Mapped
The Sound of Waves
Yukio Mishima
Mishima's simple, luminous love story is set on Uta-jima, a small fishing island in Ise Bay drawn from the real island of Kamishima, where the young fisherman Shinji and the diver's daughter Hatsue fall in love against a tide of gossip. The whole island is the book: the fishing village and its harbour, the steep stone steps of the Yashiro shrine to the sea god, the lighthouse on the height, and the sea itself, worked by the boats and the diving women.
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The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
Yukio Mishima
Mishima's novel reworks a real event: the burning of the Golden Pavilion, Kinkaku-ji, by a young acolyte monk in 1950. The stammering, ugly Mizoguchi comes from a poor coastal temple to serve at Rokuon-ji in Kyoto, and his worship of the pavilion's unbearable beauty curdles until he destroys it. The city is real throughout: the gilded pavilion above its pond, the temple grounds where he lodges, Otani University where he meets the crippled cynic Kashiwagi, and the wartime and postwar streets of Kyoto.
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