Abstract: Yasunari Kawabata was Japan’s modern master—a literary giant whose works earned him Japan’s first Nobel Prize for Literature.  Born in Osaka in 1899, Kawabata’s childhood was marked by the deaths of all his closest bloodlines.  Perhaps the sorrow of his works had its origins in the intense grief of his childhood.  Nevertheless, Kawabata went on to participate in many literary movements and was the father of many others; by the time he had reached his forties he was already regarded as Japan’s most promising writer.  For decades he compiled works of unrivaled beauty and unassuming majesty.  In 1972—less than four years after winning his Nobel—Kawabata was found dead, presumably by his own hand.  His works remain some of the most revered in Japan today—a testament to his artistic consistency.  This paper examines some of the consequences of Kawabata’s writings:  primarily their tendency to exclude Japanese-Koreans, expatriates and the colonized and colonizer alike.  Regardless of Kawabata’s intentions when writing his works, their canonization has led to a denial of shared histories in the East Asian context—a reality that it is particularly important to come to terms with today.

Yasunari Kawabata’s desolate, beautiful, and flowing prose, sometimes compared to the traditional Japanese Zen woodblock print, has been called beyond understanding, and above critique.  His art for art’s sake approach, which simultaneously brings together the old and the new, has distinguished his works and aided in their elevation to a special place in the Japanese literary canon. In his article “Writing out Asia: Modernity, Canon and Kokoro,” James Fujii establishes the critical and public reception of works, the publication and translation of works, and the formation of a national identity as the main factors contributing to an author’s canonization.  (Fujii, 178) By examining Kawabata’s Snow Country and Old Capital, two of the three works cited by the Nobel Committee upon awarding Kawabata the prize, and the glaring absences in those works, we can come to better appreciate the denial of shared histories between East Asian countries that the canonization of Kawabata has affirmed. The goal of this paper is not to attack Kawabata for the absences in his works; rather, it is to better understand how the process of canonization contributes to historical absences and omissions.

Snow Country is considered by many critics to be Kawabata’s masterpiece. (Phillips, 423) It tells the story of a tragic love affair between a mountain geisha and a Tokyo dilettante.  In his introduction to the novel, which was first serialized in the Asahi Shinbun between 1935 and 1937, translator Edward Seidensticker writes:  “The hot springs, one of which is the locale of Snow Country, also have a peculiarly Japanese significance.”  (Kawabata, vi) Another of the novel’s peculiarly Japanese traits is its writing style, which resembles that of the 17^th century “haiku.”  Even today, Kawabata’s works are seen in this light; as having clear origins in venerated Japanese poetic traditions such as haiku, and sharing the themes of loneliness and passion that prevailed during the Heian Era, considered Japan’s Golden Age. (Mathy, 212) In the mid -1930’s the traditional themes explored in Snow Country would have helped to define the “Japanese” nation as one that was unique—perhaps even peculiar—possessing a special and beautiful tradition.  This in turn may have contributed to the development of Japanese ideas of superiority that were present in the Pre-War Years, which were often used in justification of Japan’s presence on the Korean peninsula and later its involvement in mainland China.  The themes and even the setting of Snow Country more than likely helped to reinforce the popular image of a venerated, noble and isolated Japanese society at a time when that image could serve political and war room agendas. Snow Country thus was an “art for art’s sake” composition that would easily support an ideology complicit with imperialism.

“It would become a relatively common experience for Japanese writers to experience first hand the Japanese occupational presence in Asia, without letting it touch his/her literary production,” Fujii stated in his “Writing out Asia: Modernity, Canon and Kokoro”.  (Fujii, 174  ) Kawabata is no exception.  He was good friends with, and at times a creative partner to, Yokomitsu Riichi, a revolutionary author forgotten by history but nevertheless important in his own time.  (Phillips, 422) While Kawabata was writing Snow Country, Yokomitsu was busy adding to his already considerable number of works.  In 1935, the same year in which Snow Country was first serialized, Yokomitsu published Shanghai, an account of the experiences of Japanese expatriates in the sprawling metropolis of Shanghai.  In the novel, which would have undoubtedly attracted Kawabata’s attention, Yokomitsu seeks to define what it means to be Japanese outside of Japan.  While Yokomitsu dabbled in many different styles, Kawabata remained sensitive to the unique styles he had been exposed to as a young writer and whereas Yokomitsu would explore Eastern Asia looking for different settings for his works, Kawabata refused to.  One thing true of all of Kawabata’s works is a unity of setting:  every story takes place in modern Japan.  In Snow Country, as in his other works, Kawabata strives to define the Japanese identity in the modern world through bridging the past and the present, tradition and modernity.   However, the absence of Japanese living abroad as either colonizers or expatriates betrays the historical reality of a Japanese population with a considerable presence outside of Japan, especially in Korea and China.  If one were to read Snow Country as a representative work of the 1930’s in Japan, Japan’s legacy abroad would be missing from the picture.  Kawabata’s “print” would be as advertised:  what is omitted is just as important as what is included.  What is omitted is actually a shared history between China, Korea and Japan; a history that Kawabata seems to be content to ignore.

Though Kawabata’s works focus only on the Japanese struggles with modernity, it is important to remember that Kawabata did not view himself as an imperialist.  He may not have perceived Japan as an imperial power at all, and the glaring absences in his works are as readily attributed to his desire for a “pure” and traditional Japan as anything else.  Perhaps he did not intend to paint a realistic and accurate picture of the Japanese, but rather purposefully altered his portrayal of the Japanese.  The ambiguity of Kawabata’s works, the result of these nuances, is what makes Kawabata’s works both compelling and inscrutable.   Many scholars have claimed that the neglect of Korean and Chinese struggles with modernity in his works may have been a consequence of his obsession with Japanese Tradition. (Brown, 375) In 1938, he wrote to a friend that,  “I had gained a full awareness that I was a writer of Japanese traits, and that I would carry on the beauty of the Japanese Tradition.” (Kawabata, 22) Kawabata was an artist who desired to find harmony between man, nature and emptiness.  But to see his works as only pieces of art, above the criticism of scholars, degrades the value of his works because it devalues his great mastery of traditional forms and intense thought. (Phillips, 420) Though no author intends for his work to be canonized, (and admittedly he plays a very limited role in its canonization) canonization nevertheless occurs and literary works like those of Kawabata reach large audiences, influence popular perceptions, and ultimately become “representative.”

In 1940 there is an instance in which Kawabata reveals his knowledge of colonial affairs and the occasional imperial whim in the competition for the Akutagawa Prize.  Kawabata knew about events outside of Japan, even if he did not reference them in his works.  The Akutagawa Prize is named after Ryonosuke Akutagawa, a successful writer of the 1920’s, and is still considered the most prestigious Japanese literary award today. (Kwon, 6)  In 1940, the eventual runner-up was the Korean-national Kim Sa-ryang.  Kawabata praised his “Hikari no naka ni,” a story about finding identity and growing up in colonized Korea, as a great achievement in contemporary Korean Literature.  Though Kim did not win the prize that year, Kawabata is rumored to have favored his work, if only because he had sympathy for Kim’s being a Korean; this serves as an indicator of Kawabata’s patronizing attitude toward Korean writers, though the work imitated some of the features of the uniquely Japanese “shishosetsu” and was written in Japanese.  This was probably an attitude shared by many Japanese writers at the time.  Kawabata was still at this time a fairly young writer, and many of his greater works were still to come, but none of his later works would address the “Korean Problem” cited in Kim’s “Hikari no naka ni.” (Kwon, 8 ) The story also suggested a Japanese problem—that of being both Korean and Japanese—but Kawabata’s prose fails to address (unlike Kim’s) the Japanese-Korean identity, another absence in the his works.

It has already been established how Kawabata’s connections to Japan’s traditions helped give his works unique connotations.  His works helped to construct an image of the Japanese as a pure people with a two thousand year-old tradition of beauty and singularity.  This is exactly the image that the Japanese government of the 1930’s dedicated vast resources to trying to achieve. In composing this image, Kawabata passively promoted Japanese justification of colonialism. As Donald Keene wrote of Kawabata: “He was esteemed by the militarists even though he had done nothing to ingratiate himself.” (Brown, 379) The absence of Japanese-expatriates, Japanese-Koreans, and the Japanese colonizers and the colonized themselves also contributed to a denial of shared histories, and an indifference to imperialism.  The works of Kawabata also subtly affected the imperial movement in Japan by highlighting the East-West struggle that had preoccupied Japanese writers for decades.  Though he would not take the East-West struggle as far as his protégé, Yukio Mishima, Kawabata nevertheless expressed his antagonism toward Western thought.  In 1938 he noted, “I have never experienced such bitter grief and anguish as belong to the West. I have never found that nihilism and decadence which are Western.” (Kawabata, 22) This is similar to the view of Japanese imperialists, who realized Japan’s imitation of the West, but were nevertheless eager to free themselves from Western entanglements.  To again bring up Yomokitsu’s Shanghai, there were a number of people in Japan, China and Korea who wanted a united Asia strong enough to fend of the West.  Some asianists (as they were called) hoped that Japan, being the most modern and technologically advanced country in East Asia, would colonize Asia and bring its people under one banner. (Yokomitsu, 66) Kawabata, on the other hand, was a believer in Japan’s sacred heritage and would have been against Japan’s involvement in an initiative that sought to bring all of Asia together.  To Kawabata, who in Snow Country reflects on loneliness and isolation, an integrated Asia is a far cry from the ideals of Japanese Tradition.  However, politicians in 1930’s Japan were seeking to redefine Japanese Tradition, and the ambiguity of Kawabata’s works allowed for varying interpretations, some of which were complicit with imperialism.  Kawabata’s works had a wide governmental, public and critical appeal, and it is important to remember that a nation’s identity is largely formed through the interplay of these spheres. (Fujii, 178) It is entirely possible that the many readers of his works were able to draw near opposite conclusions, with some in favor of traditional isolation and others bent on colonization of the East to save Japanese tradition from the onslaught of Western thought.

For decades now, Kawabata’s works have enjoyed large audiences in both Japan and the West.  Both the Japanese and their western counterparts read Kawabata for the same reason:  the ability of his works to communicate universal themes while also glorifying tradition.  Kawabata has been a bridge-builder of sorts when it comes to linking Japan and the West.  (Mathy, 211) Thanks in large part to the attentions of Donald Keene and more especially Edward Seidensticker, two revered Japanologists, Kawabata enjoys great reverence in the English-speaking as well as his home country.  It is important to realize the great influence that scholars such as Keene and Seidensticker had on the canonization of Kawabata’s works.  Canonization is an evolving process, and the way we read works will change as our societies change.  Keene and Seidensticker provided readers with the first interpretations of these novels, and they remain the most authoritative.  Their critical acclaim for Kawabata’s works elevated his literature to a higher plane where the traditional themes of Kawabata’s works, coupled with their own preoccupation with traditional themes, worked together to create an image of a Japan free of imperial entanglements.  The Japanologists Seidensticker and Keene gave Western audiences an impression of Japan that was appropriately passive at the time considering there were still American misgivings about the Japanese after World War II; today, however, that popular image of a Japan without an imperial legacy only contributes to the denial of historical fact.

The ultimate result of Seidensticker’s efforts to translate Kawabata, and Keene’s mission to bring Japanese classics to the West, was Kawabata’s Nobel Prize.  (Brown, 375) Nowhere is the praise of Kawabata higher, the obsession with his “Japaneseness” greater, or the desire to understand his antagonism toward the West, better displayed than in the Nobel Presentation Speech.

In common with his older countryman, Tanizaki, now deceased, he has admittedly been influenced by modern western realism, but, at the same time, he has, with greater fidelity, retained his footing in Japan’s classical literature and therefore represents a clear tendency to cherish and preserve a genuinely national tradition of style. In Kawabata’s narrative art it is still possible to find a sensitively shaded situation poetry which traces its origin back to Murasaki’s vast canvas of life and manners in Japan about the year 1000. He has experienced his country’s crushing defeat and no doubt realizes what the future demands in the way of industrial go-ahead spirit, tempo and vitality. But in the postwar wave of violent Americanization, his novel is a gentle reminder of the necessity of trying to save something of the old Japan’s beauty and individuality for the new.

In awarding Japan its first Nobel Prize in Literature, the Committee brought worldwide attention to the works of Japan’s premier modern writer and also to the classical works of Japan that he incorporated into his writings; works that they stated would help to “preserve a genuinely national tradition of style.”  Three works were cited by the Committee as demonstrating Kawabata’s mastery of the traditional Japanese traits of melancholy, loneliness, nature and poetry.  The most perfect among them was The Old Capital, the work that Kawabata called his “abnormal product.”  The story takes place in Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan, which Kawabata brings to life with descriptions of its summer-time festivals and camphor tree lined parks.  The city is a symbol of Japan, a cultural and historical center that Kawabata subtly suggests is undergoing major transformations. (Brown, 378) It is interesting that the Nobel committee selected this work, which includes an elegiac testament to Japan’s traditional city and a compelling case for its evolution, as Kawabata’s best.  However, it is not altogether surprising.  The Committee has served as an agent of canonization, and its endorsement of a work attesting to the Japanese Tradition and warning against Western transgression into Japanese culture affirms and strengthens the denial of shared histories in Kawabata’s works.  The Committee effectively placed greater emphasis on Japan and the West, and in so doing diverted attention away from the imperial legacy of Japan.  The Old Capital was Kawabata’s “gentle reminder” to the Japanese to reflect on the effects of the “violent wave of Americanization” that were causing the erosion of traditional values and practices.

In 1968, the year Yasunari Kawabata won the Nobel Prize for Literature, only three of his works had been translated into English; Snow Country, Thousand Cranes, The Old Capital, all of which were cited by the committee as qualifying Kawabata for the award.  In the fifties, Donald Keene introduced his Anthology of Japanese Literature to English-speaking audiences.  Naturally, readership of the Japanese poetry and Heian period Classics that he included in his volumes went up, and prompted a higher demand for Japanese authors.  The authors that were translated, namely Soseki, Kawabata, Tanizaki and the relative newcomer Mishima, were chosen for their great literary talent as well as their connection to the classics that Keene had introduced.  For years, the only available books by Japanese authors were those by such masters, and so the translators, who also had a hand in affecting the decision of the Nobel Committee, steered Japan’s literary canon in a direction away from writings that addressed a Japanese imperial legacy.  Only recently, have the works of the likes of Kim Sa-Ryang, Lee Sang and Yuasa Katsuei—colonial writers—garnered serious scholarly attention.  It may be much longer still before they reach the mainstream, and with such denial of shared histories present over all of East Asia there are doubts as to whether they ever will.

References

Brown, Sidney D. “Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972): Tradition versus Modernity.” World Literature Today 62.3 (1988): 375-79. Print.

Fujii, James A. “Writing Out Asia: Modernity, Canon, and Kokoro.” N. pag. Print.

Kwon, Nayoung Aimee. “Empire, Nation, and Minor Writer:

“Colonized I-Novel” and the Conundrum of Representing the Colonized.”

Kawabata, Yasunari. “A Thematic Study of the Works of Kawabata Yasunari.” The Journal-Newsletter of the Association of Teachers of Japanese 5.2 (1968): 22-31. Print.

Kawabata, Yasunari. Old Capital. Emeryville, CA: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2006. Print.

Kawabata, Yasunari. Snow Country. New York: Vintage Books, 1996. Print.

Mathy, Frank. “Kawabata Yasunari : Bridge-builder to the West.” Monumenta Nipponica 24.3 (1969): 211-17. Print.

“Nobel Prize in Literature 1968 – Presentation Speech.” Nobelprize.org. Web. 03 Dec. 2009. <http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1968/press.html>.

Phillips, Brian. “The Tyranny of Beauty: Kawabata.” The Hudson Review 59.3 (2006): 419-28. Print.

Riichi, Yokomitsu,, and Yokomitsu Riichi. Shanghai A Novel (Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies, 33). New York: University of Michigan, 2001. Print.

Readers' Comments