Yasunari Kawabata Biography and List of Works

First Japanese novelist to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (1968). Many of Kawabata's books explore melancholically the place of sex in culture and the life of the individual. His works combined tradition with modernity, and realism with hallucinations.

Kawabata was born in Osaka into a prosperous and cultured family. He was orphaned at the age of three. The family deaths deprived Kawakawa of normal childhood and he was raised by his grandparents. In 1920 he started his literature studies at Tokyo Imperial University, and graduated in 1924. With a group of young writers, Kawabata founded the journal Bungei Jidai (Contemporary Literature), an advocate of the Neo-Sensualist movement. Kawabata gained his first literary success in 1925 with the novella IZU NO ODORIKO (The Izu Dancer).The auto biographical work recounted his youthful infatuation with a fourteen-year-old dancer. The story ends with a separation.

After marriage in 1931 Kawabata settled in the ancient samurai capital of Kamakura, north of Tokyo, and spent the winters in Zushi. During World War II Kawabata remained neutral and travelled in Manchuria, and studied The Tale of Genji, an eleventh-century Japanese novel. In 1954 Kawabata's perhaps best work, YAMA NO OTO (The Sound of the Mountains), which depicted family crisis in a series of linked episodes was published .The protagonist, Shingo, represents traditional Japanese caring of human relationships and nature. He is concerned about the marital crises of his two children. Scenes from the hero's daily life are interwoven with poetic descriptions of nature, dreams, and recollections.

In the 1960s Kawabata made a tour in the United States, lecturing in universities. In the late 1960s Kawabata became socially active. He campaigned for conservative political candidates and along side Yukio Mishima and other writers signed an address condemning Cultural Revolution in China. He was also president of the Japanese PEN club and an active promoter of fledgling writers. Kawabata had suffered from poor health and in 1972, two years after Mishima's suicide, Kawabata committed suicide in Zushi on April 16 by gassing himself. He left no note.

In his early works Kawabata experimented with surrealistic techniques and blended traditional elements and modern devices. His naturalistic style changed later into lyrical, combining Japanese aesthetics with psychological narrative, eroticism and reflective note. Among Kawabata's other well-known works are The Snow Country (finished 1948), the story of a middle-aged playboy and an ageing geisha, and Thousand Cranes (1952), which used the tea ceremony as a background and was based on the classical work The Tales of Genji.

For further reading: Accomplices of Silence by M. Miyoshi (1974); Approaches to the Modern Japanese Novel, eds. By K. Tsuruta and T.E. Swann (1976); Modern Japanese Writers and the Nature of Literature by M. Ueda (1976); Modern Japanese Fiction and Its Tradition by J. Rimer (1978); Life, Death and Age in Modern Japanese Fiction, ed. by R. Tsukimura (1978); The Search for Authenticity in Modern Japanese Literature by Y. Hisaaki (1978); Three Modern Novelists by V.C. Gessel (1993) - OTHER JAPANESE WRITER WHO HAS WON THE NOBEL PRIZE: Kenzaburo Oe

JUROKUSAI NO NIKKI, (1925)
BI NO SONZAI HAKKEN, (1969)
TENOHIRA HO SHOSETSU, (1971)
THE MASTER OF GO, (1972)
THE OLD CAPITAL, (1987)