SOURCE: "Kawabata Yasunari," in Dawn to the West, Japanese literature of the Modern Era: Fiction, Vol 1, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984, pp. 786-845.

Keene is an American scholar and critic who has produced a number of translations and studies of Japanese literature. The following excerpt is taken from his discussion of Kawabata in the fiction volume of his acclaimed two-part literary history of contemporary Japanese letters. Here he surveys Kawabata's early short fiction, particularly "The Izu Dancer, "placing it in the context of the author's life and artistic development

Kawabata in traditional dress.

Kawabata's first work was probably "Jūrokusai no Nikki" ("Diary of a Sixteen-Year-Old"). According to the afterword Kawabata wrote in 1925, this work was composed in 1914 and only slightly changed when he published it eleven years later. He described finding the manuscript in an uncle's storehouse, written on the kind of composition paper used by middle-school students...