Yasunari Kawabata

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Yasunari Kawabata (川端 康成 Kawabata Yasunari, June 14, 1899 – April 16, 1972) was a Japanese novelist whose spare, lyrical and subtly shaded prose won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968. He became the first Japanese to win the award. His works, which have enjoyed broad and lasting appeal, are still widely read internationally.

Biographical details

Kawabata was born in Osaka, and was orphaned when he was two, after which he then lived with his grandparents. He had an older sister who was taken in by an aunt. Kawabata's grandmother died when he was seven (September 1906), his sister, whom he met only once after the death of their parents, when he was ten(July 1909), and his grandfather when he was fifteen (May, 1914). Having lost all close reletives, he moved in with his mother's family (The Kurodas). However, in January of 1916, he moved into a boarding house near the junior high school (comparable to a modern high school) that he had formally commuted to by train. After graduating from junior high school in March of 1917, just before his 18th birthday, he moved to Tokyo, hoping to pass the exams of Dai-ichi Koto-gakko'(Number One High School), which was under the direction of Tokyo Imperial University. He succeded in the exam the same year and entered the humanities faculty as an English major. In July of 1920 Kawabata gradutated from the high school and began at Tokyo Imperial University the same month.

In addition to writing, he was also employed as a reporter, most notably by the Mainichi Shimbun of Osaka and Tokyo. Although he refused to participate in the militaristic fervour accompanying World War II, he was also unimpressed with the political reforms in Japan afterwards. The war was definitely one of the most important influences on him (along with the death of all his family while he was young); he said shortly afterwards that from then on he would only be able to write elegies.

He committed suicide in 1972 by gassing himself. Many theories have been advanced as to his reasons, among them poor health, a possible illicit love affair, or the shock caused by the suicide of his friend Yukio Mishima in 1970. However, unlike Mishima, Kawabata left no note, and since he had not discussed it significantly in his writings, his motives remain unclear.

Artistic career

While still a university student he re-established the Tokyo University literary magazine, "Shin-shichō" , (New Tide of Thought) which had been defunct for more than 4 years. There he published his first short story, "Shokonsai Ikkei"("A scene from a seance") -- a work that has liteary merit even today. During university, he changed faculties to Japanese literature and wrote a graduation thesis entitled, "A short history of Japanese novels". He graduated from university in March, 1924. In October of 1924, he, Kataoka Teppei, Yokomitsu Riichi and a number of 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 Naturalist school, while at the same time it stood in opposition to worker's literature or Socialist/ Communist schools. It was an "art for art's sake" movement, influeced by European Cubism, Experssionism, Dada and other modernist styles. "Shinkankaku-ha" has often been mistakenly translated into English as "Neo-Impressionism." The term "Shinkankakuha," which Kawabata and Yokomitsu used to describe their philosophy, was not meant to be an updated or restored version of Impressionism; their movement focused on offering "new impressions," or, more accurately, "new sensations" in the writing of literature. (Okubo Takaki(2004)Kawabata Yasunari--Utsukushi Nihon no Watashi. Minerva Shobo)

Kawabata started to achieve recognition with a number of short stories shortly after he graduated, and achieved acclaim with "The Dancing Girl of Izu" in 1926, a story which explored the dawning eroticism of young love. Most of his future works explored similar themes.

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, which takes place in a remote hot-spring town somewhere on the west of the Japanese Alps. 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, his success continued with novels such as Thousand Cranes (a story of ill-fated love), The Sound of the Mountain, The House of Sleeping Beauties, Beauty and Sadness, and The Old Capital .

The book which he himself considered his finest work, The Master of Go (1951) is a severe contrast with his other works. It is a semi-fictional recounting of a major Go match in 1938, which he had actually reported on for the Mainichi newspaper chain. It was the last game of the master Shūsai's career, and he lost to his younger challenger, to die a little over a year later. Although it 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.

As the president of Japanese P.E.N. for many years after the war, Kawabata was a driving force behind the translation of Japanese literature into English and other Western languages.

List of selected works

• The Dancing Girl of Izu (伊豆の踊り子 Izu no Odoriko 1926, English translations 1955, 1997)
• Snow Country (雪国 Yukiguni, 1935-1937, 1947)
• The Master of Go (名人 Meijin, 1951-4; English translation 1972)
• Thousand Cranes (千羽鶴 Senbazuru, 1949-52)
• The Sound of the Mountain (山の音 Yama no Oto, 1949-54)
• The Lake (湖(みづうみ) Mizuumi, 1954)
• The House of Sleeping Beauties (眠れる美女, 1961)
• The Old Capital (古都 Koto, 1962; English translation 1987, 2006)
• Palm-of-the-Hand Stories （掌の小説）
• Beauty and Sadness (美しさと哀しみと Utsukushisa to Kanashimi to, 1964)

External links

• http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1968/ Nobel Prize site
• [Yasunari Kawabata] ()
• http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/kawabata.htm Fan site

 

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