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Born into a well-established family inOsaka, Japan,[3] Kawabata was orphaned by the time he was four, after which he lived with his grandparents. He had an older sister who was taken in by an aunt, and whom he met only once thereafter, in July 1909, when he was ten. She died when Kawabata was 11. Kawabata's grandmother died in September 1906, when he was seven, and his grandfather in May 1914, when he was fifteen.
Having lost all close paternal relatives, Kawabata 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 in March 1917, Kawabata moved to Tokyo just before his 18th birthday. He hoped to pass the entrance exams for theFirst Higher School, a university-preparatory institution that sent most of its graduates to theUniversity of Tokyo, the country's most prestigious university. He was admitted in September 1917. Initially finding dormitory life unsatisfying, he took an eight-day trip toIzu in 1918, after which he got on much better with his dormmates. After graduating from the First Higher School, he secured admission to theFaculty of Letters at Tokyo University as he had hoped and matriculated in July 1920, studying English literature. The young Kawabata, by this time, was enamoured of the works of another Asian Nobel laureate,Rabindranath Tagore.[4]
Hatsuyo Itō (1906-1951), to whom Kawabata was briefly engaged in 1921. She was theunrequited love of his life and may have influenced some of his works.
One of Kawabata's painful love episodes was with Hatsuyo Itō (伊藤初代; 1906–1951), whom he met when he was 20 years old. They were engaged to be married in 1921, but only one month later Hatsuyo broke off the engagement for unclear reasons. Kawabata never completely recovered from the blow of losing her. Hatsuyo may have been the inspiration for some of his works, including the novellaThe Dancing Girl of Izu and severalPalm-of-the-Hand Stories. She died following complications from a stroke in 1951, aged 44, but Kawabata was not informed of her death until 1955. An unsent love letter to her was found at his former residence in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, in 2014.[5]
While still a university student, Kawabata re-established the Tokyo University literary magazineShin-shichō (New Tide of Thought), which had been defunct for more than four years. There he published his first short story, "Shokonsai ikkei" ("A View from Yasukuni Festival") in 1921. During university, he changed faculties toJapanese literature and wrote a graduation thesis titled "A short history of Japanese novels". He graduated from university in March 1924, by which time he had already caught the attention ofKikuchi Kan and other noted writers and editors through his submissions to Kikuchi'sliterary magazine, theBungei Shunju.
In October 1924, Kawabata,Riichi Yokomitsu and other young writers started a new literary journalBungei Jidai (The Artistic Age). This journal was a reaction to the entrenched old school of Japanese literature, specifically the Japanese movement descended fromNaturalism, while it also stood in opposition to the "workers'" orproletarian literature movement of the Socialist/Communist schools. It was an "art for art's sake" movement, influenced by EuropeanCubism,Expressionism,Dada, and othermodernist styles. The termShinkankakuha, 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" or "new perceptions" in the writing of literature.[6] An early example from this period is the draft ofHoshi wo nusunda chichi (The Father who stole a Star), an adaption ofFerenc Molnár's playLiliom.[7]
Kawabata with his future wife Hideko (秀子) to his left and her younger sister Kimiko (君子) to his right (1930).Kawabata c. 1932Kawabata at work at his house in Hase, Kamakura (1946)
Kawabata started to achieve recognition for a number of his short stories shortly after he graduated, receiving acclaim for "The Dancing Girl of Izu" in 1926, a story about a melancholy student who, on a walking trip downIzu Peninsula, meets a young dancer, and returns to Tokyo in much improved spirits. The work explores the dawning eroticism of young love but includes shades of melancholy and even bitterness, which offset what might have otherwise been an overly sweet story. Most of his subsequent works explored similar themes.
In the 1920s, Kawabata was living in the plebeian district ofAsakusa, Tokyo. During this period, Kawabata experimented with different styles of writing. InAsakusa kurenaidan (The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa), serialized from 1929 to 1930, he explores the lives of thedemimonde and others on the fringe of society, in a style echoing that of lateEdo period literature. On the other hand, hisSuishō gensō (水晶幻想;Crystal Fantasy) is purestream-of-consciousness writing. He was even involved in writing the script for the experimental filmA Page of Madness.[8]
Kawabata met his wife Hideko (née Matsubayashi) in 1925, and they registered their marriage on 2 December 1931.
In 1933, Kawabata protested publicly against the arrest, torture and death of the young leftist writerTakiji Kobayashi in Tokyo by theTokkō special political police.
Kawabata relocated from Asakusa toKamakura,Kanagawa Prefecture, in 1934 and, although he initially enjoyed a very active social life among the many other writers and literary people residing in that city during the war years and immediately thereafter, in his later years he became very reclusive.
One of his most famous novels wasSnow Country, started in 1934 and first published in installments from 1935 through 1937.Snow Country is a stark tale of a love affair between a Tokyo dilettante and a provincialgeisha, which takes place in a remote hot-spring town somewhere in the mountainous regions of northern Japan. It established Kawabata as one of Japan's foremost authors and became an instant classic, described byEdward G. Seidensticker as "perhaps Kawabata's masterpiece".[9]
Thousand Cranes (serialized 1949-1951) is centered on theJapanese tea ceremony and hopeless love. The protagonist is attracted to the mistress of his dead father and, after her death, to her daughter, who flees from him. The tea ceremony provides a beautiful background for ugly human affairs, but Kawabata's intent is rather to explore feelings about death. The tea ceremony utensils are permanent and forever, whereas people are frail and fleeting. These themes of impossible love and impending death are again explored inThe Sound of the Mountain (serialized 1949-1954), set in Kawabata's adopted home of Kamakura. The protagonist, an aging man, has become disappointed with his children and no longer feels strong passion for his wife. He is strongly attracted to someone forbidden – his daughter-in-law – and his thoughts for her are interspersed with memories of another forbidden love, for his dead sister-in-law.
The book that Kawabata himself considered his finest work,[10]The Master of Go (1951), contrasts sharply with his other works. It is a semi-fictional recounting of a majorGo match in 1938, on which he had actually reported for theMainichi newspaper chain. It was the last game of masterShūsai's career and he lost to his younger challenger,Minoru Kitani, only 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.
Through many of Kawabata's works the sense of distance in his life is represented. He often gives the impression that his characters have built up a wall around them that moves them into isolation. In a 1934 published work Kawabata wrote: "I feel as though I have never held a woman's hand in a romantic sense [...] Am I a happy man deserving of pity?”.[citation needed] Indeed, this does not have to be taken literally, but it does show the type of emotional insecurity that Kawabata felt, especially experiencing two painful love affairs at a young age.
Kawabata left many of his stories apparently unfinished, sometimes to the annoyance of readers and reviewers, but this goes hand to hand with his aesthetics of art for art's sake, leaving outside any sentimentalism, or morality, that an ending would give to any book. This was done intentionally, as Kawabata felt that vignettes of incidents along the way were far more important than conclusions. He equated his form of writing with the traditional poetry of Japan, thehaiku.
In addition to fictional writing, Kawabata also worked as a reporter, most notably for theMainichi Shimbun. Although he refused to participate in the militaristic fervor that accompaniedWorld War II, he also demonstrated little interest in postwar political reforms. Along with the death of all his family members while he was young, Kawabata suggested that the war was one of the greatest influences on his work, stating he would be able to write only elegies in postwar Japan. Still, many commentators detect little thematic change between Kawabata's prewar and postwar writings.
Kawabata was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature on 16 October 1968, the first Japanese person to receive such a distinction.[13] In awarding the prize "for his narrative mastery, which with great sensibility expresses the essence of the Japanese mind", the Nobel Committee cited three of his novels,Snow Country,Thousand Cranes, andThe Old Capital.[14]
Kawabata's Nobel Lecture was titled "Japan, The Beautiful and Myself" (美しい日本の私―その序説).Zen Buddhism was a key focal point of the speech; much was devoted to practitioners and the general practices of Zen Buddhism and how it differed from other types of Buddhism. He presented a severe picture of Zen Buddhism, where disciples can enter salvation only through their efforts, where they are isolated for several hours at a time, and how from this isolation there can come beauty. He noted that Zen practices focus on simplicity and it is this simplicity that proves to be the beauty. "The heart of the ink painting is in space, abbreviation, what is left undrawn." From painting he moved on to talk aboutikebana andbonsai as art forms that emphasize the elegance and beauty that arises from the simplicity. "TheJapanese garden, too, of course symbolizes the vastness of nature."[15]
In addition to the numerous mentions of Zen and nature, one topic that was briefly mentioned in Kawabata's lecture was that of suicide. Kawabata reminisced of other famous Japanese authors who committed suicide, in particularRyūnosuke Akutagawa. He contradicted the custom of suicide as being a form of enlightenment, mentioning the priestIkkyū, who also thought of suicide twice. He quoted Ikkyū, "Among those who give thoughts to things, is there one who does not think of suicide?"[16] There was much speculation about this quote being a clue to Kawabata's suicide in 1972, a year and a half afterMishima had committed suicide.[citation needed]
Kawabata apparently committed suicide in 1972 bygassing himself, but several close associates and friends, including his widow, consider his death to have been accidental. One thesis, as advanced byDonald Richie, was that he mistakenly unplugged the gas tap while preparing a bath. Many theories have been advanced as to his potential reasons for killing himself, among them poor health (the discovery he hadParkinson's disease), a possible illicit love affair, or the shock caused by the suicide of his friendYukio Mishima in 1970.[17] Unlike Mishima, Kawabata left no note, and since (again unlike Mishima) he had not discussed significantly in his writings the topic of taking his own life, his motives remain unclear. However, his Japanese biographer,Takeo Okuno, has related how he hadnightmares about Mishima for two or three hundred nights in a row, and was incessantly haunted by thespecter of Mishima. In a persistently depressed state of mind, he would tell friends during his last years that sometimes, when on a journey, he hoped his plane would crash.[citation needed]
^According to his family register, he was born on 14 June 1899.
^The original title is romanised either asTenohira no shōsetsu orTanagokoro no shōsetsu. Kawabata preferred the readingtanagokoro for the 掌 character.[19]
^An exemplary collection of 70 translated stories of the over 140Palm of the Hand Stories was published in 1988. Single story translations had appeared before and after.[20]
^Gerow, Aaron (2008).A Page of Madness: Cinema and Modernity in 1920s Japan. Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan.ISBN978-1-929280-51-3.
^Kawabata, Yasunari (26 February 2013).Snow Country. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. pp. x.ISBN978-0-307-83362-4.Snow Country is perhaps Kawabata's masterpiece.
^See the first postscript of his letter toHarold Strauss of 3 April 1972, reprinted in川端康成全集 補巻二 (Kawabata Yasunari zenshū hokan ni),Shinchōsha, Tōkyō 1984, p. 372.
