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 nine, and then nursed his terminally ill grandfather. Determined early on to become a writer, Kawabata enrolled in the Japanese literature course at Tokyo Imperial University, where he came to the attention of well-known novelist Kikuchi Kan (1888–1948), who became his mentor. In the 1920s he helped to found the Shinkankaku-ha, or Neo-Sensationalist school, which went against the prevailing Realist trend in Japanese literature at that time and is characterized by unusual visual imagery and synesthesia.
Among Kawabata's most prominent works are "The Izu Dancer" ("Izu no odokiko," 1926), Yukiguni (Snow Country, 1948), Senbazuru (Thousand Cranes, 1951), Meijin (The Master of Go, 1954), and Yama no oto (The Sound of the Mountain, 1954). Kawabata constantly reworked even published pieces, later adding passages, and often leaving them incomplete. Characteristic of his works is a delicate balance between the human characters and the lyrically described natural background into which they seem constantly on the verge of disappearing. There is little in the way of plot or structure, but instead the works move from image to image, like the art of linked verse. Throughout his works is a preoccupation with death and loneliness and what he saw as the close relationship between beauty and sadness.
In 1968, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1972, Kawabata was found dead in a gas-filled apartment near his Kamakura home. It was generally assumed that he took his own life, although some close associates held it was an accident.
Further Reading
Keene, Donald. (1984) Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature of the Modern Era, Fiction. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Petersen, Gwen Boardman. (1979) The Moon in the Water: Tanizaki, Kawabata and Mishima. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press.
Ueda, Makoto. (1976) Modern Japanese Writers and the Nature of Literature. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
This is the complete article, containing 325 words
(approx. 1 page at 300 words per page).
