Kawabata Yasunari (to give his name in its usual Japanese order, family name first) was one of the major Japanese novelists of the twentieth century, and the first Japanese writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (in 1968). His career spanned about fifty years, from the early 1920s until the early 1970s, and during this period – a time of tumultuous political upheaval and radical cultural change in the history of modern Japan – he produced novels considered exemplary for the unique way they blend traditional Japanese aesthetics with the latest Western modernist techniques. Although often described as an apolitical aesthete, Kawabata was actually a kind of “gentle” cultural nationalist and political conservative who nostalgically mourned the passing of traditional Japan and…
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Citation: Starrs, Roy Anthony. "Yasunari Kawabata". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 06 November 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12091, accessed 25 April 2024.]
