The Temple of Dawn (暁の寺, Akatsuki no tera) is the third novel in the Sea of Fertility tetralogy by the Japanese writer Yukio Mishima.

In 1941, Shigekuni Honda is sent to Bangkok as legal counsel for Itsui Products in a case involving a spoilt shipment of antipyretic drugs.

After touring many great buildings, he visits the Temple of Dawn and is deeply impressed by its sumptuous architecture, which to the sober lawyer represents "golden listlessness", the luxurious feel of anti-rationalism and of "the constant evasion of any organized logical system".

Honda questions her and satisfies himself that she is the genuine article, but is bothered at a later meeting by the absence of the three moles that helped him identify Isao.

He returns to Bangkok on November 23, at a time when relations with Japan are deteriorating, and is unpleasantly affected by the crassness and ugliness of the Japanese tourists at his hotel.

He gives Tadeshina some food, and in return she gives him a book she uses as a talisman, the Mahamayurividyarajni, or "Sutra of the Great Golden Peacock Wisdom King (or Queen)".

At a housewarming party, two pseudo-artistic friends of Honda's are introduced: Mrs Tsubakihara, a mournful poetry student under Makiko Kito (who perjured herself for Isao's sake in Runaway Horses), and Yasushi Imanishi, a specialist in German literature who is obsessed with elaborate sadomasochistic sexual fantasies set in his imagined utopian nation, "The Land of the Pomegranate".

His satisfaction with this ocular proof is short-lived: Imanishi falls asleep while smoking in bed and Honda's villa burns to the ground.

[citation needed] Richard T. Kelly of The Guardian wrote that "The Temple of Dawn is weighed down by Mishima's frequent résumés of Honda's learning [on "theories of metempsychosis"], suggestive perhaps of an author's struggle to convince himself."

[2] While the princess never existed, the Thai kings and palace buildings mentioned are all real, as are the places Honda visits in India.

The bombing of Pearl Harbor and Japan's declaration of war on the United States prompts Honda's retreat into his study.