25 Facts About Kawabata Yasunari

Yasunari Kawabata was a Japanese novelist and short story writer whose spare, lyrical, subtly shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author to receive the award.

Kawabata Yasunari's works have enjoyed broad international appeal and are still widely read.

Kawabata Yasunari 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.

Kawabata Yasunari's grandmother died in September 1906, when he was seven, and his grandfather in May 1914, when he was fifteen.

Kawabata Yasunari hoped to pass the exams for Dai-ichi Koto-gakko, which was under the direction of the Tokyo Imperial University.

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Kawabata Yasunari succeeded in the exam the same year and entered the Humanities Faculty as an English major in July 1920.

Kawabata Yasunari graduated from university in March 1924, by which time he had already caught the attention of Kikuchi Kan and other noted writers and editors through his submissions to Kikuchi's literary magazine, the Bungei Shunju.

Kawabata Yasunari 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 down Izu Peninsula, meets a young dancer, and returns to Tokyo in much improved spirits.

Kawabata Yasunari was even involved in writing the script for the experimental film A Page of Madness.

In 1933, Kawabata Yasunari protested publicly against the arrest, torture and death of the young leftist writer Takiji Kobayashi in Tokyo by the Tokko special political police.

Kawabata Yasunari relocated from Asakusa to Kamakura, 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.

Kawabata Yasunari 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.

Book that Kawabata Yasunari himself considered his finest work, The Master of Go, contrasts sharply with his other works.

Kawabata Yasunari often gives the impression that his characters have built up a wall around them that moves them into isolation.

Indeed, this does not have to be taken literally, but it does show the type of emotional insecurity that Kawabata Yasunari felt, especially experiencing two painful love affairs at a young age.

Kawabata Yasunari 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.

Kawabata Yasunari equated his form of writing with the traditional poetry of Japan, the haiku.

Kawabata Yasunari was appointed an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters of France in 1960, and awarded Japan's Order of Culture the following year.

Kawabata Yasunari was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature on 16 October 1968, the first Japanese person to receive such a distinction.

Kawabata Yasunari 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.

Kawabata Yasunari noted that Zen practices focus on simplicity and it is this simplicity that proves to be the beauty.

Kawabata Yasunari reminisced of other famous Japanese authors who committed suicide, in particular Ryunosuke Akutagawa.

Kawabata Yasunari contradicted the custom of suicide as being a form of enlightenment, mentioning the priest Ikkyu, who thought of suicide twice.

Kawabata Yasunari apparently committed suicide in 1972 by gassing himself, but a number of close associates and friends, including his widow, consider his death to have been accidental.

Unlike Mishima, Kawabata Yasunari left no note, and since he had not discussed significantly in his writings the topic of taking his own life, his motives remain unclear.

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