On Kinkakuji (The Temple of the Golden Pavilion) : the Birth of a Conversational Language

Abstract

I maintain that the novel, Kinkakuji is a personal account, whose main reader is its author's club-footed friend, Kashiwagi. What should be noted is the internal drama of how the young man with a terrible stutter, resolved about not being understood by others, comes to write a personal account. The protagonist, realizing his difference from Kashiwagi's attitude toward life, plunges into the act of burning the Golden Pavilion; the act, in turn, prompts him to write the account. Words are uttered through the attempt to involve the other into the personal action. If so, the widely-accepted interpretation of this novel as presentation of a solitary aesthetics is severely challenged.