Yasunari Kawabatas Masterpiece Yukiguni - Research Paper Example

? Yasunari Kawabata’s Masterpiece: Yukiguni Nobel prize-winning Japanese Yasunari Kawabata lived and worked in the 20th century. Born on 14 June 1899 in Osaka, Japan to a renowned physician father, Kawabata was orphaned at the age of four. After his parents’ untimely deaths, he came to be raised by his maternal grandfather. He lost his grandparents at a young age either and by the time of his teens, was bereft of most of his close relatives. While graduating from the Tokyo Imperial University, Kawabata contributed to the magazine Bungei Shunju, which brought him to the attention of editors and well-known writers of that time, including author Kan Kikuchi. He went on to become one of the founders of Bundei Jidai (or ‘the artistic age’), a publication that became the medium for a new movement in modern Japanese literature. Kawabata also worked for a time as journalist and claimed himself to be deeply moved by World War II, which was apparently one of the greatest influences on his work. Kawabata allegedly committed suicide in 1972 by gassing himself, although this has not been conclusively proven. It is certain however that the early loss of his family and, by his own admission, the horrors of the war, left his work with a tinge of melancholy and sense of insecurity and loss. He was the first of two Japanese Nobel laureates – Oe Kenzaburo being the other – and is perhaps globally, the best-known Japanese writer in contemporary times, although his status in his native country as an author is still widely debated among critics (Miyoshi). Kawabata’s literary style is characterized by its free flowing imagery. He uses surprisingly original and unusual images in his stories that emphasize the poetic quality of his writing. In Yukiguni (Snow Country) for instance, the imagery employed is especially effective and beautiful in telling the emotionally charged love story of the geisha and the dilettante from Tokyo. Masao Miyoshi, in his review of Yasunari Kawabata talks about this ‘dependence of visualization’ as a result of his being essentially a short-story writer. Reiko Tsukimara in ‘A Thematic Study of the Works of Kawabata Yasunari’ identifies ‘ryoshu’ and ‘aishu’ as two primary elements in Kawabata’s work. Ryoshu is described as an ‘intense emotional realization that you have found a home of your soul’ and aishu translates to ‘sorrow’ (Tsukimara 23). According to Tsukimara, these two emotions recur in Kawabata’s writing most persistently. They appear together as the recognition of finding a home for one’s soul or ryoshu is accompanied by a sense of profound sorrow or aishu as well. This paper will seek to explore what previous scholars have already commented on Kawabata’s writing technique and thematic concerns and test them on what has been called his masterpiece by Edward G. Seidensticker, Yukiguni or Snow Country. The paper will also explore if there are departures from his usual style and from what scholars like Tsukimara and Miyoshi assert. And finally, it will attempt to make fresh observations on Kawabata’s style through the study of Snow Country. Snow Country began as a short story that was published in 1935 in a literary journal. It was published serially, with Kawabata reworking later, between 1935 and 1937. A new ending and a collation of seven pre-existing versions appeared in 1937. Kawabata again worked on the story and between 1940 and 1941 the story was again published in journals in two sections. These two sections were merged by Kawabata in 1946, with another piece added in 1947. The book as it stands today was the result of combining nine previous versions, published in 1948 (Seidensticker). This complex and long publication history of the story and the its ‘piecemeal’ nature as Seidensticker calls it in his introduction to Snow Country’s translation reiterates the idea of Kawabata as being primarily a short-story writer. The repeated editing and elaborating of what began as a shorter tale, and also its final length – which is perhaps best described as a ‘novella’ rather than a novel – indicate perhaps Kawabata’s comfort with smaller-scale, miniature projects and also a passionate need for perfecting and reworking previously existing work till he felt satisfied with it. To turn to the story itself, Snow Country is a love story set in the town of Yuzawa, involving a ‘hot-spring’ geisha – i.e., not the more respected professional geishas of Tokyo, Kyoto or Osaka – and an aesthete dilettante from Tokyo who is described as being an expert on opera without ever having watched an opera being performed. In comparison to the male protagonist, the woman, Komako, is portrayed with greater sympathy. Her selfless devotion is in stark contrast to the detachment of Shimamura. As Kawabata himself writes: “The author is deep in the character Komako, and not in Shimamura. Rather the author turned his back to Shimamura. In that sense I am perhaps more in Komako than in Shimamura: consciously I delineated Shimamura in the furthest distance from myself. The incidents and emotion in the novel are more imaginary than actual. Particularly the emotion, or what appears to be Komako's sorrow, is nothing but mine. Probably the appeal of the novel derives from this” (Tsukimara 23). Here, it is evident that the author aligns himself with the idea of aishu or ‘sorrow’. The profundity of suffering as embodied in the passive, selfless love of the heroine, Komako, becomes the ideal to be valued. Especially when set against the detached worldview of the aesthete, Komako’s deep emotional investment makes her the more sympathetic character. The idea of love as necessarily containing an element of loss is something that is aestheticized and ennobled. Snow Country then does indeed have a significant presence of the element of aishu. Kawabata attributes this preoccupation with sorrow as having been generated by the World War. It is not difficult to see how the romanticized pessimism or sense of doom that one finds in Snow Country, especially as embodied in Komako could have been brought on by the devastation caused by World War II. This contrast between detachment and complete devotion, interestingly, also sets up a binary of masculine and feminine energies. Shimamura becomes for Kawabata the quintessence of the man in love: involved but not committed in the same sense that the woman is. There is something of the martyr in Kawabata’s conception of a woman in love: selfless, devoted and almost knowingly working towards her own doom. As far as the use of imagery goes, Snow Country is replete with instances of rich and unusual imagery. For instance, Komako is described as: ‘her lips opened and closed smoothly, like a beautiful little circle of leeches.’ As Seidensticker claims, Kawabata’s style of writing resembles the haiku form of poetry: restrained, austere and brilliantly evocative in its imagery. This assertion can be seen as quite valid when we look at one such instance from the book: “Following a stream, the train came out on the plain. A mountain, cut at the top in curious notches and spires, fell off in a graceful sweep to the far skirts. Over it the moon was rising. The solid, integral shape of the mountain, taking up the whole of the evening landscape there at the end of the plain, was set off in a deep purple against the pale light of the sky. The moon was no longer an afternoon white, but, faintly colored, it had not yet taken on the clear coldness of the winter night. There was not a bird in the sky. Nothing broke the lines of the wide skirts to the right and the left. Where the mountain swept down to meet the river, a stark white building, a hydroelectric plant perhaps, stood out sharply from the withered scene the train window framed, one last spot saved from the night” (Kawabata). The mountains being described as ‘skirts’ and the rich description of the extent of night and snow here is a great example of how Kawabata employs his poetic skill in conjuring up images in the midst of the plot progression. But as lush and evocative as the words may be there is also a marked restraint in Kawabata’s writing – as in ‘there was not a bird in the sky’ or ‘over it the moon was rising’. There can hardly be spotted any indulgent excesses in his descriptions, either of his characters or settings. This rich and descriptive prose coupled with the tight control that the writes exerts over it are what lend his style of writing the quality of the haiku. In addition to his poetic style, there are certain images that Kawabata repeatedly employs in Snow Country. One such often-used image is that of the mirror. Right in the beginning when Shimamura is introduced, the window of the train he is on is described as ‘that evening mirror’ (Kawabata). Later again the mirror is brought up to describe the feminine image of Komako and also to create startling visual contrasts: “The white in the depths of the mirror was the snow, and floating in the middle of it were the woman's bright red cheeks. There was an indescribably fresh beauty in the contrast. Was the sun already up? The brightness of the snow was more intense, it seemed to be burning icily. Against it, the woman's hair became a clearer black, touched with a purple sheen” (Kawabata). In fact, Kinya Tsuruta is of the opinion that Komako herself is designed to serve the function of a mirror. Not only is she described repeatedly in terms of her ‘cleanness’, she is also symbolically reflective of the Snow Country itself. At one point she physically reflects: ‘the pulse of the fire beating on her intent, slightly flushed face’. Another critic Thomas E Swann has suggested that Komako is more of a ‘translucent mirror’ as she both reflects and allows the external to pass through her. We find therefore that it is not without justification that Kawabata’s literary style has been described as poetic or in keeping with the haiku tradition. With his tendency to make surprising visual contrasts and comparisons through his imagery and his ability to keep a tight rein on the expressiveness of his prose, Kawabata is reminiscent of poets like Matsuo Basho. Also, his themes seem to stem from his own life experiences of loss. As seen in Snow Country, the love story is doomed from the beginning as one of the two, Shimamura, is simply incapable of feeling love as deeply as Komako. This sense of doom in his writing, in his own admission, is brought on by not just his own personal tragic history but also by the devastation wrought by World War II that Kawabata witnessed. Thirdly, Kawabata uses a few symbols often to construct entire worlds of meaning out of them. For instance, a mirror becomes symbolic of not just what it reflects but also a sign of purity and cleanness and its evocation at different points of the plot emphasize different sentiments. There was also the assertion that Kawabata is essentially a short story writer and this is evident not just by the facts of its short length and its origin as a short story but also by the very style in which it is written. The episodic nature of the tale, as embodied in Shimamura’s visits to the hot-spring, also give it a quality of a series of shorter tales rather than a single long story. The special quality of Kawabata’s writing therefore, lies in this expertise in miniature, in bringing out the artistic and imaginative truths behind mundane events and in imbuing his tales with a deep sense of loss that is both beautiful and profound. Works Cited Gessel, Van C. "Yasunari Kawabata." Japanese Fiction Writers, 1868-1945. Ed. Van C. Gessel. Detroit: Gale Research, 1997. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 180. Literature Resource Center. Web. 3 Nov. 2012. Kawabata, Yasunari. Snow Country. Trans. Edward G. Seidensticker. New York: Putnam, 1957. E-Pub File. Web. 3 Nov. 2012. Miyoshi, Masao. ‘Kawabata Yasunari: Overview.’ Reference Guide to World Literature. Ed. Lesley Henderson. 2nd ed. New York: St. James Press, 1995. Literature Resource Center. Web. 4 Nov. 2012. Seidensticker, Edward. ‘Snow Country: Overview.’ Reference Guide to World Literature. Ed. Lesley Henderson. 2nd ed. New York: St. James Press, 1995. Literature Resource Center. Web. 4 Nov. 2012. ‘Snow Country.’ Encyclopedia Britannica. Web. 4 Nov. 2012. Tsukimara, Reiko. ‘A Thematic Study of the Works of Kawabata Yasunari.’ The Journal-Newsletter of the Association of Teachers of Japanese 5.2 (Jul 1968): 22 – 31. Print. Tsuruta, Kinya. ‘The Flow-Dynamics in Kawabata Yasunari’s Snow Country.’ Monumenta Nipponica 26.3/4 (1971): 251 – 265. Print. ‘Yasunari Kawabata: Biography.’ Nobelprize.org. Web. 4 Nov. 2012. ‘Yasunari Kawabata.’ Wikipedia. 17 Sep. 2012. Web. 4 Nov. 2012. Read More