Yasunari Kawabata

Yasunari Kawabata was the first Japanese person to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. His style combined elements of classic Japanese prose with modern psychological narrative and exploration of human sexuality. Deeply influenced by the culture of his homeland, his writings capture the vivid and melancholy beauty and spirituality of Japan, while his own experiences and studies contributed to his assay into emotion. Kawabata was born on June 11, 1899 in Osaka, Japan into a prosperous family; his father was a very distinguished physician. However, he was orphaned at the age of 2, his father dying of tuberculosis. The tragedies continued: his grandmother died when he was seven, his only sister died when he was ten, and his grandfather when he was 14. Kawabata would go on to describe himself as a man "without home or family". It is believed that these early traumas helped shape the background for the sense of loss and loneliness that runs throughout much of his writing. After the death of his grandfather in 1915, Kawabata moved into a junior high dormitory (comparable to a modern day high school). He graduated from the school in 1917 and got into the Dai-ichi Koto-gakko' (Number One High School) in the same year. He finished high school in 1920 and was accepted to the then Tokyo Imperial University as an English major. At the university, he began to study Japanese literature and the Zen philosophy in depth, admiring the works of poets such as priests Dogen (1200-1253) and Myoe (1173-1232). Their poems had a deeply meditative quality, mostly descriptive of natural scenes such as a winter's moon or the silhouette of a mountain. Kawabata's imagery in later works would mirror these poets with surrealistic techniques. While attending the university Kawabata re-established the literary magazine, "Shin-shichō", (New Tide of Thought), which had been non-operational for over four years. There he published his first short story, "Shokonsai Ikkei" ("A Scene from a Séance"). He later wrote a graduation thesis entitled "A Short History of Japanese Novels", a show of his patriotism. He graduated from the university in March 1924. In October of 1924 he, Kataoka Teppei, Yokomitsu Riichi and a number of other young writers started a new literary journal entitled Bungei Jidai (The Artistic Age). This journal was a reaction to the old school of Japanese literature, specifically the Naturalist school, while at the same time it stood in opposition to "worker's literature" or Socialist/ Communist schools. It was an "art for art's sake" movement, influenced by Cubism, Dada, Expressionism and other modernist styles. Kawabata and Yokomitsu used the term "Shinkankakuha" to describe their philosophy. It has often been mistakenly translated into English as "Neo-Impressionism". However, Shinkankakuha was not meant to be neither an updated nor restored version of Impressionism; it merely focused on offering "new impressions", or, more accurately, "new sensations" in literature. Kawabata gained his first critical acclaim in 1925 with the novella Izu No Odoriko ("The Izu Dancer" or "The Dancing Girl of Izu"). The autobiographical tale recounted his youthful infatuation with a fourteen-year-old dancer but also captured the shy eroticism that comes with adolescent love. From that point on, aspects of love could be found in many of Kawabata's other works. An example of this can be found in his following work, Snow Country (started in 1934, published in installments from '35-'47), the novel that cemented his position as a leading author in Japan. After marriage in 1934, Kawabata settled in the ancient samurai capital of Kamakura. He refused to participate in the militaristic fervor accompanying World War II, but he was also unimpressed with the political reforms in Japan afterwards. Along with the death of all his family while he was young, the war was definitely one of the most important influences on him. Shortly after the war ended, he said that from then on he would only be able to write elegies. He then traveled in Manchuria, and studied The Tale of Genji, an eleventh-century Japanese novel. In his Nobel lecture, Kawabata stated that this in particular was "the highest pinnacle of Japanese literature" and "there [is] not a piece of fiction to compare with it". He claims the timeless novel influenced everything from poetry to landscaping from Japan to the United States. After studying this, he wrote his masterpiece The Sound of the Mountain (1954). Genji's influence was well noted; the novel extensively discussed nature and dreams in short, sparse prose akin to poetry. This work earned him the literary prize of the Japanese Academy. In the 1960s, Kawabata began to tour in the United States lecturing in universities. In the late 1960s Kawabata became socially active. He campaigned for conservative political candidates and signed with Yukio Mishima and other writers an address condemning Cultural Revolution in China. These were his only ventures into political terrain. In his Nobel lecture in 1968, Kawabata vehemently condemned suicide, commenting on the writer Akutagawa Ryunosuke. Kawabata titled an essay after a line in Ryunosuke's suicide note and stated that "however alienated one may be from the world, suicide is not a form of enlightenment; however admirable he may be, the man who commits suicide is far from the realm of the saint. I neither admire nor am in sympathy with suicide." However, many of Kawabata's contemporaries committed suicide, including own of his very good friends Yukio Mishima. On April 16, 1972, Kawabata took his own life by gassing himself. There was no known motive, though he was in poor health in his final years.