KAWABATA, Yasunari 川端康成
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KAWABATA, Yasunari 川端康成
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about KAWABATA, Yasunari 川端康成
Description
Kawabata Yasunari (1899-1972) is the first Japanese to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Kawabata made a debut in 1927 with his short story Izu no odoriko (Izu Dancer), which became one of his representative works in his earlier career. With his novel Yukiguni (Snow Country) of 1937, he distinguished himself as one of the representative novelists of the time.
Kawabata lost all of his family members in early childhood. His experiences of loss and orphanhood thus underpinned his writing, but the elegiac tone in his works seems to be linked to the sense of “mono no aware,” Japanese aesthetic ideal which he wanted to pursue in his writings.
On Dec. 12, 1968, Kawabata addressed his Nobel Prize Memorial Lecture in montsuki hakama, the Japanese formal attire. He delivered his lecture, titled “Utsukushii Nihon no watakushi (Japan, the Beautiful and Myself),” in Japanese (simultaneously translated by Edward G. Seidensticker). While referring to Zen philosophy, poems and Heian literature, such as Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji), which he regarded as “a wide and deep source of nourishment” for Japanese artistic expressions, Kawabata explained the delicate sensitivity of the Japanese, which found ephemeral beauty in the myriad manifestations of nature, such as the snow, moon, the blossoms, the mountains, and the rivers.
Kawabata’s esoteric lecture flows so smoothly like a stream of water---beautiful, yet somewhat vague and unfocused. But in this lecture, in front of the audience in Stockholm, unfamiliar to the Japanese tradition, culture or literature, he showed his mettle to describe the spiritual foundation of the Japanese mind and uniqueness of the Japanese culture as something essentially different from the Western counterparts.
Kawabata lost all of his family members in early childhood. His experiences of loss and orphanhood thus underpinned his writing, but the elegiac tone in his works seems to be linked to the sense of “mono no aware,” Japanese aesthetic ideal which he wanted to pursue in his writings.
On Dec. 12, 1968, Kawabata addressed his Nobel Prize Memorial Lecture in montsuki hakama, the Japanese formal attire. He delivered his lecture, titled “Utsukushii Nihon no watakushi (Japan, the Beautiful and Myself),” in Japanese (simultaneously translated by Edward G. Seidensticker). While referring to Zen philosophy, poems and Heian literature, such as Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji), which he regarded as “a wide and deep source of nourishment” for Japanese artistic expressions, Kawabata explained the delicate sensitivity of the Japanese, which found ephemeral beauty in the myriad manifestations of nature, such as the snow, moon, the blossoms, the mountains, and the rivers.
Kawabata’s esoteric lecture flows so smoothly like a stream of water---beautiful, yet somewhat vague and unfocused. But in this lecture, in front of the audience in Stockholm, unfamiliar to the Japanese tradition, culture or literature, he showed his mettle to describe the spiritual foundation of the Japanese mind and uniqueness of the Japanese culture as something essentially different from the Western counterparts.
Source
http://guides.lib.ku.edu/content.php?pid=59061&sid=4360752
Date
1968
Citation
“KAWABATA, Yasunari 川端康成,” KU Libraries Exhibits, accessed April 16, 2024, https://exhibits.lib.ku.edu/items/show/6497.