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In the spin-off novel Kimi no Na wa. Another Side:Earthbound, chapter 2 takes a look at the events of Kimi no Na wa. from Teshigawara's perspective. The second section of that chapter has him thinking about how he's so fed up with the corruption in Itomori that he just wants to blow the whole place up. Then, this thought occurs to him (on p. 88):

そういえば、大好きすぎて辛いから、もういっそなくなってしまえ、と思いつめて、どこかの寺に火をつける小説があったはずだ。

Come to think of it, wasn't there a novel where someone is so deeply in love that it hurts, and gets it in his/her head that he/she should just make it all go away, so he/she sets fire to some temple? [translation mine]

What novel is he referring to here? The description makes it sound like some classic of Japanese literature, which is a thing I don't know much about.

(It is presumably a novel that actually exists, given that all the other allusions so far (Michael Jackson, "Muu" magazine, a few others) have all been to real-world things that exist.)

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I believe he is referring to The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima.

The novel is loosely based on the burning of the Reliquary (or Golden Pavilion) of Kinkaku-ji in Kyoto by a young Buddhist acolyte in 1950. The pavilion, dating from before 1400, was a national monument that had been spared destruction many times throughout history, and the arson shocked Japan. The story is narrated by Mizoguchi, the disturbed acolyte in question, who is afflicted with a stutter, and who recounts his obsession with beauty and the growth of his urge to destroy it.

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  • D'oh. That's definitely it, given the surrounding context in "Earthbound".
    – senshin
    Commented Apr 19, 2017 at 0:07

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