Conflagration

In postwar Kyoto, Goichi Mizoguchi (Raizo Ichikawa VIII), a stuttering and troubled youth, arrives at Shukaku Temple seeking solace and spiritual purpose as an apprentice monk. Raised in a temple and inspired by his father’s stories of Shukaku Temple’s eternal divine beauty, Goichi is enchanted by its serenity yet tormented by memories of his mother’s adultery and his father’s death.

As the world around the temple begins to intrude - tainted by vanity, lust, and hypocrisy - his ideal of pure beauty twists into something darker. Tormented, he resolves to commit a shocking act of purity from which there is no return.

Inspired by true events and Yukio Mishima's novel The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, this haunting psychological drama examines the fragile boundary between reverence and fanaticism, revealing the turbulent inner conflicts at the heart of the human condition. Director Kon Ichikawa captures Goichi’s unravelling with masterful style.

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