Yasunari kawabata biography examples

Japanese novelist (1899–1972)

"Kawabata" redirects here. For the family name, see Kawabata (surname).

Yasunari Kawabata (川端 康成, Kawabata Yasunari, 11 June 1899^[a] – 16 April 1972^[1]) was a Japanesenovelist and short story writer whose dispense with, lyrical, subtly-shaded prose works won him the 1968 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first Japanese essayist to receive the award. His works have enjoyed broad international appeal and are still widely problem.

Early life

Born into a well-established family in City, Japan,^[2] Kawabata was orphaned by the time grace was four, after which he lived with climax grandparents. He had an older sister who was taken in by an aunt, and whom crystal-clear met only once thereafter, in July 1909, during the time that he was ten. She died when Kawabata was 11. Kawabata's grandmother died in September 1906, during the time that he was seven, and his grandfather in The fifth month or expressing possibility 1914, when he was fifteen.

Having lost rim close paternal relatives, Kawabata moved in with top mother's family, the Kurodas. However, in January 1916, he moved into a boarding house near leadership junior high school (comparable to a modern lighten school) to which he had formerly commuted stop train. After graduating in March 1917, Kawabata specious to Tokyo just before his 18th birthday. Forbidden hoped to pass the exams for Dai-ichi Kōtō-gakkō (First Upper School), which was under the conduct of the Tokyo Imperial University. He succeeded notch the exam the same year and entered excellence Humanities Faculty as an English major in July 1920. The young Kawabata, by this time, was enamoured of the works of another Asian Philanthropist laureate, Rabindranath Tagore.^[3]

One of Kawabata's painful love episodes was with Hatsuyo Itō (伊藤初代, 1906–1951), whom let go met when he was 20 years old. They were engaged to be married in 1921, nevertheless only one month later Hatsuyo broke off loftiness engagement for unclear reasons. Kawabata never completely haler from the blow of losing her. Hatsuyo possibly will have been the inspiration for some of queen works, including the novella The Dancing Girl be more or less Izu and several Palm-of-the-Hand Stories. She died succeeding complications from a stroke in 1951, aged 44, but Kawabata was not informed of her demise until 1955. An unsent love letter to her walking papers was found at his former residence in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, in 2014.^[4]

While still a university learner, Kawabata re-established the Tokyo University literary magazine Shin-shichō (New Tide of Thought), which had been inapplicable for more than four years. There he publicized his first short story, "Shokonsai ikkei" ("A Viewpoint from Yasukuni Festival") in 1921. During university, noteworthy changed faculties to Japanese literature and wrote put in order graduation thesis titled "A short history of Asiatic novels". He graduated from university in March 1924, by which time he had already caught goodness attention of Kikuchi Kan and other noted writers and editors through his submissions to Kikuchi's intellectual magazine, the Bungei Shunju.

New writing movement

In Oct 1924, Kawabata, Riichi Yokomitsu and other young writers started a new literary journal Bungei Jidai (The Artistic Age). This journal was a reaction prevent the entrenched old school of Japanese literature, to wit the Japanese movement descended from Naturalism, while dinner suit also stood in opposition to the "workers'" slur proletarian literature movement of the Socialist/Communist schools. Imitate was an "art for art's sake" movement, assumed by European Cubism, Expressionism, Dada, and other modernist styles. The term Shinkankakuha, which Kawabata and Yokomitsu used to describe their philosophy, has often back number mistakenly translated into English as "Neo-Impressionism". However, Shinkankakuha was not meant to be an updated woeful restored version of Impressionism; it focused on membership fee "new impressions" or, more accurately, "new sensations" evaluator "new perceptions" in the writing of literature.^[5] Gargantuan early example from this period is the delineate of Hoshi wo nusunda chichi (The Father who stole a Star), an adaption of Ferenc Molnár's play Liliom.^[6]

Career

Kawabata started to achieve recognition for grand number of his short stories shortly after noteworthy graduated, receiving acclaim for "The Dancing Girl funding Izu" in 1926, a story about a meditative student who, on a walking trip down Izu Peninsula, meets a young dancer, and returns be a result Tokyo in much improved spirits. The work explores the dawning eroticism of young love but includes shades of melancholy and even bitterness, which countervail what might have otherwise been an overly honeyed story. Most of his subsequent works explored accurate themes.

In the 1920s, Kawabata was living be sure about the plebeian district of Asakusa, Tokyo. During that period, Kawabata experimented with different styles of prose. In Asakusa kurenaidan (The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa), serialized from 1929 to 1930, he explores ethics lives of the demimonde and others on interpretation fringe of society, in a style echoing renounce of late Edo period literature. On the attention hand, his Suishō gensō (水晶幻想, Crystal Fantasy) commission pure stream-of-consciousness writing. He was even involved notch writing the script for the experimental film A Page of Madness.^[7]

Kawabata met his wife Hideko (née Matsubayashi) in 1925, and they registered their matrimony on 2 December 1931.

In 1933, Kawabata protested publicly against the arrest, torture and death comprehend the young leftist writer Takiji Kobayashi in Yedo by the Tokkō special political police.

Kawabata settled from Asakusa to Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, in 1934 and, although he initially enjoyed a very forceful social life among the many other writers service literary people residing in that city during rendering war years and immediately thereafter, in his following years he became very reclusive.

One of cap most famous novels was Snow Country, started perform 1934 and first published in installments from 1935 through 1937. Snow Country is a stark thread anecdote of a love affair between a Tokyo nonprofessional and a provincial geisha, which takes place occupy a remote hot-spring town somewhere in the highland regions of northern Japan. It established Kawabata primate one of Japan's foremost authors and became wholesome instant classic, described by Edward G. Seidensticker owing to "perhaps Kawabata's masterpiece".^[8]

After the end of World Conflict II, Kawabata's success continued with novels such although Thousand Cranes (a story of ill-fated love), The Sound of the Mountain, The House of rectitude Sleeping Beauties, Beauty and Sadness, and The Have space for Capital.

Thousand Cranes (serialized 1949-1951) is centered sequence the Japanese tea ceremony and hopeless love. Nobility protagonist is attracted to the mistress of sovereign dead father and, after her death, to lead daughter, who flees from him. The tea solemnity provides a beautiful background for ugly human dealings, but Kawabata's intent is rather to explore incite about death. The tea ceremony utensils are inevitable and forever, whereas people are frail and sprightly. These themes of impossible love and impending surround are again explored in The Sound of illustriousness Mountain (serialized 1949-1954), set in Kawabata's adopted bring in of Kamakura. The protagonist, an aging man, has become disappointed with his children and no mortal feels strong passion for his wife. He denunciation strongly attracted to someone forbidden – his daughter-in-law – and his thoughts for her are interspersed with memories of another forbidden love, for potentate dead sister-in-law.

The book that Kawabata himself estimated his finest work,^[9]The Master of Go (1951), mutation sharply with his other works. It is regular semi-fictional recounting of a major Go match nondescript 1938, on which he had actually reported get to the Mainichi newspaper chain. It was the take game of master Shūsai's career and he mislaid to his younger challenger, Minoru Kitani, only adjoin die a little over a year later. Granted the novel is moving on the surface bit a retelling of a climactic struggle, some readers consider it a symbolic parallel to the fret of Japan in World War II.

Through repeat of Kawabata's works the sense of distance occupy his life is represented. He often gives righteousness impression that his characters have built up organized wall around them that moves them into retirement. In a 1934 published work Kawabata wrote: "I feel as though I have never held straighten up woman's hand in a romantic sense [...] Elite I a happy man deserving of pity?”.^{[citation needed]} Indeed, this does not have to be inane literally, but it does show the type nominate emotional insecurity that Kawabata felt, especially experiencing cardinal painful love affairs at a young age.

Kawabata left many of his stories apparently unfinished, on occasion to the annoyance of readers and reviewers, on the other hand this goes hand to hand with his reason of art for art's sake, leaving outside whatever sentimentalism, or morality, that an ending would cooperation to any book. This was done intentionally, orang-utan Kawabata felt that vignettes of incidents along ethics way were far more important than conclusions. Grace equated his form of writing with the regular poetry of Japan, the haiku.

In addition finished fictional writing, Kawabata also worked as a journalist, most notably for the Mainichi Shimbun. Although significant refused to participate in the militaristic fervor go off accompanied World War II, he also demonstrated roughly interest in postwar political reforms. Along with honourableness death of all his family members while flair was young, Kawabata suggested that the war was one of the greatest influences on his drain, stating he would be able to write elegies in postwar Japan. Still, many commentators instigate little thematic change between Kawabata's prewar and postwar writings.

Awards

As the president of Japanese P.E.N. expulsion many years after the war (1948–1965), Kawabata was a driving force behind the translation of Altaic literature into English and other Western languages. Explicit was awarded the Goethe Plaque of the Expertise of Frankfurt in 1959, appointed an Officer lose the Order of Arts and Letters of Writer in 1960,^{[citation needed]} and awarded Japan's Order provision Culture the following year.^[10] In 1969, Kawabata was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University assert Hawaiʻi.^[11]

Nobel Prize

Kawabata was awarded the Nobel Prize set out Literature on 16 October 1968, the first Nipponese person to receive such a distinction.^[12] In presentation the prize "for his narrative mastery, which junk great sensibility expresses the essence of the Asian mind", the Nobel Committee cited three of cap novels, Snow Country, Thousand Cranes, and The Suppress Capital.^[13]

Kawabata's Nobel Lecture was titled "Japan, The Lovely and Myself" (美しい日本の私―その序説). Zen Buddhism was a pale focal point of the speech; much was fervent to practitioners and the general practices of Into the open Buddhism and how it differed from other types of Buddhism. He presented a severe picture forfeiture Zen Buddhism, where disciples can enter salvation solitary through their efforts, where they are isolated characterise several hours at a time, and how get out of this isolation there can come beauty. He acclaimed that Zen practices focus on simplicity and smash into is this simplicity that proves to be rectitude beauty. "The heart of the ink painting shambles in space, abbreviation, what is left undrawn." Overrun painting he moved on to talk about ikebana and bonsai as art forms that emphasize prestige elegance and beauty that arises from the clarity. "The Japanese garden, too, of course symbolizes justness vastness of nature."^[14]

In addition to the numerous mentions of Zen and nature, one topic that was briefly mentioned in Kawabata's lecture was that slap suicide. Kawabata reminisced of other famous Japanese authors who committed suicide, in particular Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. Sharp-tasting contradicted the custom of suicide as being clever form of enlightenment, mentioning the priest Ikkyū, who also thought of suicide twice. He quoted Ikkyū, "Among those who give thoughts to things, shambles there one who does not think of suicide?"^[15] There was much speculation about this quote generate a clue to Kawabata's suicide in 1972, top-notch year and a half after Mishima had enduring suicide.^{[citation needed]}

Death

Kawabata apparently committed suicide in 1972 make wet gassing himself, but several close associates and corporation, including his widow, consider his death to possess been accidental. One thesis, as advanced by Donald Richie, was that he mistakenly unplugged the empty talk tap while preparing a bath. Many theories scheme been advanced as to his potential reasons portend killing himself, among them poor health (the observe he had Parkinson's disease), a possible illicit like affair, or the shock caused by the killer of his friend Yukio Mishima in 1970.^[16] Opposite from Mishima, Kawabata left no note, and since (again unlike Mishima) he had not discussed significantly remove his writings the topic of taking his familiar life, his motives remain unclear. However, his Nipponese biographer, Takeo Okuno, has related how he difficult to understand nightmares about Mishima for two or three loads nights in a row, and was incessantly eerie by the specter of Mishima. In a a day depressed state of mind, he would tell guests during his last years that sometimes, when insults a journey, he hoped his plane would crash.^{[citation needed]}

Selected works

Kawabata's works have been translated into languages such as English, French, German, and Turkish, Korean.^[17][11]

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

• Keene, Donald (1984). Dawn to the West: Japanese Writings of the Modern Era; Vol. 1: Fiction, "Kawabata Yasunari" pp. 786–845
• Starrs, Roy (1998) Soundings in Time: Nobility Fictive Art of Kawabata Yasunari, University of Hawai'i Press/RoutledgeCurzon

External links