Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972) was a Japanese novelist. He was the first Japanese writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1968.) Kawabata’s fiction is distinguished for his subtle psychological characterization and a lyrical style that is deceptively simple.
Kawabata was born in Osaka and had a lonely childhood after the deaths of his parents and his grandparents when he was still very young. He published his first successful novel in his twenties. The novella Izu no odoriko (1925; The Izu Dancer, 1955) is still the most popular and widely read of his works in Japan. This semiautobiographical novel presents an itinerant student who meets a group of traveling performers and becomes enamored with their beautiful 14-year-old dancing girl.
Known as an experimental writer in the 1920s, Kawabata returned to traditional Japanese novel forms in the mid-1930s. His other famous novel, Yana no oto (The Sound of the Mountain, 1954,) set in Japan during the early 1950s, dramatizes the struggles of the aging businessman Shingo, who withdraws from the pressures of family to the sustaining memories of his past.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Yasunari Kawabata
A masterpiece of a game can be ruined by insensitivity to the feelings of an adversary.
—Yasunari Kawabata
Because you cannot see him, God is everywhere.
—Yasunari Kawabata
Topics: Faith, Divinity, Belief, God
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Isaac Bashevis Singer Polish-born American Children’s Books Writer
Mark Van Doren American Poet, Critic
Haruki Murakami Japanese Novelist
Robertson Davies Canadian Novelist, Playwright
Matsuo Basho Japanese Poet
D. T. Suzuki Japanese Buddhist Philosopher
Nyogen Senzaki Japanese Buddhist Monk
Taisen Deshimaru Japanese Buddhist Teacher
Ernest Hemingway American Author
Gunter Grass German Novelist, Poet