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 11, 1899, into a cultured family, his father being a doctor of medicine. When Kawabata was three, his father died; the next year his mother died, and Kawabata went to live with his grandparents. When he was eight, his grandmother died, and in 1914 his grandfather died. The child was thus constantly confronted with the death of members of his family, and it is thought that this experience left its mark on the writer, who often dwells on the problem of death or loneliness of life. In Diary of a Sixteen-year-old, actually written on the eve of his grandfather's death but published in 1925, Kawabata gives vent to his emotions in a haunting memoir of early sorrow.

After the death of...