Golden Color

As a literary synonym for gold, the term Golden Color appears many times in the Manyoshu. Poets used 'Golden Color' to describe autumn rice ears and kerria flowers, linking gold with natural scenery and endowing it with a poetic tenderness.

During the Muromachi period, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu built the Kitayama Mountain Villa (later Kinkaku-ji Temple). The Shariden hall was covered entirely with gold leaf both inside and out. As Yukio Mishima wrote in his novel 'The Temple of the Golden Pavilion,' 'The Golden Pavilion, of a brilliant Golden Color, came across the sea of time.' Thus, Golden Color became the ultimate symbol of the intersection of eternity and illusion in Japanese aesthetics.

The Azuchi-Momoyama period's screen paintings used Golden Color as their background. While Kano Eitoku's 'Chinese Lions' and Hasegawa Tohaku's 'Pine Trees' take gold and ink respectively, the brilliance of Golden Color as a background and its silence as an empty space together formed that era's most profound aesthetic proposition.

During the Edo period, Golden Color was produced in large quantities in the gold leaf workshops of Kanazawa. Kanazawa's climate was suitable for beating gold leaf, and it became the capital of Japanese gold leaf. Artisans beat gold to a thinness of one ten-thousandth of a millimeter using traditional methods. This Golden Color leaf is the pride of Japanese craftsmanship.

When Kinkaku-ji was burned down in 1950, the literary world and the nation mourned as one. The rebuilt Kinkaku-ji has a Golden Color even more dazzling than before. In the Japanese heart, Golden Color is not merely the color of a building but has transformed into a spiritual entity.