Japan, the Beautiful, and Myself

by Yasunari Kawabata

Book by Kawabata, Yasunari

Genres: Japan, Japanese Literature, Nonfiction, Nobel Prize, Essays, History

81 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Yasunari Kawabata (川端 康成) was a Japanese short story writer and novelist whose spare, lyrical, subtly-shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author to receive the award. His works have enjoyed broad international appeal and are still widely read today.
Nobel Lecture: 1968
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prize...

Reviews

[Jason Keenan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short look at Japanese literature and art - or more correctly what is behind these things - make up that was Yasunari Kawabata's Nobel Prize for Literature acceptance speech in 1968.

In the span of 30 pages he leaps to the roots of Japanese arts in the 10th and 11th centuries. What's clear is the highest art is about what is not there rather than what is there. As well it's not so much about what is shown - but what it represents. Symbolism is the key. That's why a Japanese garden of stone and sand can represent not only mountains and fields but also rivers and waves. The same holds across literature, painting, and flower arranging.

A fascinating look into the heart of art.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 1968, Yasunari Kawabata became the first winner of the Nobel Prize in literature from Japan. At the time, only two of his novels had been translated into English, Snow Country and Thousand Cranes. It is perhaps fitting, then, that his acceptance speech, Japan, the Beautiful, and Myself, was his first work written for a Western audience. As far as speeches go, it is a most unusual one, and yet it is quintessentially Kawabata. In it, he discusses the “essence of the Japanese mind,” the quality in his works that was responsible for him winning the prize. Kawabata explores that essence — the spirit of Zen — as found in the works of twelfth-century poet-priests, in the ritual of the tea ceremony, in Japanese landscape gardening, in the spirit of Oriental painting.

Kawabata was a most contemporary writer but saw himself as a descendant of art and literature and a “spirit of the age” of nearly eight hundred years earlier. In his speech, he makes no reference to himself until the final paragraph: “Here we have the emptiness, the nothingness of the Orient. My own works have been described as works of emptiness, but it is not to be taken for the nihilism of the West. The spiritual foundation would seem to be quite different.” It is, for those of us who count themselves as fans of Kawabata, utterly fitting and entirely revealing, and is, perhaps, the best litmus test for anyone contemplating an exploration of his writings.

[Antonio Margal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me puse a "hojearlo" anoche y termine leyéndolo todo de nuevo. Cada vez descubro más cosas entre las letras de Kawabata, los japoneses tienen una manera muy particular y muy bella de ver la vida a traves del arte.

2 fragmentos (de muchos) que explotan con ese minimalismo japonés que permea el zen.

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Una sola flor deslumbra más que cien flores.
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El blanco, que parece incoloro, además de resultar el color más puro, contiene en sí a todos los demás.
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Muchas veces se nos olvida, lo importante que es eso: disfrutar el paisaje.

[Shu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this most prominent Japanese writer’s essays is such a overwhelmingly beautiful thing. Indulging myself in his signature nostalgic and ultra-delicate world is absolutely luxurious experience. So many exquisite words and sentences that I wish I could imprint in my mind and never forget.

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like his books

[Devrim Güven]

Mishima vs. Kawabata
Free PDF available @ https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/fe/is...
In all his public statements Yukio Mishima expressed his joy and pride for Yasunari Kawabata. However, such a warm response was nothing but simply a “mask” that he (who was always posited as the faithful friend, even some sort of pupil of Kawabata in the discourses of Japanese literary history and criticism) wore to dissimulate his true feelings and thoughts. He was especially dissatisfied with Kawabata’s Nobel lecture. In his speech Kawabata constructed an “esoteric and nihilistic metaphysical discourse” by citing obscure lines from works of medieval Zen poetry, emphasising how effective Zen Buddhism had been in the formation of Japanese culture’s “beauty” (Güven, 2018: 278). What disturbed Mishima was that such an overwhelmingly self-glorifying nationalistic representation of Japanese culture built around the image of “beauty” was not restricted to premodern times, but it was through an implicit ambiguity and vagueness connected to contemporary Japan.

How can one verify Mishima’s critical reaction? For understanding it, one should carefully read his posthumously published latest work, The Decay of the Angel (天人五衰, 1971), the fourth and last book of The Sea of Fertility tetralogy 『( 豊饒の海』四部作). In this work, Mishima tacitly criticised Kawabata’s vision of Japan and Japanese culture, that he presented in his Nobel speech, particularly, almost in all episodes of Kinué, who suffers a “delirious depression,” which was triggered by an “unfortunate love affair.” She is constantly under the delusion that she is the most “beautiful” woman in the world, while she is in fact very “ugly”:

Kinué was the daughter of a wealthy landowner. She had been somewhat strange since an unfortunate love affair, and she had been in a mental hospital for six months. She had a curious syndrome described as delirious depression or depressed intoxication or something of the sort. There had been no serious outburst since, and it had settled into a conviction that she was the most beautiful girl in the world (Mishima, 2001: 34).

Mishima, who thought that the post-war Japanese society betrayed its cultural roots and sold its soul to the devil called materialism (Güven, 2020: 58), found Kawabata’s embellishment of Japan around the image of “beauty” in his speech, ridiculous and abstract. Kinué was the perfect tool for ruthlessly satirising Kawabata’s aestheticisation of Japan, as it was to Mishima nothing but a delusional self-deception.
Hence, we can conclude that in his last work, The Decay of the Angel, Mishima sublimates his wrath of losing the Nobel Prize to Kawabata, whom he thought had only a shallow understanding of traditional Japanese culture, as well as his discontent with his Nobel lecture entitled “Japan the Beautiful and Myself” into the level of art. Furthermore, losing the prize inspired him to write his last and one of his most “beautiful” works of non- European language world literature canon.

"How has the Nobel Prize Affected the Canonisation of Japanese Literature?" (2021) by Devrim Çetin Güven
Free PDF available @ https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/fe/is...

[Stephen Miletus · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first edition of this book will be something of a surprise to the reader: one half is the Japanese original which is read with the spine on the right, & the other half is the English translation by E.G. Seidensticker which is read with the spine on the left. Both are how books are published in their native countries. The pages are numbered from the start of the Japanese original, so this will be a bit confusing to the Western reader.

The structure of Kawabata's essay may also puzzle the reader. It has been said that unlike in the West Japanese essayists do not explicitly state the thesis of their work, but circle around it & in the end when the Western reader expects a conclusion to be drawn, the Japanese essayist simply walks away.

Nonetheless, this essay presents several insights to Kawabata's art, not only providing hints of his intent in his novels then available to Western readers, but how he saw his own writings fitting into the rich tradition of Japanese literature.

[Gabriel · Rating 5 out of 5]

<3 <3 <3

[Tair Berlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

להרצאה הזו הוא קורא הקדמה, וזו המילה הנכונה כי אני רוצה ללמוד ולקרוא עוד עליו, על יפן, על זן ויופי.

[Đào Kiên]

Không biết nói gì... Nhìn chung là những chia sẻ về văn chương. Rất hàn lâm, không quen nên cũng không ấn tượng gì

[Helen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is bilingual, in Japanese and English. It is the acceptance speech of an author who won the Nobel Prize for Literature. It discusses Japanese culture and the arts.

[d · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The time of the snows, of the moon, of the blossoms------then more than ever we think of our comrades." (...)
The excitement of beauty calls forth strong fellow feelings, yearnings for companionship, and the word "comrade" can be taken to mean "human being".

Citas en el texto –

Autores
*
Dōgen
Myöe
Saigyō
Ryokan
Ikkyu
Izumi Shikibu
Akazome Emon
Ono No Komachi

Obras
The Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra
Kokinshu: A Collection of Poems Ancient and Modern
The Shinkokinshu
The Tales of Ise
The Tale of Genji
The Pillow Book
Thousand Cranes
*

[Ananko-san · Rating 4 out of 5]

irgendwie hatte ich mir diese Novelle anders vorgestellt. Beziehungsweise ich hatte gedacht, dass es sich bei diesem Buch um eine Novelle handelt. Das es aber tatsächlich "nur" die Rede ist, die Kawabata bei der Übergabe des Nobelpreises gehalten hat, wusste ich vorher nicht.
Diese Tatsache hat der Qualität des Textes aber keinesfalls einen Abbruch getan. Ich fand das Werk sprachlich ganz bemerkenswert und habe, da ich es auf englisch gelesen habe, meine Wörterbücher ordentlich zum Qualmen gebracht. Das spricht schon mal für einen sehr variantenreichen Sprachgebrauch. Etwas das mir sehr wichtig ist.
Sehr beeindruckt, hat mich die Tatsache, dass ich mich nicht bei dieser Rede halb zu Tode gelangweilt habe, wie es mir sonst leider meist ergeht, sondern, dass ich gespannt alles bis zum Ende gelesen haben.
Besonders schön fand ich auch die Einbindung verschiedener Haiku in den Text der Rede.
Diese etwas andere Tour durch die japanische Ästhetik, Spiritualität, Poesie, die Teekunst und das Ikebana jedenfalls war sehr aufschlussreich und hochinteressant.

[Benedek Toth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kawabata's Nobel Lecture on Japanese literature, poetry, nature, Zen, flowers, gardening, ancient history, and delicate emotions...can't go wrong with that :)

"I have an essay with the title 'Eyes in their Last Extremity'. The title comes from the suicide note of the short-story writer Akutagawa. It is the phrase that pulls at me with the greatest strength."

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Here we have the emptiness, the nothingness, of the Orient. My own works have been described as works of emptiness, but it is not to be taken for the nihilism of the West."

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Into it, but it's kind of a pamphlet, you know?

[Kì Diệu Ếch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dù thích Kawabata nhưng vì đây là một bài phát biểu ngắn thôi nên mình chỉ định sẽ cho 4 sao trước khi đọc.
Nhưng tất nhiên là đọc xong sẽ chẳng thể bỏ rơi một sao nào cho tác giả được.

[Pato Padula · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una introducción magistral a la literatura japonesa y su estética.