8 Quotes & Sayings By Yasunari Kawabata

Yasunari Kawabata was born in the Japanese city of Kyoto as the son of a university professor. He began writing from a young age, and by nineteen he had published his first short story. At the end of the Second World War he went to Tokyo, where he worked as a journalist and critic before turning to fiction. In 1949 he won his first literary prize for a story called "The Old Capital" Read more

The following year, he married a young woman named Yoko. During the long postwar period, Kawabata produced a series of short stories and novels dealing with the problems of contemporary Japanese society. In 1956 his novel Snow Country was awarded the prestigious Akutagawa Prize.

In 1957 he became a member of Japan's central committee for international literary affairs, and from 1959 to 1963 he held various academic positions at Kyoto University, including that of professor in English literature. In 1961 Kawabata moved to Los Angeles, California. From 1963 to 1968 he served as president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City, and from 1969 until his death at the age of sixty-eight in 1976 he served as president of the Academy Foundation for Literature and Art in Tokyo.

Put your soul in the palm of my hand for...
1
Put your soul in the palm of my hand for me to look at, like a crystal jewel. I'll sketch it in words... Yasunari Kawabata
I wonder what the retirement age is in the novel...
2
I wonder what the retirement age is in the novel business. The day you die. Yasunari Kawabata
Now, even more than the evening before, he could think...
3
Now, even more than the evening before, he could think of no one with whom to compare her. She had become absolute, beyond comparison. She had become decision and fate. Yasunari Kawabata
4
Yet the misty spring rain softened the outline of the mountain across the river and made it even more beautiful. So gentle was the rain that they hardly knew they were getting wet as they strolled back toward the car, not even bothering to put up their umbrella. The slender threads of rain vanished into the river without a ripple. Cherry blossoms were intermingled with young green leaves, the colours of the budding trees all delicately subdued in the rain. . Yasunari Kawabata
5
No, it didn't hurt. He didn't want to lose any black hair, and he was careful to pull out the white hairs one by one. But when he had finished, the skin was drawn and shriveled. It hurt when you ran your hand over it, the doctor said. It didn't bleed, but it was raw and red. Finally he was put in a mental hospital. He didn't want to be old, he wanted to be young again. No one seems to know whether he started pulling it out because he had lost his mind, or he lost his mind because he pulled out too much. Yasunari Kawabata
6
People have separated from each other with walls of concrete that blocked the roads to connection and love. and Nature has been defeated in the name of development. Yasunari Kawabata
7
Because you cannot see him God is everywhere. Yasunari Kawabata