Narratives of disappearing and re-configuring heritage architecture in Japan
Dr. Wendy Ella Wright became interested in the concept of “heritage” as a girl, during summers at the coastal Australian town where her Scottish great-grandfather was a pioneer ship builder. She became fascinated with the elements of “old country” and” new country”, distance, time, tradition, loss and innovation. Her talk is situated in the conceptual framework of heritage and re-creation and will focus on certain significant spaces in Japan, such as the Temple of the Golden Pavilion.
Kinkaku-j i (金閣 寺 , "Temple of the Golden Pavilion", originally 1397), is a Zen Buddhist temple in Kyoto. The Golden Pavilion is one of the Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto and is part of the World Heritage Sites. The ruling Shōgun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu transformed the villa into the Kinkaku-ji complex. The building was converted into a Zen temple after his death.
During the 15th century, all the buildings in the complex apart from the pavilion were burnt. Then, in the 1950's, the pavilion was burn t by a young apprentice monk, who attempted suicide after the fire. During this fire, the original statue of Shogun Yoshimitsu vanished in the flames, but is now restored.
Yukio Mishima's 1956 book The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, is based on the lives of The Golden Temple. There is also the building's estoteric relationship to the Silver Pavilion in Kyoto, the architectural subject of an intertwined ethos of "wabi sabi ”, or "impermanence".
