Yukio Mishima

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

Born into a well-established family in Osaka, Japan, Kawabata was orphaned by the time he was four, after which he lived with his grandparents. His grandmother died in September 1906, when he was seven; his older sister died when he was 11; and his grandfather died in May 1914, when he was fifteen. Having lost all close paternal relatives, he moved in with his mother's family, the Kurodas. In January 1916 he moved into a boarding house near his junior high school. After graduating in March 1917, he moved to Tokyo just before his 18th birthday and was admitted to the First Higher School in September 1917. He secured admission to the Faculty of Letters at Tokyo University and matriculated in July 1920, studying English literature. The young Kawabata was enamoured of the works of Rabindranath Tagore. One of his painful love episodes was with Hatsuyo Itō (1906–1951), whom he met when he was 20. They were engaged in 1921, but only one month later she broke off the engagement for unclear reasons. Kawabata never completely recovered from the blow. While still a university student, he re-established the Tokyo University literary magazine Shin-shichō and published his first short story, 'Shokonsai ikkei' ('A View from Yasukuni Festival') in 1921. He changed faculties to Japanese literature and wrote a graduation thesis titled 'A short history of Japanese novels', graduating in March 1924.

Reader's Guide

In October 1924, Kawabata, Riichi Yokomitsu and other young writers started a new literary journal Bungei Jidai (The Artistic Age), a reaction to the entrenched old school of Japanese literature and in opposition to proletarian literature. The term Shinkankakuha focused on offering 'new sensations' or 'new perceptions' in writing. Kawabata started to achieve recognition after graduating, receiving acclaim for 'The Dancing Girl of Izu' in 1926. In the 1920s he lived in Asakusa, Tokyo, and experimented with different styles, including stream-of-consciousness in Suishō gensō (Crystal Fantasy). He met his wife Hideko in 1925 and they registered their marriage on 2 December 1931. In 1933, Kawabata protested publicly against the arrest, torture and death of the young leftist writer Takiji Kobayashi. He relocated to Kamakura in 1934. One of his most famous novels, Snow Country, was started in 1934 and first published in installments from 1935 through 1937. After World War II, his success continued with novels such as Thousand Cranes, The Sound of the Mountain, The House of the Sleeping Beauties, Beauty and Sadness, and The Old Capital. The book Kawabata himself considered his finest work, The Master of Go (1951), is a semi-fictional recounting of a major Go match in 1938. He left many of his stories apparently unfinished, equating his form of writing with the traditional haiku. He also worked as a reporter, most notably for the Mainichi Shimbun. As the president of Japanese P.E.N. for many years after the war (1948–1965), Kawabata was a driving force behind the translation of Japanese literature into English and other Western languages. He was awarded the Goethe...

Did You Know?

• Kawabata was the first Japanese author to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded in 1968.
• He was orphaned by age four and had lost all close paternal relatives by age 15.
• An unsent love letter to Hatsuyo Itō was found at his former residence in Kamakura in 2014.
• He re-established the Tokyo University literary magazine Shin-shichō while still a university student.
• Kawabata served as president of Japanese P.E.N. from 1948 to 1965.