Kawabata, Yasunari << kah wuh BAH tuh, yah soo NAHR ee >> (1899-1972), was the first Japanese author to win the Nobel Prize in literature. Kawabata won the prize in 1968 for his novels. Much of his best writing reflects feelings of loneliness and a preoccupation with death. His fiction shows the influence of both Japanese and Western poetry. His novels utilize symbols and images as much as characterization and plot to tell their stories.
Kawabata was born on June 11, 1899, in Osaka. His first successful book was the partly autobiographical novel The Izu Dancer (1926). Kawabata is best known for three novels. Snow Country (1948) was written between 1935 and 1937 and revised in 1947. It deals with the relationship between a man of artistic sensibility and a beautiful geisha. Thousand Cranes (1949) is a partial sequel to Snow Country. It explores the relationship between a young man and his father’s former mistresses and one of their daughters. The Sound of the Mountain (1952), like Kawabata’s other major fiction, portrays a lonely young man trying to find comfort in a young woman’s beauty and goodness. Kawabata died on April 16, 1972.
