The Golden Pavilion without gold
Feb 5th, 2008 by Ad Blankestijn
Was the outside of the Golden Pavilion originally clad in thick gold, as it is today?
Many scholars doubt this. Is it not rather just a fanciful name, like the Silver Pavilion, about which we know for certain that it never was coated with silver (something which would anyway have been insane considering the wet climate in Kyoto!).
Unfortunately, the original pavilion burned to the ground in 1955. The fire was set on purpose by one of the temple’s own acolytes, a shocking story of arson that formed the material for Mishima Yukio’s novel The Golden Pavilion. But the pavilion survives on old photographs. And one thing is shown clearly by these pictures: there is not a flake of gold on its outer walls!
Is all that shiny gold really just the result of the folly of the Bubble Economy, of the present-day Genroku-period?
What do you think? Was the original Golden Pavilion really a “golden pavilion?”
