Kawabatas Japan
An early perspective on a subject in vogue.
On receiving the nobel prize for literature in 1968, Yasunari Kawabata appeared before his audience dressed in Kimono, to present (in Japanese) his lecture ‘Myself of Beautiful Japan’. In it he made reference to the classical Japanese poetry of the 12th Century, and the female-penned Heian texts which are to this day regarded as the finest works of Japanese fiction.
He was a staunch traditionalist, his attitude summed up with just two words Inheritance and Preservation. Even in the late sixties, Kawabata had observed the degradation of what he felt was Japan - Distinct, unique and unfaltering in it’s sense of pride as an Island nation set apart from it’s continental and global neighbours.
The late sixties were a time of great mutual influence, particularly between Japan and the US, with thousands of troops still stationed in Japan, and with the hippy movement of the time seeing in Japan something which it could adopt as it’s own. The Zen ideal, the reverence for nature, and the complete faith in a peaceful state. Kawabata however, saw this for exactly what it was, the commodification of something he felt could not be appreciated in the godless west, and without the extraordinary beauty of Japan as its backdrop.
Kawabata is out of fashion in modern Japan, his literature thought by many to be too strictly nationalist in its message. He was unblinking in the purity of his work. Nowhere in ‘Snow Country’ will you see western terminology used in place of traditional Japanese words. He simply ignored the closing of the classic era of Japanese Literature in favour of the new, modern age. He longed to be a part of the Heian literary age, and even adopted the ‘feminine’ writing system used by the courtesses some seven hundred years before him.
The war-weary world which awarded him his Nobel Prize was quite probably a little miffed when he appeared before them to condemn the west, and to try and make them appreciate that Japan was not some theme-park like exotic nation, from which they could pick and choose cultural nodes to take back home. Japan, for Kawabata was:
In the spring, cherry blossoms, in the summer the cuckoo.
In autumn the moon, and in winter the snow, clear, cold.
Buddhist Priest - Dogen (1200-1253)
