Yasunari Kawabata Summary

Kawabata Yasunari (1899–1972), Japanese novelist. Born the son of a doctor in Osaka, Japan, Kawabata Yasunari lost both parents, his grandmother with whom he lived, and a sister before he was n... Read more

Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972) was a distinguished Japanese novelist who won the Nobel Prize in literature for exemplifying in his writings the Japanese mind.Yasunari Kawabata was born in Osaka on June... Read more

Fitzsimmons is an American poet, educator, and critic with a special interest in Japanese culture. In the following highly favorable assessment of 'House of the Sleeping Beauties, he perceives ... Read more

In the following review, Smock praises the concision and the highly evocative quality of the pieces in Palm-of-the-Hand Stories. Somewhere in my future is a small, simple apartment, maybe a couple of ... Read more

In the essay below, lebowitz maintains that the compression of detail in the stories in Palm-of-the-Hand Stories is reflective of aspects of both primitivism and sophistication in Japanese culture. If... Read more

In the essay below, Kimball closely scrutinizes the imagery in "House of the Sleeping Beauties, " detecting numerous pairs of opposing or contradictory images in the story. In his Nobel ... Read more

In the excerpt below, Masao examines Kawabata's early experimentation with European avant-garde aesthetics in several short stories. The critic finds "The Izu Dancer, " however, a... Read more

In the essay below, Takeda identifies Western literary influences on numerous Kawabata short stories. Yasunari Kawabata, who died in 1972, was a towering figure in the Japanese literary world. But the... Read more

In the laudatory review below, Seibold admires the polish and precision of the pieces in Palm-of-the-Hand Stories. Born in 1899, the same year as Hemingway and Borges, Yasunari Kawabata was venerated ... Read more

Critical Essay by Hisaaki Yamanouchi [The] early loss of [Kawabata's] parents seems responsible for the unique quality which one perceives in his life and work—a peculiar tension between... Read more

In the following essay, DeVere Brown discusses how Kawabata focused on traditional culture in his major works. Yasunari Kawabata is Japan's only Nobel laureate in literature. The prize, once mo... Read more

In the following essay, Palmer emphasizes the importance of Kawabata's “palm-of-the-hand” short stories to his fictional oeuvre. In 1968, Yasunari Kawabata became the first Japane... Read more