Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972)

an odd collection of translated short stories from Tuttle, with one written by Yasunari Kawabata followed by three from Yasushi Inoue. Kawabata is one of my favourite writers ever; his delicate and unstated social transactions between parties speaks very little of the emotions governing the principals, but dwells on every gesture, every hesitation, every observation until the reader becomes a third party to every transaction, and the meaning is contained in what is never said. add this to show more the Japanese tendency in such stories, describing an old Japan hardly aware of yet colliding with the new before and after 1945, never to let the authorial voice in any way summarize or interpret the relationships, and every story becomes a painting of spare figures in a naturalistic world, a momentary breeze rippling a pond. allusive, evocative, burrowing into the ma concept of time and space that in these stories cannot quite be caught in the moment of meeting.

and this way of working at the world can come as a shock to the western mind, which wants the author to supply more hints about both what happened and what it meant. very subtle, this stuff, and plainly producing art. but also it describes context and complexity in very different formal terms - as a series of japanese tea ceremonies, say, deconstructed - that hardly seem to register on the page, yet become indelible in the mind's eye long after the story has been set aside. here the written story displays as art, composed with a calligraphic brush on a ricepaper page. which in general terms conveys beauty, runs an metaphysical expense account, and radiates solitude. but the meaning has been left for the reader to decipher.

Inoue, whom i had not read before, approaches his similar subjects a little differently, owing apparently to his own cast of mind. somewhat younger than Kawabata, with the same poetic pen but with more of a detail-oriented temperament, he tells stories that seem at first glance to be more matter-of-fact, but are not necessarily about what they seem to be about. consider his lead subject in "The Counterfeiter", a man who seems mere background detail in a story about an artist, until the biographer narrator seizes on him while trying to straighten out the detail of the artist's life for a biographical intro to his work. as he proceeds, there are any number of facts to find, yet they can hardly all be crammed into one tidy chronological narrative. he is compelled to become a detective. the timeline originally seems straightforward, but in the field he finds it difficult to straighten out the kink. how will he resolve these difficulties in order to continue? and do we as readers come to the same private conclusions about what the story means? the artist may not be the artist. there are questions of authenticity. yet neither the poet-writer nor the narrator really live in a world which sets out to solve such mysteries, so instead it's the nature of the encounters between the two principals that matters and yet cannot be altogether authenticated. none of this is ever stated, but between the straightforward account of the search and the unknowable truth behind it, there is a gap, creating a texture to the work that is simple yet very dense. very like, perhaps, what an artist does with pigment.

and so every story is painted onto a ricepaper scroll, rolled up by the writer and then unrolled by the reader. but beware, there is no gloss available for all the beyond that is buried on the page. and with both authors, the stage, every meeting, is set in the natural world, which holds a lot of the emotion that is not otherwise expressed. welcome to the ground of the japanese school of painting, literature, philosophy. there is a setting (here: mountains), time passes (in both directions), there are two people, there is a moment. but do they ever really meet? profound changes can occur if they do, but the tableau itself does not record much movement. every encounter is all built from allusion, down to the tiniest detail. yet bells are ringing somewhere in that empty sky. show less

The simplicity and suggestiveness of Yasunari Kawabata’s writing is great at invoking landscapes, sights and sounds. The descriptions of nature are beautiful. You want to read slowly, being aware of every word. It’s almost hypnotizing.

The world of “Snow Country” is claustrophobic and heartbreaking, the relationships so fraught and unreal. There are moments of joy here and there, but they are just a contrast to the melancholy.

The beautiful writing is quite wasted on Shimamura, who is show more a misogynistic pretentious asshole. I did like how the author got into his head - it was very skillfully done. And then there is Komako, who has such talents and riches in her soul, and does not seem to be aware of it. The only reason why she is in love with Shimamura (or had convinced herself that she is, it’s not clear) seems to be that there is no one else.

Reading this book has been like reading a very long haiku. show less

Yasunari Kawabata's early life was marked by loss. He was born in 1899 and orphaned as a toddler. He was taken in by his grandparents, but his grandmother died when he was seven and his grandfather when he was fifteen. His only sister died when he was ten. These early losses were compounded by rejection by his first love after she was raped by a monk. Kawabata became well-respected for his short stories while still in college and with other young writers started a literary movement called show more "Shinkankakuha," with the meaning of "new impressions or sensations." [Snow Country] was written in installments between 1934 and 1937 and is considered one of his best works. In 1968 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first Japanese person to do so. Four years later, he died by gassing, probably suicide, in the wake of his friend and fellow writer Mishima's own suicide.

Snow Country refers to the area west of the central mountains where there is heavy snowfall, in excess of fifteen feet at times. The area is also known for it's hot springs and hot spring geishas. In his informative introduction, the translator, Seidensticker, writes that at the time men would travel to the snow country to ski or see the leaves or cherry blossoms, but without their wives and families. The hot spring geishas were provincial and little better than prostitutes, as opposed to their urban counterparts. In this short novel, the emotionally stunted dilettante, Shimamura, seduces a young girl without family, then returns two more times over the course of three years. The girl, Komako, is initially described as clean and pure, but inevitably becomes a geisha and begins to decay. Unable to love, Shimamura, can only admire women then move on, both literally and figuratively. Komako, meanwhile, is rooted to the place by her obligations and burdens.

Shimamura is not devoid of self-awareness and the descriptions of him are both beautiful and ugly. He is wealthy enough not to need to work, but amuses himself by publishing articles about western ballet, despite never having seen one himself.

He pampered himself with the somewhat whimsical pleasure of sneering at himself through his work, and it may well have been from such a pleasure that his sad little dream world sprang. Off on a trip, he saw no need to hurry himself.

He spent much of his time watching insects in their death agonies.

The moths that litter his room on his last visit are symbolic of the decay that surrounds him and his own degenerate state.

As he picked up a dead insect to throw it out, he sometimes thought for an instant of the children he had left in Tokyo.

Yet he is also moved by their dead beauty and loneliness.

Although short, this novel needs reflective reading. Much like poetry, it's the images that drive the story forward, not necessarily the plot. On the train, Shimamura spends hours looking at the reflections created by the light from inside the carriage on the window. Although the nature outside is still visible, another surreal world is superimposed, and creates the sort of hazy reality that appeals to him. He falls in love with a woman's face he can barely make out.

Another similarity with poetry, particularly haiku, is Kawabata's use of opposing images in juxtaposition to reflect beauty. For instance,

Black though the mountains were, they seemed at that moment brilliant with the color of snow.

The brightness of the snow was more intense, it seemed to be burning icily.

Black but brilliant with color and snow burning icily are but two of the many such descriptions that I savored.

Quiet, understated, gem-like, all words I could use to describe Kawabata's writing. I have a collection of his short stories, [Palm-of-the-Hand Stories], and I look forward to more of the same. show less

Kawabata's Adolescent is a small collection of autobiographical writings, the longest dealing with a schoolboy affair of the heart with a fellow student. Orphaned as a small child and raised by grandparents, he seems to have been of a melancholy, even depressive disposition. (The nature of his death has been questioned, but most evidence points to it being a suicide.) In these writings he repeatedly expresses sadness and self-pity, imagining he's talking to his dead parents--this loss was show more clearly a wound never healed. The story of his schooldays, when he fell in love with a beautiful younger boy, Kojima, also never rises into a happier register, although Kojima apparently hero-worshipped him and the two boys spent years in loving, pleasant, sometimes even physically rewarding friendship. Curiously, while Kojima was the one decidedly religious, belonging to some odd minor cult, it was Kawabata who at least occasionally agonised over their "sinful" relationship. And, of course, felt depressed about it.

I had no idea previously that Kawabata lived through a what he himself calls "my homosexual love". No idea either how he saw or identified himself; I only found mentions of this one adolescent relationship. Nevertheless, stories like these exemplify exactly the complexity, ambivalence and diversity of human experience, within an individual life as much as in a collective. show less