Yasunari Kawabata(1899 — 1972)
Yasunari Kawabata
Japon
6 min read
Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972) was a Japanese writer, the first author from his country to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1968. His work, imbued with melancholy and traditional Japanese aesthetics, explores fleeting beauty, solitude, and the passage of time.
Frequently asked questions
Key Facts
- Born in Osaka in 1899, orphaned in early childhood, which deeply shaped his work
- Published “Snow Country” (Yukiguni), one of his masterpieces, beginning in 1935
- Received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968, the first Japanese person to be awarded this distinction
- Delivered the lecture “Japan, the Beautiful, and Myself” upon accepting the Nobel Prize
- Died in 1972 in Zushi, likely by suicide
Works & Achievements
The short story that made Kawabata's name: a lonely student follows a troupe of travelling performers and falls for a young dancer. A masterpiece of delicacy and restraint.
Kawabata's most famous novel, about the impossible love between a Tokyo aesthete and a provincial geisha. A work of icy beauty, long and repeatedly reworked.
A novel woven around the tea ceremony, where antique bowls carry the weight of passions and of the dead. A meditation on inheritance and desire.
Portrait of an old man confronting decline, family and death in post-war Japan. Regarded by many as the summit of his fiction.
A narrative inspired by a real game of go, pitting an aging master against a young champion. An allegory for the end of a traditional Japan.
A novel about twin sisters separated in the old capital, unfolding across the seasons and the traditional festivals. A tribute to the beauty of Kyoto.
A lecture delivered in Stockholm, in which Kawabata introduces the West to the Zen aesthetic and classical poetry of his country. A text that became a cultural manifesto.
Anecdotes
Orphaned very young, Kawabata lost his father at age two, his mother at three, then his grandmother and his sister. Raised by his blind and ailing grandfather, at fifteen he kept watch alone over the dying old man and drew from it a moving account, the “Diary of My Sixteenth Year.” This childhood solitude would feed his entire body of work, haunted by loss and melancholy.
In 1968, Kawabata became the first Japanese writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. For his Stockholm lecture, titled “Japan, the Beautiful and Myself,” he chose to appear in a kimono and to present to the West the poems of Zen monks and his country's traditional aesthetics, rather than aligning himself with European literary fashions.
Kawabata was the mentor of the young writer Yukio Mishima, whose talent he championed from his earliest days. When Mishima committed suicide by seppuku in 1970 after an attempted coup, a devastated Kawabata went to the scene. Many saw in this grief a sign foreshadowing his own end.
To write “Snow Country,” Kawabata stayed for several winters at a hot-spring inn in Echigo-Yuzawa, in the snowy mountains of Niigata. He observed at length the life of the hot springs and the provincial geishas, and took nearly twelve years (1935-1947) to perfect this short novel, which he reworked endlessly.
On 16 April 1972, Kawabata died in his studio in Zushi, asphyxiated by gas, leaving no note. His death, at age 72, is generally presented as a suicide, but some of those close to him and some scholars have doubted whether it was deliberate, the mystery remaining unsolved.
Primary Sources
The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country. The earth lay white under the night sky.
In the spring, cherry blossoms; in the summer, the cuckoo; in autumn, the moon; and in winter, the snow, clear and cold. Kawabata quotes this poem by the monk Dōgen to convey the soul of Japan.
A shower swept across the foot of the mountain, whitening the cryptomeria forest just as the road began to climb toward the pass.
Key Places
Kawabata's birthplace, where he was born in 1899 into a family soon decimated by illness. It was there that his childhood as an orphan began.
Kawabata studied Japanese literature here and graduated in 1924. With friends, he founded the magazine that launched the “New Sensationist” movement.
A snowy hot-spring resort in the mountains of Niigata where Kawabata stayed for several winters. The place directly inspired the setting of “Snow Country”.
A region of hot springs that the young Kawabata explored on foot. It is the setting of “The Dancing Girl of Izu”, the story of his encounter with a troupe of travelling performers.
A former shogunal capital south of Tokyo where Kawabata settled and lived for many years. Surrounded by temples and ancient art, he wrote several of his great novels there.
A coastal town where Kawabata kept a working studio. He died there on 16 April 1972, asphyxiated by gas.
