The Temple of Dawn

Now here's one of those books which one tries to review, but can only come up with disembodied cries and wild gesticulations due to sheer awe when one sits down to do it. I'll admit, I was a bit skeptical when approaching this: Runaway Horses, the second novel in the Sea of Fertility cycle, seemed to me to be a kind of regression after the incredibly beautiful Spring Snow. But now it occurs to me that I very well may have treated it unfairly, since I've read The Temple of Dawn and was blown away all over again.

I'll grant you, this is a more difficult read than Spring Snow, which is probably why people don't talk about it as much. Why so? Well, first of all, it's split into parts. The first part isn't very heavy on plot - most of it is comprised of Mishima explaining various aspects of Buddhism. You might not be too keen on this; I wasn't, and frankly I don't think Mishima was either - it's a bit too dry to have been written by someone who was passionate about the subject. If this turns you off, however, I advise you to persevere - the ending will make it more than worth it.

Secondly, there's an abrupt shift in focus. The first two books centered around their young protagonists Kiyoaki and Isao; Shigekuni Honda was present in both as a sort of way to link the two, but was often out of the picture. Further, both of those books seemed to paint a broader picture of Japan, if the depictions of court intrigue in Spring Snow and conspiracy organization in Runaway Horses are any indication. Indeed, both of those books reflect just how well Mishima could understand the world when he had a mind to. The Temple of Dawn, however, takes a new course that is then followed all the way to the end of The Sea of Fertility - it takes place almost entirely in Honda's head. Other characters are still present, certainly, but now everything is filtered through his eyes. This explains why you never meet the new incarnation of Kiyoaki, Ying Chan, in person - all you know of her comes from Honda's obsessive thoughts.

In taking this course, Mishima has created just about the most poignant portrayal of loneliness and ennui I've ever seen. Reduced to Honda's perspective, the world of the novel becomes much more insular. This really culminates in the last novel (The Decay of the Angel), but it's more than evident here. Here we have Honda, a man whose life has been a brilliant success by all standards, and yet who can't say he has ever lived. Does that sound like a cliche? Well, now that I look over that sentence, it kind of does. But this will be soon forgotten when you read about his lonely dreams and his increasing burning desire to be someone he isn't. And in this light, it's no surprise that his quest for Ying Chan becomes the one and only quest of his life. It could have been no other way - it's one of those brilliant Mishima touches to have made the third incarnation a woman; not the first or the second, mind you, but the third, when Honda is already slipping into old age, which Mishima equated with the loss of one's soul. Only this way could the intense yearning that permeates the pages of this book have been created.

The writing itself shows Mishima to be in full mastery of his art. One of the reasons why I found Runaway Horses a bit underwhelming was the lack of the absolutely mindblowingly sensuous descriptions that filled Spring Snow. Well, in The Temple of Dawn, they're back with a vengeance. I won't tell you any of the plot or how this relates to it since I don't want to ruin it for you. I will, however, say that the ending is just about one of the most brilliant things I've ever read. For a time, I was wondering where Mishima was going with these new developments and puzzling over how they could end. And then came the ending. In hindsight, it was the most obvious conclusion ever, and yet, since Mishima is familiar with things such as "subtlety," I was taken completely off guard by it. It's quite possibly the apex of this author's literary career, and it took the wind right out of me; when trying to imagine how it was written, I can only envision a fevered Mishima furiously tossing off page after page with a sort of maniacal frantic gleam in his eyes. And to this day, I get the oddest sinking feeling whenever I recall it.

Why am I writing this incoherence? If you've started The Sea of Fertility, you'll certainly finish it, and if not, you should be reading Spring Snow. But I implore you not to forget to read The Temple of Dawn. Don't listen to anything anyone else says about it - the truth is that it's another unqualified masterpiece from a man whose career was blessed with them.

This was the first novel I read in the Sea of Fertility tetrology, and though I have finished the series, this still remains my favorite one. Few other novels I have read, not just in the series but other books in general, have been as shocking or deeply moving.
The main character's quest for enlightenment and search for truth culminate into a disastrous obsession with a young lady. His fixation on her youth and beauty are compared to his own tired and aging body, and that of his unhappy wife.
Deeper than other novels, he pursues the link between people beyond death. If someone is reborn, are they forced to replay their fate again and again? Is this the fate of mankind, or is the protagonist simply unable to accept the death of someone he loved? He is searching in this novel, searching for lost love and friendship, and searching for his own soul. The dialogue in the novel on Buddhism is somewhat dry and scholarly, but the this fits in with the dryness and objective view the narrator feels towards the world in general.
Mishima manages to connect eroticism, reincarnation, post-war Japan skepticism, beauty and death into a work of art. I highly recommend this novel.

This is the third installment of the SEA OF FERTILITY tetralogy.

Seeing the development of Honda's life throughout the "Sea of Fertility" series has been a fascinating journey that I'm sure will be taken to extreme in part IV (The Decay of the Angel.) Knowing a bit about Mishima's biography is particularly helpful in understanding his works (more so than with many other authors.)

As Honda (who is the link in all the books) gets older, he gets jaded and disenchanted with life, he get's wrapped up in sexual fantasy with a girl over 30 years younger, ignores his wife, and is still searching for some sort of religious truth in Buddhism, although his outlook becomes more nihilistic all the time.

This is a good story, although not as good as "Spring Snow" or "Runaway Horses." The writing is a bit more clouded than before...but its probably because there's a different translater in this volume. "Spring Snow" and "Runaway Horses" were both translated by Michael Gallagher who did a brilliant job. This volume uses two translators and the words just don't flow as well...its more awkward. (By the way I'm reading the series put out on Vintage International.)

In addition to just being a wonderful piece of fiction, its interesting to see how the characters reflect different aspects of 20th century Japanese society, and the conflicts that arise when a nation embraces aspects of different cultures and straddles two distinctly different ideaologies.

I strongly recommend reading the book if you've read the previous two, because Honda's character is ever evolving and Mishima is a grand storyteller, but I can't rate this one as high due to the sometimes dry translation.

This was, for me, the weakest of the three Sea of Fertility novels I have read. One problem has been commented on by almost every reviewer: the theme of the overall work is reincarnation. But traditional Buddhist philosophy regard the soul, and even the self, as illusions. If this is so, then what is it that is reincarnated? A long and complex essay on this takes up far too much of the novel and probably could be understood only by a reader with extensive previous knowledge of Buddhist philosophy.

A more subtle problem is that this book seems to lack the compassion of the earlier volumes. Part of this is the treatment of Honda himself, and perhaps a natural reflection of the fact that Honda, in the timeline of the overall work, is becoming an old man, combined with Mishima's own horror of old age that influenced his suicide a few years after this book was written. Certainly the contrast between the fading age of Honda and this novel's reincarnation of Kiyoaki, a beautiful young Thai princess, is made frequently and rather heavy-handedly. But in other cases Misihima's cruelty seens clearly gratuitous, particularly the case of a pseudo-intellectual and a would-be poetess who are brought in as characters almost solely so that Mishima can mock them before killing them off. This whole subplot struck me as entirely unworthy of Mishima.

Mishima was a genius, though, and there is much in this book that is impressive, fully equal to the brilliance of the two prequels. The dramatic ending has been justly praised by other reviewers. The recent history of Japan is a major focus of the tetralogy, and the descriptions in this story of Tokyo in ruins during and just after the war are harrowing. And the portrayal of Honda's marriage with Rie, two people who have spent their lives together and are growing old together, tied to each other by familiarity and social custom, yet never really united by love, is poignant and remarkable.

In THE TEMPLE OF DAWN, the third book of Yukio Mishima's "Sea of Fertility" tetralogy, we find Shikeguni Honda on business in Thailand. Six years after the death of Isao Iinuma, the former judge is now a successful lawyer, but his interest in practising law is shaken when he meets Ying Chan, a Thai princess who is the second reincarnation of Kiyoaki Matsugae. THE TEMPLE OF DAWN differs greatly from the first two books of the tetralogy. While SPRING SNOW and RUNAWAY HORSES focus mainly on their tragic young men done in by fatal youthful flaws, love and idealism respectively, Honda is the central figure of this volume. All events are filtered through his eyes, and what little we learn about Ying Chan comes from his desperate musings. In its chronology this third volume also differs, for while the first two volumes take place within a span of a couple of years, THE TEMPLE OF DAWN leaps from 1939 through the war years to 1952, and ends with a shocking revelation in 1967.

Honda has changed a lot since we last met him. Right off the bat Mishima tells us that the death of Isao turned Honda from a idealistic man of reason to a nihilist, and nihilism is finally revealed as the big theme of the cycle. Honda continues to change as he grows older in this volume, and this process of growing old, of questioning earlier assumptions, and of searching for some answer to life's mysteries makes for a fascinating plot. Readers will be shocked by the behavior of the protagonist, his wife, and their social circle. This is a novel where every nearly every page punches the reader in the cut, and Mishima appears as much a master of apparently casual revelations as Gene Wolfe. He is also a master of the love story, for love affairs in this book, twisted though they be, come out as much more realistic than Kiyoaki's doomed affection for Satoko.

But beyond the individual personages of the book and their foibles, Mishima wants the reader to consider universal principles of philosophy. Honda spends the war years in a haze, reading through the Buddhist canon and trying to figure it all out as his country is battered around him. While one can enjoy THE TEMPLE OF DAWN without too closely paying attention to ideas of samsara and the self, the novel richly rewards repeat reading. And finally, the book stands out for its amazing ending. I won't give it away, but I will say that Mishima brilliantly alludes to his earlier writings, reinforces his thoughts on "cosmic nihilism", and even pays a tribute to his mentor Yasunari Kawabata.

All in all, this is the finest book of "The Sea of Fertility" that I have read so far, and I really can't recommend it enough. Pick up SPRING SNOW if you haven't yet, and other readers can continue on through this one without fear.