The Temple of Dawn

I love how matter-of-fact the opening is about popping Honda down in Bangkok and setting us up: Kiyo's ba-aaacckkkk! As a little Thai princess this time. It's Hollywoodian. Each of these books cannibalizes the last to an extent, just as each adds to its predecessors' richness. It's interesting that the exigencies of Kiyo having to be die to be reborn each time and the reincarnated self having to get nubile so Honda can go all unbearable-lightness-of-perversity on them means that it sort of has to be twenty years between books--Isao, in Runaway Horses would have been a much more natural obsession for a Honda at the tail end of youth, say 30 or 32 instead of 37 or 40. And this is meant to be the "middle age" volume of the tetralogy, but show more Honda is 60 by the end and a sad old man. I'm curious, since there is one more book, whether he'll be 80 and decrepit, or his mind gone, or dead-in-a-twist.

But the slight weirdness the time-out-of-jointedness lends to the proceedings works--a slightly sadder sadness that this middle-aged voyeur never learned to live, a slightly weirder weirdness at how childless he tries to sup of Ying Chan's youth. The pain of life ends in death, the fearkiller, for Kiyo-returned once again, and the jiggery-pokery about the three moles and is-she-or-isn't-she really him this time around takes us much deeper into Honda's husk-mind--I still don't feel like I know how much of this eternal recurrence of his great friend is real samsara magic and how much is simple need, the existential dread of a man who never really lived and went on doing it too long. We all look like Hondas these days, grooming our careers and wasting our fecundity and trying to keep the doctor away with an ever more attenuated thread of youth and health stretched out beyond what it'll bear at the middle manager gym with the other husks. Sea of fertility indeed.

At the start of the book I think Honda still has our respect--by the end he's a fucking tragedy. Horatio to Peeping Tom. The lassitudinous world eternal of Theravada, not the constant-recreation-anew-in-a-neverending burst of beauty of Mahayana. Maybe each always craves the other, but I can't help but gravitate toward the second. Maybe that means I'm still young? (My understanding is that as a fruit poacher in this life, I will be reborn a monkey. Perfect.)

Anyway, besides the murky deep stuff, this book is full of the almost epigrammatic character descriptions that Mishima excels at, and ruined Tokyo, and an essentialist and grandiose yet magnificent excursion to India, and new enigmatic characters like Keiko coming in all the time to renew our interest. That's Japan for you--even the self-obsessedest, like Mishima, are better at writing about tiny interactions and reverberations among people than all but the true greats of our West. Mishima comes off much more as a Proust than a Dostoevsky here--this novel is sunk in memory, although not, like its predecessors, nostalgic, just tired. Sometimes distracted--by "Peeping Tom" above I guess I mean "the one who needs things to keep happening to distract him from the emptiness, the one who knows that the watcher alters the watched," the kind of guy who would put a cat in a box and speculate on if it's dead, or to ravish the sexy girl form of his great friend. Sometimes life is almot poetic, almost meanignful, on its own, and here we can watch Honda try to round up. And the shock ending, like the movie beginning, somehow works, not only because it's much like the ending I dreamed of for my own Japan novel (spoiler the uchi burns down, people die), but also because it's more of an event that the whole firebombing of Tokyo in the war and because Honda, pursuer of hot teens, looker-for of some fix to keep him recognizable to himself as human, has nothing to do with it. We are helpless in the face of complexity! Live till you die! show less

The third book in the Sea of Fertility series is an improvement on the second. The overt nationalistic overtones are pared down, but are replaced by Mishima working his way through Buddhist doctrine. When he gets on with the story, it's much better than Runaway Horses. Honda is now middle aged and thinks he has discovered Kiyoaki's latest incarnation in a Thai princess. She seems to think she's the reincarnation, too, despite only being 6 years old. Time passes. Honda has an epiphany/existential crisis. The princess comes to Japan as a teenager. Honda becomes obsessed and is revealed to be a seedy man with a penchant for voyeurism. His midlife crisis is dressed up as spiritual awakening, and he's a bit of a sorry character, manipulated show more by the women around him. In the final couple of chapters, his hopes are simultaneously realised and dashed. It made me see this older Honda as akin to Don Draper in Mad Men. Like Draper, Honda tries to stand separately from the world in order to pursue his own code of living with impunity. show less

After reading and being rather impressed by the first two books in Yukio Mishima's The Sea of Fertility, Spring Snow and Runaway Horses, I was anticipating with great pleasure reading the third volume in the series, The Temple of Dawn. While the previous books were translated by Michael Gallagher, The Temple of Dawn is translated by E. Dale Saunders and Cecilia Segawa Seigle. I find it somewhat strange that the translator would change in the middle of a series, but each book really is quite distinct in this case. In Spring Snow Honda's close friend Kiyoaki dies at a young age. In Runaway Horses, he becomes convinced that Kiyoaki has been reincarnated in the young man of Isao, who also dies tragically despite Honda's efforts. And now in show more The Temple of Dawn, Honda faces yet another possible reincarnation.

The Temple of Dawn is told in two separate parts. Part One, the shorter of the two, begins in 1940. Honda, who has remained a lawyer since Isao's death, has traveled to Thailand in order to settle an international case. While there Hishikawa, his guide and translator (who he can't stand), arranges for him to meet Princess Ying Chan, the seven-year-old daughter of Prince Pattanadid with whom Honda attended school briefly in Japan. Much to the embarrassment of her relatives, the princess is convinced that she is the reincarnation of a Japanese boy. Honda hopes and believes she is in fact his friend Kiyoaki reincarnated, although he does have some lingering doubts. As a bonus for his diligent work on the case, Honda travels through India before returning to Japan--a trip that affects him profoundly and sparks his obsessive study into reincarnation. Part Two begins in 1952 and primarily follows Honda whose obsession has turned from reincarnation to Ying Chan who is in Japan to study. The princess has grown to be a beautiful if somewhat indolent young woman and has no memory of her childhood eccentricities.

Many characters from Spring Snow and Runaway Horses return in The Temple of Dawn or are at least referred to. The Temple of Dawn doesn't stand on its own quite as well as the first two novels, but most of the information needed to understand the overarching plot is provided. To me, Kiyoaki's reincarnation as Ying Chan didn't seem to work as effectively as his reincarnation as Isao. Part of this may be because the story doesn't really focus on Ying Chan except voyeuristically through Honda who really seems to be the focus of this book. I was somewhat surprised that World War Two did not play a very big role in the novel. The changing international tensions between travelers abroad before the war, the Japanese populace's reaction to the the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and the attitudes towards the American occupation force are briefly explored, but beyond that the war is mostly ignored.

I didn't enjoy The Temple of Dawn nearly as much as I did either Spring Snow or Runaway Horses. The book's tone seems very different from the first two books; I'm not sure if this is due to the new translators or if the change is found in Mishima's original as well. But some things remain the same--great attention is given to the details of the environment and setting, descriptions are sensual and evocative. Some of the writing is simply breathtaking but at other times it can be rather tedious (the primary example being an overly-lengthy exploration of the various theories and philosophies surrounding reincarnation which just serves to show the extent of Honda's intense interest in the subject). The characters are often cruel and manipulative--Honda himself has become somewhat of a creepy bastard--but somehow even this holds a sense of beauty in its own peculiar way. The Temple of Dawn may not be my favorite volume in The Sea of Fertility, but I am still glad I read it and look forward to finishing the tetralogy with The Decay of the Angel.

Experiments in Reading show less

Honda is fascinated by Princess Ying Chan, who is evidently the rebirth of Isao. But now there is a powerful sexual dimension. In the middle of the book there is this review of Buddhist metaphysics, Abhidharma and Yogacara. It seems accurate enough as far as I can tell. What makes a person, what glues the bits together and integrates them? Yeah it's a good puzzle, if Buddhism teaches anatman, that there's no soul, then what is reborn? It must be these deep currents, our emotional patterns.

There are some amazing lines in here. An old woman looks at herself in a mirror, and uses the mirror as a receptacle into which she can discard her wrinkles. Some other line, I think it was Honda sitting on the abyss like a toilet.

How it all fits show more together, I don't know. Honda as voyeur, Honda as metaphysical speculator. Maybe those are two levels of the same pattern. Then there are the snakes. Darned if I know! show less

When I'd started The Sea of Fertility series years ago, I'd noticed that the third volume had a significantly lower rating than the other three. At the time, I'd assumed this probably had more to do with readers not accepting Mishima's female incarnation. Nope, that's not it; this book just truly pales in comparison.

The first two novels in Mishima's reincarnation tetralogy were widely different from one another. This, I believe, showcased the different aspects of the reincarnated Kiyoaki. The Temple of Dawn is also very different, though I don't know that it really provides much insight into the current incarnation of the Thai princess, Ying Chan.

While every novel in this series is very much about Honda, Kiyoaki's friend who recognizes show more each rebirth, the first two said much about the first and second incarnation. The first half of The Temple of Dawn is all about Honda. It is his travelogue, philosophizing, and in-depth explorations of reincarnation. Ying Chan makes a couple of appearances, but she is mostly left out of the tale.

The story picks up significantly in the second half, as Honda settles down and the princess becomes more prominent; and while Mishima writes some gorgeous prose, the story is itself troubling. Aside from being a beautiful princess, Ying Chan lacks distinction. The deplorable behaviors of the other characters to possess her and her beauty was troubling. While Honda's previous regard for his friend was great and he made every effort to save him, here he views his "friend" with only lust, desiring to rape and kill. It left me uncomfortable not only because of the depravity of these characters--men and women--but because it seemed out of place against the earlier volumes.

The first half of The Temple of Dawn is painfully rendered; the second bears some semblance to Mishima, but not to this ongoing narrative or to the characters it portrays. I've really enjoyed the author's work up to this point, but this one was truly disappointing, and probably would have a lower rating if not for his other, more outstanding works. show less

I enjoyed the first two of the tetralogy more than The Temple of Dawn. The first two thirds are tedious, boring, and haphazard. The last third was more interesting and the pace picked up a bit, though none of it was very believable. If I wasn't set on completing this tetralogy I might have given up on this book.

The 50+ year old Honda become obsessed with a Thai princess he believes is yet another reincarnation of Kioyaki. It's hard to like Honda is this book-- he is perverted, lies and manipulates, etc. Yang Chin is very one-dimensional, as are many of the characters. I was hoping for more time spent on the War years, but this book didn't really have the historical piece or the imagery-filed writing of the first two books. (Different show more translator?)

It isn't yet clear to me how this book fits into the Sea of Fertility-- as least the progression I was expecting. Perhaps the final book will shed some light.

I will say that Chapters 38 and 39 are brilliant. They describe the changes in Rie and Honda as they become bitter and apathetic. It's depressing, but very insightful and perfectly described.

Some nice passages:
"If one must live, one must not cling to purity...."
"Single-mindedness often gives rise to viciousness."
"...anything born of necessity is accompanied by bitterness..." show less

This is the third book of a tetralogy, "The Sea of Fertility". As was true in the first two books, Mishima's prose is elegant, evocative, and full to overflowing with magnificent metaphors. Honda, our protagonist, focuses on reincarnation and the teachings of Buddhism and Hinduism. I felt that Mishima was overly didactic in some sections, which diminished pleasure of the rhythm of the story. However, a surprise ending, which was perfectly written, left me eagerly anticipating the fourth and final volume. Mishima was a fascinating and gifted writer.