THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THING IN THE WORLD
by
Douglas Messerli
Kon Ichikawa, Keiji
Hasebe, and Natto Wada (writers, based on the novel The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima), Kon Ichikawa
(director) 炎上 Enjō (Conflagration) / 1958
Young
Goichi (Raizo Ichikawa), whose father has run an out-of-the-way Buddhist center,
has witnessed his mother and uncle having sex shortly before his own father has
died, perhaps of complications for his wife’s affairs.
Having been convinced of his father’s
continued statement that “the Golden Pavilion of the Shukaku Temple is the most
beautiful thing in the world,” the young, innocent Buddhist acolyte determines
to study there under Dosen Tayama (Ganjirō Nakamura).
Although he is a true believer, there
also seems to be something slightly backward about the likeable Goichi, who is
not only unbelievably naïve but also a stutterer, a condition perhaps brought
on by his rather abusive family life.
The seemingly affable Dosen even offers
to send him to further schooling, and, later hires Goichi’s mother who suddenly
reappears in her son’s life again, to work in the kitchen. In debut now to the
kindness of the Dosen, she demands that her son study hard and, ultimately,
replace the Dosen 
after he finishes his studies. But things do not go well,
particularly when Goichi discovers that the Buddhist leadership, although
giving an outward pretense of abstinence and piety are, in fact, running the
Pavilion as a tourist stop and making a great deal of personal profit in the
process. The Dosen even has a geisha mistress in town.
Ichikawa reveals his hero’s inner feelings
through a careful mix of flashbacks and plot extensions, revealing Goichi’s
rather fragile ego developing him into a being who has sought spiritual beliefs
as a way to escape from the daily realities of post-World War II Japanese life.
He, it is clear, has mistakenly perceived the shrine as a kind of Shangri-La, a
world lying entirely apart from the everyday world. In short, the sad incidents
of Goichi’s home life get purposely inter-fused in Ichikawa’s telling with the
young boy’s illusions of paradise. And before long, it has a profound impact
not only upon his studies but, particularly when he meets a young woman, concerning
his sexual fears.
We might almost describe Giochi as a religious
purist or, even, an over-zealous believer—even while we still sympathize with
his spiritual crisis. What Ichikawa does not focus on is that the boy, with his
love and devotion to his father and his utter hatred of his mother, may also be
a closeted gay man who will clearly be unable to come to terms with his
sexuality. Whatever the case, it is apparent that for many viewers Goichi is
not an entirely appealing figure. As The
New York Times reviewer, Howard Thompson, wrote upon the film’s original US
premiere: "For all Raizo Ichikawa's righteous indignation, as the painfully stuttering protagonist, he remains an extremely neurotic and naive whiner, and a dead duck from the outset." I feel more empathy for him.
As often in Mishima’s work, whose novel
provided the source to this film, such inner turmoil, especially at the
crossroads of sex, familial duty, and spiritual beliefs, results in terrible
violence. In Goichi’s case, it erupts by him trying to burn down the “golden
temple,” him being arrested, and his committing suicide before he is to be
imprisoned for his deed.
Like so many of Ichikawa’s films, Enjō profoundly explores how Japan’s
World War II imperialist pretensions effected the generations that followed. Like
the warriors of Ichikawa’s early war films and the fall of the grand families
of The
Makioka Sisters, Goichi’s
more humble family is another sacrifice made for the war effort, while also
focusing on how spiritual values have been equally destroyed in the process. Enjō may not be one of Ichikawa’s greatest
films, but it is very certainly worth watching.
Los Angeles, February 9, 2018
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