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was a Japanese
novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others aspire ...
and
short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest ...
writer whose spare, lyrical, subtly shaded prose works won him the
Nobel Prize in Literature ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , caption = , awarded_for = Outstanding contributions in literature , presenter = Swedish Academy , holder = Annie Ernaux (2022) , location = Stockholm, Sweden , year = 1901 , ...
in 1968, the first Japanese author to receive the award. His works have enjoyed broad international appeal and are still widely read.


Early life

Born into a well-established family in
Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of ...
, Japan, Kawabata was orphaned by the time he was four, after which he lived with his grandparents. He had an older sister who was taken in by an aunt, and whom he met only once thereafter, in July 1909, when he was ten. She died when Kawabata was 11. Kawabata's grandmother died in September 1906, when he was seven, and his grandfather in May 1914, when he was fifteen. Having lost all close paternal relatives, Kawabata moved in with his mother's family, the Kurodas. However, in January 1916, he moved into a boarding house near the junior high school (comparable to a modern high school) to which he had formerly commuted by train. After graduating in March 1917, Kawabata moved to
Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.46 ...
just before his 18th birthday. He hoped to pass the exams for ''Dai-ichi Kōtō-gakkō'' (First Upper School), which was under the direction of the
Tokyo Imperial University , abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project by ...
. He succeeded in the exam the same year and entered the Humanities Faculty as an English major in July 1920. The young Kawabata, by this time, was enamoured of the works of another Asian Nobel laureate,
Rabindranath Tagore Rabindranath Tagore (; bn, রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter. He resh ...
. One of Kawabata's painful love episodes was with Hatsuyo Ito (, 1906–1951), whom he met when he was 20 years old. An unsent love letter to her was found at his former residence in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, in 2014. According to Kaori Kawabata, Kawabata's son-in-law, an unpublished entry in the author's diary mentions that Hatsuyo was raped by a monk at the temple she was staying at, which led her to break off their engagement. While still a university student, Kawabata re-established the Tokyo University literary magazine ''Shin-shichō'' (''New Tide of Thought''), which had been defunct for more than four years. There he published his first short story, "Shokonsai ikkei" ("A View from Yasukuni Festival") in 1921. During university, he changed faculties to
Japanese literature Japanese literature throughout most of its history has been influenced by cultural contact with neighboring Asian literatures, most notably China and its literature. Early texts were often written in pure Classical Chinese or , a Chinese-Japanes ...
and wrote a graduation thesis titled "A short history of Japanese novels". He graduated from university in March 1924, by which time he had already caught the attention of
Kikuchi Kan , also known as Kan Kikuchi (which uses the same kanji as his real name), was a Japanese author. He established the publishing company Bungeishunjū, the monthly magazine of the same name, the Japan Writer's Association and both the Akutagawa ...
and other noted writers and editors through his submissions to Kikuchi's
literary magazine A literary magazine is a periodical devoted to literature in a broad sense. Literary magazines usually publish short stories, poetry, and essays, along with literary criticism, book reviews, biographical profiles of authors, interviews and lett ...
, the ''Bungei Shunju''.


New writing movement

In October 1924, Kawabata,
Riichi Yokomitsu was an experimental, modernist Japanese writer. Yokomitsu began publishing in dōjinshi such as ''Machi'' ("Street") and ''Tō'' ("Tower") after entering Waseda University , mottoeng = Independence of scholarship , established ...
and other young writers started a new literary journal ''Bungei Jidai'' (''The Artistic Age''). This journal was a reaction to the entrenched old school of Japanese literature, specifically the Japanese movement descended from Naturalism, while it also stood in opposition to the "workers'" or
proletarian literature Proletarian literature refers here to the literature created by left-wing writers mainly for the class-conscious proletariat. Though the '' Encyclopædia Britannica'' states that because it "is essentially an intended device of revolution", it is ...
movement of the Socialist/Communist schools. It was an "
art for art's sake Art for art's sake—the usual English rendering of ''l'art pour l'art'' (), a French slogan from the latter part of the 19th century—is a phrase that expresses the philosophy that the intrinsic value of art, and the only 'true' art, is divorce ...
" movement, influenced by European
Cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...
,
Expressionism Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it ra ...
,
Dada Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 1920 Dada flourished in Pari ...
, and other
modernist Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...
styles. The term '' Shinkankakuha'', which Kawabata and Yokomitsu used to describe their philosophy, has often been mistakenly translated into English as "Neo-
Impressionism Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passa ...
". However, ''Shinkankakuha'' was not meant to be an updated or restored version of Impressionism; it focused on offering "new impressions" or, more accurately, "new sensations" or "new perceptions" in the writing of literature. An early example from this period is the draft of ''Hoshi wo nusunda chichi'' (The Father who stole a Star), an adaption of
Ferenc Molnár Ferenc Molnár ( , ; born Ferenc Neumann; 12 January 18781 April 1952), often anglicized as Franz Molnar, was a Hungarian-born author, stage-director, dramatist, and poet, widely regarded as Hungary’s most celebrated and controversial play ...
's play ''
Liliom ''Liliom'' is a 1909 play by the Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnár. It was well known in its own right during the early to mid-20th century, but is best known today as the basis for the Rodgers and Hammerstein 1945 musical ''Carousel''. P ...
''.


Career

Kawabata started to achieve recognition for a number of his short stories shortly after he graduated, receiving acclaim for "
The Dancing Girl of Izu is a novel by Japanese writer and Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata first published in 1926. Plot The narrator, a twenty-year-old student from Tokyo, travels the Izu Peninsula during the last days of the summer holidays, a journey which he ...
" in 1926, a story about a melancholy student who, on a walking trip down
Izu Peninsula The is a large mountainous peninsula with a deeply indented coastline to the west of Tokyo on the Pacific coast of the island of Honshu, Japan. Formerly known as Izu Province, Izu peninsula is now a part of Shizuoka Prefecture. The penins ...
, meets a young dancer, and returns to Tokyo in much improved spirits. The work explores the dawning eroticism of young love but includes shades of melancholy and even bitterness, which offset what might have otherwise been an overly sweet story. Most of his subsequent works explored similar themes. In the 1920s, Kawabata was living in the plebeian district of
Asakusa is a district in Taitō, Tokyo, Japan. It is known as the location of the Sensō-ji, a Buddhist temple dedicated to the bodhisattva Kannon. There are several other temples in Asakusa, as well as various festivals, such as the . History The ...
, Tokyo. During this period, Kawabata experimented with different styles of writing. In '' Asakusa kurenaidan'' (''The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa''), serialized from 1929 to 1930, he explores the lives of the
demimonde is French for "half-world". The term derives from a play called , by Alexandre Dumas , published in 1855. The play dealt with the way that prostitution at that time threatened the institution of marriage. The was the world occupied by elite me ...
and others on the fringe of society, in a style echoing that of late
Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was character ...
literature. On the other hand, his ''Suisho genso'' (''Crystal Fantasy'') is pure stream-of-consciousness writing. He was even involved in writing the script for the experimental film ''
A Page of Madness is a 1926 Japanese silent film directed by Teinosuke Kinugasa. Lost for 45 years until it was rediscovered by Kinugasa in his storehouse in 1971, the film is the product of an avant-garde group of artists in Japan known as the Shinkankakuha ( ...
''. In 1933, Kawabata protested publicly against the arrest, torture and death of the young leftist writer
Takiji Kobayashi was a Japanese writer of proletarian literature. He is best known for his short novel '' Kanikōsen'', or ''Crab Cannery Ship'', published in 1929. It tells the story of the hard life of cannery workers, fishermen and seamen on board a cannery ...
in Tokyo by the Tokkō special political police. Kawabata relocated from Asakusa to
Kamakura is a city in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. Kamakura has an estimated population of 172,929 (1 September 2020) and a population density of 4,359 persons per km² over the total area of . Kamakura was designated as a city on 3 November 1939. Kamak ...
,
Kanagawa Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Kanagawa Prefecture is the second-most populous prefecture of Japan at 9,221,129 (1 April 2022) and third-densest at . Its geographic area of makes it fifth-smallest. Kanag ...
, in 1934 and, although he initially enjoyed a very active social life among the many other writers and literary people residing in that city during the war years and immediately thereafter, in his later years he became very reclusive. One of his most famous novels was '' Snow Country'', started in 1934 and first published in installments from 1935 through 1937. ''Snow Country'' is a stark tale of a love affair between a Tokyo dilettante and a provincial
geisha {{Culture of Japan, Traditions, Geisha {{nihongo, Geisha, 芸者 ({{IPAc-en, ˈ, ɡ, eɪ, ʃ, ə; {{IPA-ja, ɡeːɕa, lang), also known as {{nihongo, , 芸子, geiko (in Kyoto and Kanazawa) or {{nihongo, , 芸妓, geigi, are a class of female J ...
, which takes place in a remote hot-spring town somewhere in the mountainous regions of northern Japan. It established Kawabata as one of Japan's foremost authors and became an instant classic, described by Edward G. Seidensticker as "perhaps Kawabata's masterpiece". After the end of World War II, Kawabata's success continued with novels such as ''
Thousand Cranes is a novel by Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata which first appeared in serialised form between 1949 and 1951 and was published as a book in 1952. Plot The novel consists of five chapters, titled "Thousand Cranes", "The Grove in the Evening Sun" ...
'' (a story of ill-fated love), ''
The Sound of the Mountain is a novel by Japanese writer Yasunari Kawabata, serialized between 1949 and 1954, and first published as a standalone book in 1954 by Chikuma Shobō, Tokyo. Plot Shingo Ogata, a 62-year-old businessman living in Kamakura and working in Toky ...
'', '' The House of the Sleeping Beauties'', '' Beauty and Sadness'', and ''
The Old Capital is a novel by Japanese writer Yasunari Kawabata first published in 1962. It was one of three novels cited by the Nobel Committee in their decision to award Kawabata the 1968 Nobel Prize in Literature. ''The Old Capital'' was first translated ...
''. His two most important post-war works are ''Thousand Cranes'' (serialized 1949–1951), and ''The Sound of the Mountain'' (serialized 1949–1954). ''Thousand Cranes'' is centered on the
Japanese tea ceremony The Japanese tea ceremony (known as or ) is a Japanese cultural activity involving the ceremonial preparation and presentation of , powdered green tea, the procedure of which is called . While in the West it is known as "tea ceremony", it is se ...
and hopeless love. The protagonist is attracted to the mistress of his dead father and, after her death, to her daughter, who flees from him. The tea ceremony provides a beautiful background for ugly human affairs, but Kawabata's intent is rather to explore feelings about death. The tea ceremony utensils are permanent and forever, whereas people are frail and fleeting. These themes of implicit incest, impossible love and impending death are again explored in ''The Sound of the Mountain'', set in Kawabata's adopted home of Kamakura. The protagonist, an aging man, has become disappointed with his children and no longer feels strong passion for his wife. He is strongly attracted to someone forbidden – his daughter-in-law – and his thoughts for her are interspersed with memories of another forbidden love, for his dead sister-in-law. The book that Kawabata himself considered his finest work, '' The Master of Go'' (1951), contrasts sharply with his other works. It is a semi-fictional recounting of a major Go match in 1938, on which he had actually reported for the ''Mainichi'' newspaper chain. It was the last game of master Shūsai's career and he lost to his younger challenger,
Minoru Kitani was one of the most celebrated professional Go players and teachers of the game of Go in the twentieth century in Japan. Biography He earned the nickname "the Prodigy" after winning a knockout tournament. He defeated eight opponents from the ...
, only to die a little over a year later. Although the novel is moving on the surface as a retelling of a climactic struggle, some readers consider it a symbolic parallel to the defeat of Japan in World War II. Through many of Kawabata's works the sense of distance in his life is represented. He often gives the impression that his characters have built up a wall around them that moves them into isolation. In a 1934 published work Kawabata wrote: "I feel as though I have never held a woman's hand in a romantic sense ..Am I a happy man deserving of pity?”. Indeed, this does not have to be taken literally, but it does show the type of emotional insecurity that Kawabata felt, especially experiencing two painful love affairs at a young age. Kawabata left many of his stories apparently unfinished, sometimes to the annoyance of readers and reviewers, but this goes hand to hand with his aesthetics of art for art's sake, leaving outside any sentimentalism, or morality, that an ending would give to any book. This was done intentionally, as Kawabata felt that vignettes of incidents along the way were far more important than conclusions. He equated his form of writing with the traditional poetry of Japan, the
haiku is a type of short form poetry originally from Japan. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases that contain a '' kireji'', or "cutting word", 17 '' on'' (phonetic units similar to syllables) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern, and a '' kigo'', or ...
. In addition to fictional writing, Kawabata also worked as a reporter, most notably for the ''
Mainichi Shimbun The is one of the major newspapers in Japan, published by In addition to the ''Mainichi Shimbun'', which is printed twice a day in several local editions, Mainichi also operates an English language news website called ''The Mainichi'' (prev ...
''. Although he refused to participate in the militaristic fervor that accompanied
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
, he also demonstrated little interest in postwar political reforms. Along with the death of all his family members while he was young, Kawabata suggested that the war was one of the greatest influences on his work, stating he would be able to write only elegies in postwar Japan. Still, many commentators detect little thematic change between Kawabata's prewar and postwar writings.


Awards

As the president of Japanese
P.E.N. PEN International (known as International PEN until 2010) is a worldwide association of writers, founded in London in 1921 to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere. The association has autonomous Internation ...
for many years after the war (1948–1965), Kawabata was a driving force behind the translation of Japanese literature into English and other Western languages. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters of France in 1960, and awarded Japan's
Order of Culture The is a Japanese order, established on February 11, 1937. The order has one class only, and may be awarded to men and women for contributions to Japan's art, literature, science, technology, or anything related to culture in general; recipient ...
the following year.


Nobel Prize

Kawabata was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature on 16 October 1968, the first Japanese person to receive such a distinction. In awarding the prize "for his narrative mastery, which with great sensibility expresses the essence of the Japanese mind", the Nobel Committee cited three of his novels, ''Snow Country'', ''Thousand Cranes'', and ''The Old Capital''. Kawabata's Nobel Lecture was titled "Japan, The Beautiful and Myself" ().
Zen Buddhism Zen ( zh, t=禪, p=Chán; ja, text= 禅, translit=zen; ko, text=선, translit=Seon; vi, text=Thiền) is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty, known as the Chan School (''Chánzong'' 禪宗), an ...
was a key focal point of the speech; much was devoted to practitioners and the general practices of Zen Buddhism and how it differed from other types of Buddhism. He presented a severe picture of Zen Buddhism, where disciples can enter salvation only through their efforts, where they are isolated for several hours at a time, and how from this isolation there can come beauty. He noted that Zen practices focus on simplicity and it is this simplicity that proves to be the beauty. "The heart of the ink painting is in space, abbreviation, what is left undrawn." From painting he moved on to talk about
ikebana is the Japanese art of flower arrangement. It is also known as . The tradition dates back to Heian period, when floral offerings were made at altars. Later, flower arrangements were instead used to adorn the (alcove) of a traditional Japan ...
and
bonsai Bonsai ( ja, 盆栽, , tray planting, ) is the Japanese art of growing and training miniature trees in pots, developed from the traditional Chinese art form of '' penjing''. Unlike ''penjing'', which utilizes traditional techniques to produc ...
as art forms that emphasize the elegance and beauty that arises from the simplicity. "The
Japanese garden are traditional gardens whose designs are accompanied by Japanese aesthetics and philosophical ideas, avoid artificial ornamentation, and highlight the natural landscape. Plants and worn, aged materials are generally used by Japanese garden des ...
, too, of course symbolizes the vastness of nature." In addition to the numerous mentions of Zen and nature, one topic that was briefly mentioned in Kawabata's lecture was that of suicide. Kawabata reminisced of other famous Japanese authors who committed suicide, in particular Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. He contradicted the custom of suicide as being a form of enlightenment, mentioning the priest Ikkyū, who also thought of suicide twice. He quoted Ikkyū, "Among those who give thoughts to things, is there one who does not think of suicide?" There was much speculation about this quote being a clue to Kawabata's suicide in 1972, a year and a half after Mishima had committed suicide.


Death

Kawabata apparently committed suicide in 1972 by gassing himself, but a number of close associates and friends, including his widow, consider his death to have been accidental. One thesis, as advanced by
Donald Richie Donald Richie (17 April 1924 – 19 February 2013) was an American-born author who wrote about the Japanese people, the culture of Japan, and especially Japanese cinema. Although he considered himself primarily a film historian, Richie also di ...
, was that he mistakenly unplugged the gas tap while preparing a bath. Many theories have been advanced as to his potential reasons for killing himself, among them poor health (the discovery that he had
Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that mainly affects the motor system. The symptoms usually emerge slowly, and as the disease worsens, non-motor symptoms beco ...
), a possible illicit love affair, or the shock caused by the suicide of his friend
Yukio Mishima , born , was a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor, model, Shintoist, nationalist, and founder of the , an unarmed civilian militia. Mishima is considered one of the most important Japanese authors of the 20th century. He was considered fo ...
in 1970. Unlike Mishima, Kawabata left no note, and since (again unlike Mishima) he had not discussed significantly in his writings the topic of taking his own life, his motives remain unclear. However, his Japanese biographer, Takeo Okuno, has related how he had
nightmares A nightmare, also known as a bad dream, Retrieved 11 July 2016. is an unpleasant dream that can cause a strong emotional response from the mind, typically fear but also despair, anxiety or great sadness. The dream may contain situations of d ...
about Mishima for two or three hundred nights in a row, and was incessantly haunted by the specter of Mishima. In a persistently depressed state of mind, he would tell friends during his last years that sometimes, when on a journey, he hoped his plane would crash.


Selected works


See also

* List of Japanese Nobel laureates *
List of Nobel laureates affiliated with the University of Tokyo This list of Nobel laureates by university affiliation shows the university affiliations of individual winners of the Nobel Prize since 1901 and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences since 1969. The affiliations are those at the time of th ...
* '' The Moon in the Water: Understanding Tanizaki, Kawabata, and Mishima''


Notes


References


Further reading

* Keene, Donald (1984). ''Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature of the Modern Era; Vol. 1: Fiction'', "Kawabata Yasunari" pp. 786–845 * Starrs, Roy (1998) ''Soundings in Time: The Fictive Art of Kawabata Yasunari'', University of Hawai'i Press/RoutledgeCurzon


External links

* * * including the Nobel Lecture, 12 December 1968 ''Japan, the Beautiful and Myself'' *
Literary Figures of Kamakura


* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kawabata, Yasunari 1899 births 1972 suicides Japanese male short story writers Japanese Nobel laureates Japanese Zen Buddhists Nobel laureates in Literature Writers from Osaka Go (game) writers People from Zushi, Kanagawa Suicides by gas University of Tokyo alumni Magic realism writers Suicides in Japan Recipients of the Order of Culture People from Ibaraki, Osaka Japanese erotica writers 20th-century Japanese novelists 20th-century Japanese short story writers 1972 deaths