Conflagration (Enjo) is Kon Ichikawa's adaptation of a best-selling novel by Yukio Mishima, who based his story on an actual incident, the burning of Kyoto's celebrated Golden Temple. An obsessive young acolyte, disgusted by his mother's promiscuity and disenchanted with his weak father, finds his temple and school to be even more sullied, a haven for sexual desire. In despair, he deliberately sets fire to what is for him - and others - the symbol of pure beauty, the Golden Pavilion.
Ichikawa's chilling interpretation of Mishima's already highly conceptual novel combined Toshiro Mayuzumi's avant-garde music and Kazuo Miyagawa's inventive cinematography, making Enjo a profoundly original film. Donald Richie comments:
“The visuals of the film are superb.... Miyagawa...used the widescreen as it has seldom been used before or after, capturing, in black and white, textures and surfaces so perfectly that the screen at times almost resembled a bas-relief.... Particularly impressive was the use of architecture....” (in Anderson and Richie, “The Japanese Film” and Anderson, “Japanese Cinema”)