A short life of the author
Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972) was born on 11 June 1899 in Osaka. He was orphaned by the age of fifteen — both parents, his grandmother, and his only sister died during his childhood, experiences that shaped his lifelong preoccupation with loneliness and loss.
Life and Career
Yukiguni (Snow Country, serialized 1935–1937, completed 1948) — about a wealthy Tokyo dilettante’s doomed relationship with a geisha in a hot-spring town in the Japanese mountains — is his most famous novel. Its opening line — “The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country” — is one of the most celebrated in Japanese literature.
Yama no oto (The Sound of the Mountain, 1954) — about an aging businessman in postwar Kamakura who becomes aware of his approaching death — is his greatest novel. Senbazuru (Thousand Cranes, 1952) — about a young man’s involvement with his dead father’s mistresses through the tea ceremony — and Koto (The Old Capital, 1962) — about twin sisters separated at birth in Kyoto — are his other major works.
Major Works and Themes
Kawabata wrote about beauty, loneliness, aging, and the transience of all things. His prose — influenced by haiku and Japanese painting — achieves meaning through what is left unsaid. He won the Nobel Prize in 1968 and died by suicide in 1972.
Key Works
- Snow Country (1937–1948)
- The Sound of the Mountain (1954)
Collecting Kawabata
Japanese originals are the primary collected form. English translations (Knopf, Vintage) bring $10–$30. Kawabata died in 1972.