Japan: Spiritual Bridge

He is called a “human treasure” by his fellow Japanese, and few authors have so compellingly evoked the subtle, precise beauty of his homeland. His prose is clear, deceptively simple; yet the images scattered through his narratives link together to produce deep, sudden insight into the souls of his characters — and of Japan. Until last week, however, Yasunari Kawabata was all but unknown in the West. Then, to the surprise of many, he was awarded this year’s Nobel Prize for literature for his contributions, as the citation put it, to the “spiritual bridge spanning between East and West.”

He was the first Japanese ever to win the literary award and the first Asian to be so honored since 1913, when the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore was selected. Kawabata, 69, stepped into the limelight calmly. “I feel I am very lucky,” he told the caller who brought the news. “It is a great honor.” Later, he showed concern that “too great a fuss” might be made. “For authors,” he said, “honors can some times become unbearable burdens.”

Kawabata is well aware of life’s burdens. He was born in Osaka in 1899, and his father died when he was two. His mother died the following year, and he was placed in the care of his grandparents. By the time he was 16, they were dead as well.

He writes slowly and meticulously. He began perhaps his best-known work, Snow Country, in 1934 and did not consider it completed until 1947. A bittersweet, erotic story of the doomed affair of a deteriorating geisha and a Tokyo dilettante, the novel shows Kawabata at his best, sensually describing the darker aspects of life, suffering, love and death. Both Snow Country and the later, highly praised Thousand Cranes have been published in the U.S. and Europe. But many of his score of novels are barely known abroad.

A Habit of His. For the Western reader, Snow Country provides a key to the lesser-known regions of Japanese life. Particularly evocative are Kawabata’s descriptions of the look of Japan. “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.” His eye for physical description is sharp. “Her skin, suggesting the newness of a freshly peeled onion or perhaps a lily bulb, was flushed faintly, even to the throat.”

He can be quietly amusing: ” ‘One is bigger than the other.’ She cupped her breasts lightly in her hands. ‘I suppose that’s a habit of his—one side only.’ ” Kawabata is keenly aware of Japan’s historical heritage: “The houses were built in the style of the old regime. No doubt they were there when provincial lords passed down this north-country road.” History, sensuality and the land —all interweave to suggest rather than state the uniqueness of his vision.

The slight, grey-haired Kawabata is married, with an adult daughter and a Japanese-style home in the ancient Samurai capital of Kamakura as well as a Westernized cottage in the mountain resort of Karuizawa. He avoids politics and concentrates instead, as the Nobel selection committee put it, “on the essence of the Japanese mind.” It was somehow fitting that his selection came on the 100th anniversary of the Meiji Restoration, which marked long-secluded Japan’s entry into the modern world.