Penguin, 1971, 204 p. Translated from the Japanese 雪国 (Yukinugi) and 雪国 (Senbazuru) by Edward G Seidenstecker. First published in English in 1956 and 1958, respectively.

This book contains two of the author’s novels, Snow Country and Thousand Cranes. Kawabata is also known as a poet and some of his sentences here are short and enigmatic, as in haiku. The nuances of Japanese culture can perhaps never be properly illuminated by a translation; there is though something ineluctably Japanese about the two tales – at least to someone brought up with no contact with the country – a sort of understanding not fully expressed by the prose.

Snow Country is the story of the relationship between Shimamura, who goes on a trip from the city to the hot springs of the snow country of Western Japan, and Komako, a local part-time geisha. On the train there Shimamura observes the ministrations of a young woman named Yoko to a young man who is obviously ill, returning to his home to die. Yoko is an off-screen presence for most of the novel, though her importance to Shimamura, perhaps as some sort of ideal, is not in doubt. It is his dealings with Komako that take up most of the story though, a liaison never completely spelled out but indicated by implication, yet most likely utterly transparent to a Japanese reader.

Thousand Cranes is a bit more straightforward. As a boy, Kikuji was once brought by his father to a meeting with his mistress, Chikako, when he glimpsed the birthmark on her left breast. Years later, after his father’s death, his mother also being dead, Chikako unwarrantedly assumes loco parentis and tries to inveigle him into marrying Yokiko Inamura, who on introduction to him wore a dress decorated with pictures of cranes. He is not interested. Instead, he becomes briefly involved with Mrs Ota, who had replaced Chikako as his father’s mistress, and friendly with her daughter Fumiko. A lot of their interactions are mediated through the rituals of the tea ceremony and of gifts and usage of various kinds of Japanese pottery.

These two short novels were interesting reading, if a little opaque to my anglophone sensibilities.

Despite this being in translation (albeit into USian) amazingly I found not a single typo or any other possible entrant for Pedant’s corner in this book.

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.)