The Temple of Dawn
The third volume of Yukio Mishima's tetralogy follows Honda, now a middle-aged judge, to Thailand in search of a young princess he believes to be the reincarnation of his dead friend Kiyoaki. The novel spends long stretches on Buddhist cosmology, erotic obsession, and the slow corrosion of postwar Japan. It is stranger and more ruminative than the first two books, less interested in plot than in the metaphysics of recurrence and the death of the self.The Pocket edition is the E. Dale Saunders and Cecilia Segawa Seigle translation, presented in the same compact format as the rest of the series. The novel's preoccupation with reincarnation gives the series its shape, even when the argument threatens to overwhelm the drama. Best read after Spring Snow and Runaway Horses, though Mishima would probably respect a contrarian who started here.
