on remarque que Honda... vit par les livres... et derrière eux.

La prétention, le faux-semblant, l'imposture

En Thaïlande, Honda a pour guide l'insinuante et médiocre Hishikawa. Hishikawa est un artiste raté, fat et faux.

Honda est ensuite pénétré par la laideur et la fausseté des "Messieurs" japonais en villégiature en Thaïlande.

... par celle des prétentions artistiques de Makiko et sa disciple Mme Tsukibahara, dont l'exhibition permanente de sa douleur de mère éplorée savamment entretenue comme un fond de commerce le dégoûte.

... par celle d'Iinuma et son son étalage de bravoure lorsqu'il raconte sa tentative de suicide ratée à Honda et s'en glorifie...

Par Makiko, elle-même voyeuse des pulsions des autres, qu'elle ne ressent pas elle-même.

... par celle du libertin de pacotille Imanishi, écrivain-critique du monde flottant, qui fantasme sur un royaume de licence sexuelle, parodie du roman Le temple de l'aube, parodie de la conscience ayana et de l'éternel retour, parodie de Mishima, portant chemises hawaiiennes !

Toutes formes de fausseté ou de cabotinage dont la nullité est sûrement mise en relief par la vérité des incarnations précédentes de son ami.

Finalement, Honda réalise qu'il a été le prétexte, l'alibi pour Keiko dans sa relation lesbienne avec Ying Chan.

Mise en abîme de la création littéraire, phénomène de la conscience ayana aussi, semence parfumée aussi.

Mise en abîme du voyeurisme du lecteur (hypocrite lecteur, mon semblable...).

Vers l'authenticité

Honda est l'homme de la complexité. Il est en mue, en perpétuel dépouillement, les incarnations successives de Kiyoaki/Isao/Ying Chan, ce sont aussi les siennes.

Honda accablé, effondré d'insignifiance, pénétré de l'influence nulle qu'il a eue sur son époque. La peine qu'il en conçoit. Réalise la vanité des désirs. Du moins leur incidence nulle sur ce qui pourrait conduire à leur réalisation.

Son "incarnation" précédent connaît une forme de mort à Bénarès, où il assiste à la célébration de la fin du monde et à sa renaissance simultanée, fin de la raison, dissolution dans l'effroyable sainteté de la mort.

Honda aspire alors à des désirs inassouvissables. C'est la signature de sa quête de pureté et d'une volupté d'anéantissement. Son attrait pour Ying Chan prend la forme d'amour mystique, enrichi de toute la symbolique ésotérique qu'il étudie au même moment. Qui n'a jamais connu ça dans l'emprise du sentiment amoureux ?

Ici, les "hallucinations" visuelles et auditives, présentes déjà dans Neige de printemps et Chevaux échappés se font significatives. Tout ce kaléidoscope d'échos visuels, auditifs, symboliques (échos, parodies, simulacres, dérision) finit bel et bien par détruire partiellement l'illusion de la trame du temps chronologique.

La farce de l'histoire : singeries et imitation, effacement et absence

La trame historique est incroyablement discrète.

Le Siam est devenu Thaïlande, forte monarchie, fort nationalisme, forte occidentalisation (famille princière à Lausanne, mouvement Yuwachon, inspiré des Jeunesses hitlériennes).

26/02/1936 : Incident avec la Chine, fin de l'agitation interne au Japon.

De retour à Bangkok, dégradation des relations entre Thaïs et Japonais.

07/12/1941: W USA - Japon

Mai 1945 : Tokyo bombardée à répétition
// Honda étudie le samsara et la transmigration. Vision de cendres flottantes se mêle à l'affreux miracle de Bénarès.

Occupation US : Keiko Hisamatsu, nouvelle voisine de Honda, émancipée, divorcée, amante d'officier US.

1947 : disparition des tribunaux spéciaux et du tribunal des conflits administratifs.
Honda gagne son procès interminable, s'achète une ville en vue du mont Fuji.

Honda prend ce qui lui arrive, l'impermanence, comme elle vient, avec désinvolture et fatalisme. Puis, convaincu de la stérilité de l'existence, de l'inanité de toutes choses, il quête la déraison.

Visitant les ruines de la demeure Matsugae, il y rencontre Tadeshina.

Honda retrouve Makiko (amante de Isao Iinuma).

1er mai 1952
Émeutes et présages de révolution.

1967 : Honda rencontre la jumelle de Ying Chan, apprend la mort de la dernière, mordue par un serpent, sans qu'on vienne la sauver à temps. Sans qu'elle aie pu faire l'usage du soutra de Honda.

Étude savante du Bouddhisme

Étudie les liens entre cultes et pensée grecque, cultes et pensée orientale (dionysisme, enthousiasme, extase, samsara, réincarnation), intention mystique, transmise dans le sacrement de l'Eucharistie, pont de l'unité avec l'univers.

=> Honda attaque la question de l'essence, qui est elle aussi sujette au Samsara, ce qui pose la question de son siège.

+ Belle habileté du texte de Mishima qui excite l'appétit pour les matières ésotériques que Honda étudie.

Sectes Theraveda (Birmanie, Thai, Cambodge)

Milindapañha du canon thaï : la pensée est cause du samsara, mais n'est pas le corps migratoire.

Boudhisme nayana : La réalité existe constamment en passé, présent et avenir.

vs

Bouddhisme mahayana, dont doctrine yuishiki : La réalité n'existe qu'au présent, il n'est ni passé, ni avenir.

Cette doctrine propose une résolution de la contradiction entre samsara et anatman (non-personnalité). La voici :

Nous sommes dotés de 5 sens, d'esprit et du manas (= capacité à percevoir le moi et l'identité individuelle).

Mais aussi d'alayavijnana = "conscience ultime".
L'alaya entrepose toutes les "semences" du monde des phénomènes, flux constant.

= 8 consciences au total.

Si la conscience alaya est pure, le pouvoir qui engendre le samsara et la réincarnation est une force extérieure à elle, karmique.

Si la conscience alaya ne l'est pas (= doctrine yuishiki),
les semences karmiques sont causes indirectes et c'est la conscience alaya, corps migratoire, qui est la force qui engendre samsara & réincarnation.

En d'autres termes, les semences de la conscience alaya engendrent cette conscience et forment la loi naturelle. La conscience alaya est donc le fruit de la récompense des êtres sensibles et la cause fondamentale de toute existence.

La conscience alaya façonne les illusions du monde où nous vivons. Tout se réduit à l'idéation :

Par l'attribution de noms
Par l'attachement au moi
Par la semence des 3 mondes (trailokya) : illusion composée des désirs sensuels, formes et amorphisme du pur esprit, cause des 3 mondes de souffrance et d'illusion, de qui dépendent les destinées.

En conséquence :

= Cause et effet simultané et pourtant alterné de la conscience alaya, qui garantit la réalité et l'existence.

= Le monde et la conscience alaya sont simultanés, alternants et interdépendants.

= Conception agnostique du monde et solipsisme.

*****

JUMEAUX LITTÉRAIRES :

Observateurs alertes des transformations de leur société :

Le régime politique, les lois sur l'héritage, les mœurs, les valeurs nationales, la religion. Tocqueville couvre tous ces sujets et d'autres dans son étude en deux livres des États-Unis.
De la Démocratie en Amérique, tome I
De la Démocratie en Amérique, tome II

L'œil de Lovecraft pour les antiquités, les particularismes et les subtils changements dans le temps des villes de la Nouvelle Angleterre et plus largement de tous les États qu'il a pu visiter.
I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H.P. Lovecraft
I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft, Volume 2

L'autobiographie partielle de Akira Kurosawa, qui observe les changements qui modèlent la société japonaise avant et après la Seconde guerre mondiale. L'œuvre de Kurosawa comme celle de Yukio Mishima rend compte des bruits et calomnies, de la paranoïa qui cible les Coréens alors.
Something Like an Autobiography

La quête d'Ougarit, qui cherche des anomalies et des noyaux d'identité urbaines qui transcendent le temps et l'espace :
Ougarit

Les romans et nouvelles de Philip K. Dick, qui tous à leur façon questionnent la realité et sa nature, la relation des êtres vivants à elle :
The Man in the High Castle
Lies, Inc.
VALIS

Fictions qui explorent les sensations et visent à leur épuisement :
À rebours
La carte et le territoire

La décadence et le monde flottant au Japon.
An Artist of the Floating World
La Déchéance d'un homme

Femmes impénétrables :
Les Diaboliques

Scenarii érotiques qui mettent en jeu une obsession ou un symbole passé :
Le Livre du rire et de l'oubli
L'identité

La découpe du temps en tranches infimes par le narrateur observateur :
Lolita

Un personnage principal qui devient un juge désabusé, imperméable à tout affect hormis le cynisme, l'égotisme ou le mysticisme :
La mort d'Ivan Ilitch

BANDE-SON :
Phlegethon - Phonotek (less)
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Mar 18, 2012 Matthew rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
I was slightly scared going into this one. Not only was I aware that the translator had changed, but I also heard that it was really boring, with Honda just being indolent, visiting shrines, and rambling existentially the entire time. While it's true that Honda, as a character, may not be the most exciting person in the world, and that I struggled through his touring of India (and the majority of part 1 in general) I can't stress enough how this book picked up the thematic power of the series and took it into overdrive.

There's so much reflection on Buddhism and the nature of spiritual transmigration that it could almost function as a textbook on the material. At times, it even read like one. But it's understandable. The main focus has undoubtedly shifted to the central theme of reincarnation, and Honda, who is all but convinced of it's potency and truth, has to confront this new bizarre apparition of his friend, Kiyoaki, manifested in the form of a Thai princess.

With every book, the concept of beauty has evolved, but through the same lens. At the end of the previous book, Runaway Horses, the paradigm of beauty seemed to have been set as 'death', but now, in a more theoretical sense, beauty has been restructured as something that can only be held in memory, and is in itself not real. At the beginning of The Temple of Dawn, in the very first chapter, when Honda is being talked to by a failed artist (who is functioning as his tour guide in Thailand), he is surprised by how "beautiful" the eponymous Temple of Dawn is in the evening sky. His tour guide, flapping his lips in an irritating fashion, touches upon (in my opinion) the very soul of this book by describing the horizon in nostalgic terms:

"The numerous bits of logic which people have so stubbornly cherished during the day are all drawn into the vast emotional explosion of the heavens and the spectacular release of passions, and people realize the futility of all systems. In other words, everything is expressed for at most ten or fifteen minutes and then it's all over."

Honda, who is our prime Mr. Reason, furthers his development as a human being, emotional and spontaneous throughout the course of this book. As both literary and character development, Mishima is recentering the work on Honda, the viewer, the voyeur, the one who is watching all of life transpire. He has always been what the work is about, but never has he been so integral to the arc of the plot itself. "What's beginning? Nothing. Everything is ending." Mishima, as we know from his life, was thoroughly against the concept of reincarnation and Buddhism. But it is a fascinating subject, and judging by the way he's writing this series, I can't help but think he agrees and disagrees with it all at the same time. (less)
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Mar 04, 2021 morgan rated it it was amazing
currently and forever will be in disbelief over how good this was. omg
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May 12, 2013 Paola rated it liked it
Shelves: 2015-challenge-continuing-series
The third novel in the Sea of Fertility tetralogy, unlike the other two I think this one really needs the reader to have gone through Spring Snow and Runaway Horses first to be able to follow what is going on properly - and not just the action, as the first third of the book is centred on Honda's quest for a coherent theory of reincarnation, something without internal contradictions that would square with his logical way of thinking.

Yet for this first third I could not stop wondering whether this was Honda's or Yukio Mishima investigation: indeed (though it could be down to translation) at some point the writing comes out as if the narrator is lecturing the reader, when he writes

The Yuishiki theory originated in the Mahayana Abhidharma sutras, and as we shall see,"Puzzled" probably best described how I felt through the first third of this book. The rest is also very different from the other two - while those were centred on purity, here all is decay, or at least its menacing shadow. The person Kiyoaki reincarnates into is just a vessel this time: Honda the man gets center stage here, and we are served an unflattering portrait of a middle aged man bored and unsatisfied, with a bored and unsatisfied wife whom he mostly ignores, and who fills his day with cheap, sordid, pathetic thrills, joining the ranks of other pieces of that period (Alberto Moravia springing immediately to my mind).

Although the writing is beautiful, I did find many passages over the top, overcomplicated in their effort to describe Honda's inner struggle, somewhat trying too hard, if any such thing can be written about Mishima. Definitely less satisfying for me than the previous two books in the tetralogy. (less)
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Jul 21, 2019 Nancy Oakes rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: japanese-fiction, 2019, translated-fiction
Fact: I'm not sure that I could love anything I might read by Mishima as much as I did his Runaway Horses, which is to me the best book of the now three that I've read in this tetraology. At the same time, Temple of Dawn is also an amazing and unforgettable novel, albeit (in my opinion) with not quite the same level of consistent intensity reached in the first two books. However, when all is said and done, it's another Mishima novel that kept me entirely entranced and on my own planet while reading. That so rarely happens.

more soon after book four. (less)
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Jun 24, 2020 Luís rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: g-classics, g-historical-fiction, japan, e-4
The first two volumes of the tetralogy The Sea of Fertility had utterly won me over. So my expectations were high for the temple of dawn. And the first part met them. I found Shigekuni Honda, who had abandoned the judiciary to get into law. He is now in his fifties and is starting to feel the weight of age. He is not particularly close to his wife. He has no children. At this point in life, anyone turns to the past, nostalgic. The years of youth, the Academy, the Thai princes and especially his friendship with Kiyoaki Matsugae, who died too early, and this enigmatic sentence: "I will see you again."
Then, as prophesied, the best friend reincarnated as Isao Inuma, a young man with high convictions, who also died in the prime of life. But the cycle must continue. In 1939, on a business trip to Thailand (he had to settle a commercial dispute), Honda came into contact with the young Ying Chan. At seven, she has funny ideas. "I am not a real Siamese princess. I am the reincarnation of a Japanese, and my country is Japan."
I like how everything is connected, so the presence of the Thai princes in the first volume was not an extra detail but thought from the start, relevant to the plot. I didn't expect an ageing lawyer to kidnap a minor royal highness. Instead, Honda embarks on a spiritual, introspective journey to India. Even if this part was more contemplative, shared between religious and philosophical reflections and his observations of Indian customs, I was not bored. Maybe I swiped quickly over a few paragraphs, but overall it was different and exciting.
Unfortunately, the second part left me ambivalent. It takes place a few years after the war. Disillusionment is everywhere, but Honda is part of the privileged class, so it does not suffer too much. One day, he learns that Princess Ying Chan is in Japan to continue her higher education and he tries to meet her to check if it is the reincarnation of Kiyoaki Matsugae. She, for her part, no longer remembers the fads of her childhood, any more of the older man. She became an enigmatic young woman. Too much, perhaps, because I have never connected with it. Ying Chan seemed cold, distant, inaccessible. Maybe the author Yukio Mishima is having trouble identifying a female protagonist?
Anyway, it follows many adventures which I did not understand the usefulness. Among others, Honda seeks to play matchmakers, attempting to divert the princess by a young man of his acquaintance. Why? Also, at times, I seemed to be a perverse older man on the return of age, who finds his pleasure in spying on women without their knowledge. Then, events rush to the end, culminating in a disappointing finale. I expected death of the princess, as was the case of the protagonists in the two previous volumes - after all, the cycle of reincarnations must continue - but hers was summarized in a few lines almost shipped.
In any case, I still enjoyed my reading experience. I immersed myself in this extraordinary universe: exotic Thailand, mystical India and, above all, post-war Japan, which is rebuilding, which is looking for its way. The American occupation, openness to Western culture, certain traditions relegated to oblivion, etc. Yukio Mishima has created a real masterpiece. I am as impatient as sad at the idea of embarking on the last volume of the series. (less)
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Feb 07, 2013 Michael Battaglia rated it it was amazing
It's hard enough losing one's friends, now imagine constantly losing the same one and finding him or her again, except that you're much older, they're the same age as when you last saw them and they don't even recognize you. And you're going to lose them again, despite your best efforts. And chances are, it won't even matter. This is the stuff of high emotional tragedy, fraught with urgency and a sense of desperation.

Yet, it's not even the real story of what Mishima is trying to tell here.

Anyone who has read this far into the series knows the basic premise. Former judge and now lawyer Honda keeps running into his doomed friend Kiyoaki, who has an intensely beautiful soul that burns out all too quickly, snuffed out like a flower that shames the grey winter around it, too brilliant to survive before it calls attention to all that is numb around it. He met him again as Isao, a young man who believed in Japan so intensely that his plan to throw the government into chaos could only end in one way, even after Honda had expected him to be saved.

Now we're years later and Honda, now a successful lawyer, happens to hear about a princess in Thailand who claims to be a young Japanese boy (reminding him of the last words Isao said in his presence (although "Runaway Horses" comments that the words were too indistinct to hear clearly, I guess he pieced it together later)). He makes arrangements to meet the child who immediately seems to recognize him and wants to be taken back to Japan. And from there begins an obsession with her life, and maybe the lives beyond lives, that will consume the rest of the novel and years of barely noticed history.

This is the first time we don't really meet Ying Chan, the newest incarnation of his old friend. Unlike the times before where the other two people were in effect the main characters in how we got buried deep in their emotions and how the plot of the book was driven by their actions, we only see her through the lens of Honda and even then only scarcely. Instead she exists in his thoughts, his fantasies, his wishes and desires but her actual appearances in the book are scant, often separated by years and open to an interpretation beyond how Honda is interpreting them. In fact, once she is no longer a young child she barely remembers telling Honda how she used to be his friend and at that point a tug of war begins between his desire to understand his friend better and his desire for Ying Chan, and how one impacts the other. Mishima takes an aspect of the novel I wasn't a fan of at first (Ying Chan basically coming out and saying "Hey, I used to know you" seemed too obvious for what had previously been a mystical and mysterious thing, taking some of the magic out of it) and manages to work his way out of it by wrapping the proceedings in so many psychological layers that teasing them all out becomes a full time job.

Honda has distinguished himself by being more or less an interested bystander in the previous two books and now given the chance to take center stage, he does what we expect and becomes something interesting, a bystander as lead character. He becomes no more active than he was before, drifting through life and observing, all the while become increasingly interested in the thoughts that exist inside his own head, even while painfully realizing that he's far from the most fascinating person who ever lived. As we go through the years of his life, we find that he does well simply by showing up every day and a bit of luck but he's not extraordinary by any means, and its a burden that weighs down on him. He becomes rich and successful but begins to feel that its a bit empty because he hasn't really lived for the experience, he's plodding through and killing time, but what does that mean? Is life about being comfortable if the best you can hope for is not to feel any wide swings of emotions between birth and the time your heart finally stops? He drifts through life without leaving a mark and unlike most of us, he's both acutely and intensely aware of that, how hollow his life seems and how he'll dissipate while barely leaving a stain when he dies. And even as he's not okay with that, the question remains: does he really want to bother to change it? After all, being rich is kind of nice too.

What strikes me with this volume is how little it's tied to the history of Japan. The first two novels felt bound to their eras, an evocation as much as a character study, how times shape the person even as a person tries to shape the time. Here history has no effect on Honda, even as Japan undergoes one of the most significant periods of its history, a little thing called World War Two. The aggression before the war officially begins is barely noticed by Honda and even the years of the war pass by without barely a comment as to the impact or the emotional climate at the time. It hardly affects him and in doing drives us further into his mind, as we track his obsessions and his fascinations and the tiniest details of his mediocrity. As a study of someone who is so ordinary that its often painful, its brilliant.

But he does make you work for it. Good chunks of the novel are devoted to Honda studying the various aspects of Buddhism and these sections can go on for a while, often coming across as fairly dry, academic without being driven, like homework Mishima had to do in order to understand his own novel better, with the attitude of "I had to look this all up so now I'm going to make you read it." They often disrupt the flow of what until that is like the epitome of an ambient techno song, beatless while still being in constant motion. You wouldn't think that inserting more lack of plot into an essentially plotless novel would do that but you can't gain an appreciation for how delicate a balancing act he's doing and how well its working until the Buddhism sections arrive and nearly throw that balance off.

Even plotless it still has its concerns, mostly mortality and aging and there are a number of passages poetically depicting Honda realizing that he's getting older and that he's very much the opposite of a fine wine, despite his success in life. At times it feels like a concern of Mishima's as well and while you never want to read into an author through his work, his suicide after the next novel starts to hover this, the meditations on death and the long slow slide into it becoming almost oppressive. Faced with proof that reincarnation exists, Honda realizes that knowledge means nothing and is only the first step to the better question, what does it mean? Its not one he's capable of answering and even while he constructs elaborate attempts to see Ying Chan naked so he can spot the telltale three moles on her side, you wonder if his reasons for doing this aren't quite what they saw they are. A professional voyeur of sorts, it seems that he'd be willing to stand aside and dispassionately watch his own demise.

In the course, you may wonder what all the point of this is. And then, suddenly, you do. If you've ever read James Joyce's "The Dead", you may get the same feeling, where the story trots along pleasantly enough until they leave and the party and needle without warning hits "awesome". Mishima neatly pulls off the same trick, as a house party at the end kicks the poetic intensity up a notch and the glacial pace seems utterly too fast as all the layers are simultaneously stripped away and becomes smothering all at once. Its as if this is where the heart of the story ultimately lay and the rest was all preamble. It comes together and crashes while Honda stands there and watches it, then goes on with his life as usual. When the tragedy arrives, its almost offhand and detached, as if the story is clearing up old business. But maybe it doesn't matter, like Honda maybe we've already seen what all we need to see in a revelation that is both comforting and terrifying: we will perhaps always be less than we are, but we will be forever. (less)
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Jan 08, 2019 Morgan rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: own, translation, fiction
First book of 2019! I actually enjoyed this better than the last book of this series. It wasn't too political. However, this was just as heavy with pages and pages of religious philosophy. After those pages, the story picks up again. The second part goes back to a romance, kind of, and maybe a mix of eroticism. I'm stating to see there is something with Mishima and peepholes. I might read the next book sometime later this year. Knowing Mishima's fate, I kind of expect what that book is going to be about. (less)
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Oct 13, 2012 Alison rated it it was ok
Shelves: far-east
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
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Apr 21, 2009 David rated it liked it
Shelves: big-red-circle
Mishima really hates Japan in this one. Everyone's dissolute, jaded and exhausted. "There are only two roles for humans in this world: those who remember and those who are remembered" and "The Temple of Dawn" has only the former. ...more
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May 27, 2017 Christian rated it did not like it
Shelves: read-in-french, abandonned, bookclub
Oops, couldn't gather enough motivation to finish this one even though I enjoyed the first two books of the series. The constant discussion about buddhism and hinduism felt like reading a textbook for a course I didn't sign up for. Plus, you never know how accurate his explanations are, is Mishima an expert on this subject matter? If I really wanted to inform myself, I'd probably look it up in other sources, so I prefer reading novels that are inspiring, rather than explaining. There's barely any plot (up to where I stopped anyway, which is about halfway through)

I guess it also depends on one's interests and I'd say that history and religion are among my least favorite, so talk about ancient Gods is sure to get me disinterested fast.

It's taken for granted that we remember secondary characters of previous installments and I felt no need to remember/look it up because I honestly didn't care much for them. It was also alienating that the rebirth of Kiyoaki wasn't hinted at anymore, but fully accepted as such by Honda. Hopefully it isn't too essential for The Decay of the Angel... (less)
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Oct 26, 2021 George rated it liked it
This novel is about Honda, a lawyer, his travels to Thailand on business where he sees Buddhist temples and a young seven year old Thai princess named Ying Chan, who is thought to be mad as she wants to go to Japan as she believes she is Japanese. Honda thinks she may be the reincarnation of Isao, a young headstrong Japanese man. Honda then travels to Benares, India and witnesses Hindu burial rituals. Years later back in Japan, Honda, now 57 years old, falls in love with the Thai princess, who is now 21 years old.

The first half of the novel mainly describes Honda’s reflections on reincarnation and describes the temples of Bangkok and Benares. The story gains plot momentum during the second half of the novel.

This is my seventh Mishima novel. Readers new to Mishima should firstly read ‘Mishima’s, ‘The Sailor Who Fell from Grace’. This book is the third book in a tetralogy. Readers should begin with the first book in the tetralogy, ‘Spring Snow’. The four books should be read in sequence.

This book was first published in 1970. (less)
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May 15, 2009 David rated it liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: read-2009
This seems the weakest of the Sea of Fertility books so far, but it may be that when viewed within the context of the entire work it will make more sense. Where the first two books could stand alone, this one seems rather dependent on the rest of the tetralogy.

It's also a less engaging read, both because it describes various characters' lazy descent into increasing decadence and because it contains an (unjustifiably?) extended description of various types of Hindu and Buddhist thought. Mishima's meditations upon history, theory, love, philosophy, and the rest were much more skillfully interwoven in the earlier books.

I'm still confident the final book (_The Decay of the Angel_) will bring everything to a satisfactory close. Fingers crossed.

-------------------
It also occurs to me that I'm anxious to read some feminist criticism of this book in particular, and the tetralogy as a whole. Mishima's handling of women seems less assured and sensitive here than in the previous novels, and it may even be that part of the problem with this book is that an extremely key character is female yet remains somewhat walled-off. Hm. I just realized that she's just about the only character of any importance at all in any of these three novels who's POV was never presented, including the, ahem, key boys in the first two novels. Interesting. I'm more convinced, now, that some of the authorial choices that seem problematic at the moment have their reasons behind them.

Whatever the case, I prefer putting off reading much criticism until after I've had a chance to read for myself. (less)
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Mar 31, 2018 Florencia rated it liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: mishimaism, japanese

"Everything is in constant flux like a torrent."

*

Falling in love was a special privilege given to someone whose external, sensuous charm and internal ignorance, disorganization, and lack of cognizance permitted him to form a kind of fantasy about others. It was a rude privilege. Honda was quite aware that since his childhood, he had been the opposite of such a man.
Time to re-examine these things, Honda.

April 1, 18
Actual rating: 3 stars for the first part; half a star for the rest.
* Review to come? Maybe on my blog.
** The Sea of Fertility:
Spring Snow
Runaway Horses
The Decay of the Angel (less)
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Dec 26, 2021 Yongene Wong rated it liked it
Shelves: favorites
although it lacks the continuity of poetic beauty of the first two books in the tetralogy, and is replaced with some pretty forgettable textbook knowledge in the first half, but by the end it culminates into what mishima does best: a whirlwind of life, sorrow, happiness, contemplation, and death - all into the form of writing.
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Sep 20, 2020 Sahil Sood rated it really liked it
Shelves: fiction, reincarnation, japan, india, hinduism, buddhism, thailand
Building on the theme of reincarnation, Mishima's third installment in "The Sea of Fertility" tetralogy, set during the early years of American occupation and post-war Japan (1941-1967), begins with Honda, who, while on a work trip to Thailand, is luckily granted an audience with a young Thai princess. Convinced that the princess is a reincarnation of his childhood friend Kiyoaki, Honda sets off on obsessive, philosophical quest to understand the true nature of transmigration of souls, a journey which takes him to sacred Hindu and Buddhist religious sites in India, where he devotes himself to studying myths, legends, and ritualistic ceremonies of Kings and warriors. However, in the post-war Japanese society, reeling under poverty and destruction, Honda becomes an unexpected beneficiary of sudden wealth, and we slowly see a subtle shift in his characterization. Whereas earlier he was shown as the man of reason, resolutely wary of vagaries of emotions and fleeting passions, we now see him grapple with uncertainty and meaninglessness of life. The man who, in his extreme youth chastised Kiyoaki for his hedonistic spirit, now becomes a rich voyeur whose obsession with beauty and sensuous pleasures of the flesh of the young Thai princess leads him to a despairing end. In “The Temple of Dawn”, Mishima uses Honda’s metamorphosis and suffering to highlight Japan’s decadence in the aftermath of American occupation and its longing to achieve unity and semblance in a deeply ruptured society. (less)
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Sep 05, 2010 Sarah Magdalene rated it really liked it
I am obsessively working my way through Mishimas' entire bibliography. Just finished The Temple of the Dawn, because it was the first of the Sea of Tranquillity books I managed to find. Starting a tetraology at book number three is not ideal, but I am still totally enchanted by his great final masterpiece. What a fantastic premise for a series of novels. There's something unforgettable about the way he writes, or is it his whole personality shining through his writing?... Whatever it is his words and the scenes he describes seem to burn their way indelibly into my mind. Like I am remembering something important I once knew but had forgotten. Not many authors are special like this.
Artists and writers are despicable characters to him, but they still get to say great things:

"Art is a colossal evening glow", he repeated. "It's the burnt offering of all the best things of an era. Even the clearest logic that has long thrived in daylight is completely destroyed by the meaningless lavish explosion of colour in the evening sky; even history, apparently destined to endure forever, is abruptly made aware of its own end. Beauty stands before everyone; it renders human endeavor completely futile. Before the brilliance of the evening, before the surging evening clouds, all rot about some 'better future' immediately fades away. The present moment is all; the air is filled with the poison of colour. What beginning? Nothing. Everything is ending." (less)
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Jan 24, 2010 Chris Watson rated it it was amazing
This is less well-structured than the first two, but has some extremely beautiful passages; and in places is dark and disturbing.
You can feel Mishima beginning to come to pieces even as his art reaches a climax.
The long sequences about Buddhism, Hinduism, Benares, the Goddess Kali - extraordinary; factual and yet surreal.
The sequences in WWII, amongst the ruins, are also unlike anything I've read.
As it moves into the postwar period, the writing returns to a restrained, naarative style; but the characters become - including Honda - become much more disturbed.
The parallel with Runaway Horses and the naive purity of the young Isao is striking.
Once again Mishima really captures an entire era, to its innermost, sinister core, with a very light touch. (less)
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Aug 13, 2007 Alex rated it it was amazing
The gaze is inverted: this one's about Honda.

In the first part, before the war, Honda is a Japanese tourist floating through Siam and India. The war comes and Honda spends the entirety of it studying reincarnation. Tadeshina (from vol. 1) eats a raw egg.

In the second part, after the war, Honda is a voyeur, and watches everyone else have sex. 57 years old, he convinces himself he is in love with the Thai princess, and he transforms into a Humbert. For a few chapters, we, the readers, even live in Honda's right eye, propped up against a peephole behind his father's German lawbooks.

Thoroughly bizarre and loneliness-inducing. (less)
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Apr 14, 2020 Jack rated it really liked it
Shelves: 20th-century, japan, philosophy-theory-psychoanalysis, should-really-reread
Somehow even more disturbing than Runaway Horses, though the eroticism here is not so keenly resonant in Mishima’s life and death. I swam through the theology and philosophy in my fascination with the tetralogy’s overarching theme of reincarnation, but I think this was a mistake. Becoming more familiar with Buddhism might help, but my brushes with Zen haven’t yet made me eager to continue following that path. On to the (supposedly disappointing) conclusion, The Decay of the Angel...
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Feb 07, 2021 Kinga rated it it was ok
Shelves: japanese-authors, have-read-in-english, 2021
Considering how incredible the second part was, this… this was a bit of a disappointment.

The focus was clearly on the topic of reincarnation itself with Honda’s many musings across lengthy pages, which was really interesting. But it was quite disturbing to read about his relationship with Ying Chan, a teenager, while Honda being almost sixty… Well.

And the ending? Again, after how spectacularly the second novel ended, this one had the importance of a footnote. And knowing how important the endings of these four novels are, it was strange for this to be in such a rush. (less)
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Nov 30, 2021 lucinda rated it liked it
“Life strove mightily to exile orthodoxy, hospitalize heresy, and trap humanity into stupidity. It was an accumulation of used bandages soiled with layers of blood and pus. Life was the daily changing of the bandages of the heart that made the incurably sick, young and old alike, cry out in pain.”

3.5 stars
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Jan 20, 2021 Disa rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
From all the series, this one is hands down my favorite. Honda was no longer an observer, he now took actions and did what he thought was right.
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Jun 14, 2017 Dioni (Bookie Mee) rated it liked it
Shelves: 1001-books
First published at: http://www.meexia.com/bookie/2017/06/...

The Temple of Dawn is book #3 in The Sea of Fertility tetralogy. My review for book #1 Spring Snow here and book #2 Runaway Horses here. If you have not read the first two, warning there will be possible spoilers.

So my relationship with Mishima's epic has been long and slow going, as I read Spring Snow in 2015, and Runaway Horses in 2016. With The Temple of Dawn in 2017, I plan to read the last book The Decay of the Angel in 2018. That's one book per year if you noticed, as I'm not the type of reader that can read more than one book consecutively by the same author. The good thing is that way you give adequate time for each book, the bad thing is you may forget details from previous books.

I read this with my Goodreads Japanese Literature group (discussion board here), and it seems to cause very conflicting reactions - unlike the first two books. My own take was just lukewarm - there are bits I liked and bits I didn't like. But my overall impression is that it's definitely the weakest book of the tetralogy so far. Even Mishima couldn't avoid the "saggy middle" that seems to often happen to a book and especially a series of books. It felt like a filler, something in between an exciting beginning (book 1), peak (book 2), and the (possibly exciting) ending (book 4). Makes me wonder, do we need a middle at all? Why don't we just cut the middle of everything?

So in The Temple of Dawn, the readers are brought to Thailand and India at the early chapters - which I actually quite enjoyed, before going back to Japan. Mishima used the settings to explore the roots and other branches of Buddhism, including Hinduism. He went into the history and philosophy of those religions, which I could see the reasons of, considering the series is all about transmigration. But it doesn't bring much into the narrative. It's meandering and self-indulgent, and I'm not sure how much I remember of it at the end.

Unlike the previous two books that concentrate on Kiyoaki and Kiyoaki reincarnate, The Temple of Dawn dwells on Honda, who is frankly a boring character compared to any form of Kiyoaki. This time Honda believes that he has encountered his friend in the form of a Thai princess, who is somewhat still related to the two Thai princes appeared in Spring Snow.

The book is divided into two parts, separated by untold years of World War II. I initially thought WWII would take central stage in book 3 or 4, but apparently it was just swept under the rug. The princess is 7 years old in part 1, Honda 46 years old, and the year is 1941. Part 2 is set 11 years later in 1952, Honda is 57 years old, Ying Chan the princess is 18 years old.

So Kiyoaki is now in the form of female - a passive one annoyingly, and is the object of obsession of Honda. Is he symbolically attracted to "life" and the embodiment of the mysterious transmigration? Or is there a homosexual undertone there? (Mishima is largely accepted as homo or bi-sexual - though his wife would disagree.) In any way I failed to grasp the purpose of Honda's lust in the overall narrative. He came across as an old creep. The age and gender of Kiyoaki's form this time really hinder her to blossom into her own character like Isao, who was at the peak of his life. As Kiyo reincarnate gets younger and younger, I wonder how his last form will contribute to the narrative. Those who have read all books in the series hinted that the last book makes the whole journey worthwhile. I guess I'll have to wait and see.
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Oct 11, 2018 Tonymess rated it really liked it · review of another edition
The Buddhist & Hindi sections took me a while to get into, so the spiritual arc here was more of a struggle than the emotional & physical of the first two volumes. The second section a much easier read - maybe Mishima struggled with child characters (the young princess in section one?)
Another wonderful meditation from Mushima’s oeuvre
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Feb 14, 2017 EJ Daniels rated it really liked it · review of another edition
A book only requires sequels when said sequels advance the meaning of the book, and such a series ought to convey this endeavor in both its form and function. In the third installment of his Mare Fecunditatis tetralogy, Mishima Yukio beautifully achieves such an effect, and while his reach ever so slightly exceeds his grasp, when taken with the previous two novels, The Temple of Dawn is nevertheless a triumph.

In many ways, The Temple of Dawn functions as an axis for the larger tetralogy: as the overarching narrative shifts in tandem with the decline of Japanese civilization, so too does Mishima's writing: his macroscopic cultural gaze descends to the deeply personal and esoteric, fixated upon individual foibles and failures. The effect is jarring, yet beautiful, and in the torrid eroticism which comes to define The Temple of Dawn Mishima captures the wanton spirit of an indolent and decadent age.

Mishima's ability to capture the spirit of the age, however, slips somewhat: with its greater attention to personalities separated from the national conscience of Japan and a sizable sojourner to Thailand and India, The Temple of Dawn loses the pure verisimilitude of the previous novels. Perhaps this loss is an indication of Mishima's sense of detachment from his own age.

One also misses a very great deal the heady and august prose of Michael Gallagher, who has been replaced as translator for The Temple of the Dawn. Dale Saunders and Cecilia Segawa Seigle are simply too pedestrian for the scope of Mishima's work.

I would recommend the Temple of Dawn to fans of the other books in the Mare Fecunditatis series: without the contextualization of the previous works the novel would simply be too disjointed and abstruse (less)
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2022-06-14

The Temple of Dawn 3 by Yukio Mishima | Goodreads

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