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Temple of Dawn: Architecture, Novel, and Reincarnation

Sat, April 2, 3:00 to 5:00pm, Washington State Convention Center, Floor: 6th Floor, Room 604

Abstract

In 1980, Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) published Temple of Dawn (Akatsuki no tera), a third installation of his famous tetralogy, Sea of Fertility (Hōjō no Umi). Featuring a tale about reincarnation, the novel tells a story of a Japanese visitor to Thailand who found a soul of his dead friend in the body of a Thai princess. Their encounter took place after he had seen the Temple of Dawn in Bangkok; thus the temple came to symbolize a newborn life, as well as the unending cycle of night and day (reincarnation).
What Mishima did not recognize was that the Temple of Dawn also has its own multiple reincarnated stages. Predating Bangkok, it had been renovated by King Thonburi (Taksin) in the late eighteenth century, and subsequently by Kings Rama II and Rama III. In each of the restorations, changes were made to the architecture—altering it from a Khmer-inspired Ayutthaya complex to the architecture redecorated with Ming Chinese art. By the time Mishima’s fictional characters saw the glittering temple in the 1940s, the temple owed its aesthetic identity to sources stretching from the ruins of Angkor Complex to porcelain factories in Jingdezhen.
This paper traces the history of the Temple of Dawn, its architecture, and its decorative art, from the eighteenth century to the present. As the paper maps the temple’s design and architectural aesthetics, it will become clear that the flows of aesthetics coincided with the flows of trade, politics, and diplomatic connections.

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