Beauty and Sadness by Yasunari Kawabata
Posted in Other fiction, Reading Reviewed at 12:00 on 19 January 2016
Penguin Modern Classics, 1986, 160 p.Translated from the Japanese Utsukushisa To Kanashimi To by Howard Hibbett. (First published by Chuo koronsha, Tokyo, 1961.)
Twenty-four years before the time of the narrative, when he was thirty, Oki Toshio had an affair with fifteen year-old Ueno Otoko. Her subsequent pregnancy led to a still birth and a stay in a mental institution, experiences Toshio, a writer, parlayed into his best-selling novel A Girl of Sixteen, much to the chagrin of his wife, Fumiko. Otoko meanwhile moved to Kyoto, has become a successful painter in the Japanese style and taken on a young pupil, Sakami Keiko. For New Year Toshio decides to hear the traditional bells from Kyoto at New Year’s Eve for himself and contacts Otoko to see if she wishes to join him for the celebration. She sends Keiko (who is also her lover) to greet him and has her accompany Toshio throughout his visit. But, as Otoko says, Keiko is “a bit crazy,” a trait which drives the plot.
Though I am not unfamiliar with Japanese fiction this is the first work by Nobel Laureate Kawabata that I have read. Beauty and Sadness is compelling and interesting but whether it is due to the translation or the fact the source is Japanese there is something distancing about the text, a barrier between the reader and the character’s emotions. We are told they are present but they somehow seem to be held behind a layer of reserve. Kawabata’s back catalogue is one I’ll look out for though.
Pedant’s corner:- a missing period at the end of one sentence, another appears on the line after its own sentence, exquisie (exquisite,) the word order of, “Balconies line the river banks for drinking and feasting” is a little awry, “‘It’s hard to believe you’re idea you’d come out to meet me,’” doesn’t need the “you’re idea”, and is immediately followed by “‘My kimono?’” which is a baffling non-sequitur, tidbits (titbits,) “had not sent a telegram to Otoko or Keiko” (to Okoto nor Keiko,) “quite apart from weakness of strength of will” (apart from weakness or strength of will,) “at they drove” (as they drove.)
