Learning of his family's collapse, acolyte Goichi, sent to study silently at the Temple of the Golden Pavilion, must endure acute psychological distress.
Cinematography
Every frame weaponizes the temple's impossible beauty against you.
Acting
Raizō Ichikawa's stutter becomes its own language of rage.
Direction
Ichikawa turns Yukio Mishima's prose into pure cinematic suffocation.
Director
Kon Ichikawa
Raizō Ichikawa
Goichi Mizoguchi
Tatsuya Nakadai
Tokari
Michiyo Aratama
Mistress of the floral art
Ganjirō Nakamura II
Tayama Dosen
Yōko Uraji
Tamao Nakamura
Woman at Gobancho
Tanie Kitabayashi
Aki, Goichi's mother
Kinzō Shin
Ryōsuke Kagawa
Priest Zenkai
Kōichi Mizuhara
Prosecutor
Yūsaku Terashima
Jun Hamamura
Goichi's Father
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Based on the real 1950 burning of Kinkaku-ji by a disturbed monk, which Mishima fictionalized into a meditation on postwar Japanese identity crisis.
Ichikawa and Mishima famously despised each other; this film exists because the director outmaneuvered the author for rights.
JP
