One of the most beautiful of all Japanese films, Conflagration is based on a best-selling novel by Yukio Mishima. "Ichikawa was Mishima's favorite director," James Quandt notes, "and from this adaptation, it is easy to see why." Mishima based his story on an actual incident, the burning of Kyoto's celebrated Golden Pavilion. A young man, Mizoguchi (Raizo Ichikawa), disgusted by his mother's promiscuity and disenchanted with his weak father, becomes a Buddhist acolyte. But the obsessive, stuttering youth finds his temple school to be sullied by sexual hypocrisy. In despair, he deliberately sets fire to the temple, symbol of pure beauty, and a national treasure, causing a conflagration that for him is a holocaust. Ichikawa's interpretation of Mishima's already highly conceptual novel was profoundly original, using Toshiro Mayuzumi's avant-garde music and Kazuo Miyagawa's "architectonic" widescreen cinematography to chilling effect. Donald Richie noted, "The textures captured in black and white were-even for Japan-beyond comparison."