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"
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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.