Difference between revisions of "Kawabata Yasunari" - New World Encyclopedia

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

Revision as of 21:42, 27 September 2006

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 was 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 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 relatives, he 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 from junior high school in March 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 succeeded in the exam the same year and entered the humanities faculty as an English major. In July 1920 Kawabata gradutated from the high school and began at Tokyo Imperial University the same month.

In addition to fiction 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. Along with the death of all his family while he was young, the war was definitely one of the most important influences on him. Shortly after the war ended, he said that from then on he would only be able to write elegies.

Kawabata 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 Kawabata 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"). 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 Kawabata, Kataoka Teppei, Yokomitsu Riichi and a number of 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 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, influenced by European Cubism, Expressionism, Dada and other modernist styles. The term "Shinkankakuha," which Kawabata and Yokomitsu used to describe their philosophy, has often been mistakenly translated into English as "Neo-Impressionism". 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" 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 received acclaim for "The Dancing Girl of Izu" in 1926, a story which explored the dawning eroticism of young love. Most of his subsequent works explored similar themes.

One of his most famous novels was Snow Country, started in 1934 and first published in installments from 1935 through 1947. 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 north of the mountainous region of 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 (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, on which Kawabata had actually reported 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 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.

As the president of Japanese P.E.N. 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.

Kawabata won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, being the first as a Japanese, with his three novels Snow Country, The Old Capital and Thousand Cranes cited by the committee.


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, English translations 1957, 1996)
  • 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

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