Yasunari Kawabata

Born: 11 June 1899, Osaka, Japan

Died: 16 April 1972, Zushi, Japan

Experienced family deaths before he was 10

Studied literature at Tokyo Imperial University from 1920 to 1924
One of the founders of the journal Bungei Jidai "The Artistic Age, where they advocated
Shinkankaku (Neo-Sensualism), opposing the realistic school of writing
Gained his first critical success with the novella Izu-no Odoriko (The Izu Dancer) by1925
Published his most famous novel, Yukiguni (The Snow Country) by 1948
Became the first Japanese novelist to win the Nobel Prize for Literature by 1968
Campaigned for conservative political candidates in Japan, and with Yukio Mishima and other
writers, signed an address condemning the Cultural Revolution in China
President of the Japanese PEN club
Committed suicide by gassing himself

Palm-of-the-hand-stories

Written from 1923 to 1972

72 stories, average length is two and a half page each, so short that ideally a story can fit in a palm
Themes involved are life, death, love, memory, forgetting, age, God, mankind, reason, and nature

Death Mask

Summary
The death mask refers to the final hours of a beautiful woman filled with tragic joy. After her death,
her many lovers try to recapture her image.

Characters
The woman A beautiful dying woman whose illness has been kept hidden and was
immortalized using a death mask
Male lover the person who took care of the woman in her dying hours.

Symbol
Death mask A symbol of immortality of a persons face, meaning a remembrance only of their
physical appearance. Signaling, perhaps, that death is not the boundary of a persons beauty.

It also became a symbol of gender blindness. By the end of the story, the lover was
confused why the death mask both looked like a man and a woman. The artist answered the lover,
The distinction of sex ends with death.
Theme
Beautifying Death In the story, makeup was applied to the womans face as if to resurrect, the
fresh, vital beauty the woman had possessed. Theres somehow an importance being put on what a
person looks like even after death.
The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket
Plot
The plot can be described as a journey to a discovery. We see two journeys unfolding in the
story: that of the childrens as they look for the singing insect; and that of the narrators as he
discovers within himself characteristics of both a grasshopper and a bell cricket. The anonymous
student from an unnamed university sees an embankment illumined by multicoloured lanterns after
following the sound of an insects song as he slowly walks along campus. The lanterns belong to
around twenty children who have been searching for insects. The narrator then sees a boy asking his
companions if they would like a grasshopper. The boy ignores the requests of the other children and
decides to repeat the question until a girl finally tells him that she would like it. The boy gives her the
grasshopper, which actually turns out to be a (presumably rarer) bell cricket. This delights the
narrator, thinking that the boy was aware that he actually found a bell cricket and kept it with the
desire to give it to this particular girl.

Point of view/narrator
The narrator of the story is presumably a young adult who is probably in transitional
phases of his or her life. This trait of the narrator is contrasted against the children whom he
follows children who are not (yet) worn out by life or not (yet) jaded
Towards the end, the narrator starts to address the boy in a sort of apostrophe, perhaps a
form of addressing something that he once had but was now gone passion, fascination, a sense of
curiosity and happiness as he makes his way through the world
The narrator remains ungendered and anonymous possibly to draw readers in or serve as
Kawabatas stand-in

Characters
The narrator unnamed and ungendered; has philosophical musings about the childrens insect hunt;
obviously distanced from the children as if peering into childhood only as an observer
Fujio the boy (whose name is revealed by the narrator after seeing its shadow caused by the light of
his lantern on the girls breast)
Kiyoko the girl (whose name is likewise revealed by the narrator after seeing its shadow on the
boys waist)
Imagery
A fitting imagery of obscurity and darkness fits perfectly with the plot of discovery of the
story as it highlights the significance of the symbols of the lanterns, the grasshopper, and the bell
cricket
Important Symbols:
Lantern
each lantern a child carries symbolizes his or her entire being with all its facets, moods, emotions,
thoughts, and spirit.
each lantern bears the owners name which is a further strengthening of the fact that it is the
representation of the childs inner self
 the illumination of the lantern has two levels of meaning: 1) it represents the enlightenment the
children bring upon the narrator and 2) it stands for the abstraction of a childs glowing spirit
which seems to be the key to finding ones way out of the dark in this case in search for a distinct
voice
notice that the narrator has no lantern
The lanterns could also symbolize the transience of youth or the fragility of the present; these
lanterns are handmade yet possibly flimsy and cannot last forever no matter how beautiful they may
be
The Insects
the titular insects are rich symbols, which stand for multiple concepts. The insects can be taken as
symbols of the simple joys of childhood; the insect hunt is tantamount to bliss for these kids. Then,
the supposed rarity of these insects begins to signify love. Fujio subtly gives Kiyoko a bell cricket by
initially claiming that it was a grasshopper; the boy finds a way to insidiously express his love,
disguising it as something else before the other acknowledges it.
Grasshopper
the grasshopper symbolizes those who lose their own voice and their own illumination as they
age and as they are constantly wounded by the things they come across in their lives. They start to
blend with their environment and cease to be special in relation to a bell cricket
Bell cricket
A bell cricket has a distinct voice. It sings and it is the reason people are attracted to it, the reason
people seek it, the reason that it is a valuable, precious insect.
the fact that the bell crickets distinguishable characteristic is its voice corroborates the argument that
what makes one special is not ones appearance but rather an innate quality that sets one apart from
the rest
Play of light
the narrator is the only one who notices the play of light that happens between Fujio and Kiyoko
probably because he is precisely at that point in his life where he becomes wary of what may happen
between two people who may be the cause of each others bliss or demise. We see in the last
paragraph how the narrator addresses Fujio with the assumption that his heart will grow weary and
that love doesnt hold all the promises one is made to think it holds. But because of this, the narrator
discovers that he might have been too jaded and that, perhaps, he should start taking his own advice.

Theme
The divide between childhood and adulthood - The narrator is noticeably distance from the
children; he is from an entirely different world, so romanticizes the simple gesture made by children, possibly
reading into every single detail of this particular exchange; the narrator is an outsider looking in, who appears
to be in search of lost time. His observation of the children and their brief romantic exchange seems to prove
his need for the connection to his more innocent past; he has a difficult time walking away from the
playground. The scene with the gathering of children with their lanterns is expressed as something right out
of a fairy tale, showing the disparity between the two spheres of childhood and adulthood. The narrator,
however, still exhibits the innocent property of a child; he finds joy in watching a simple scene of a boy giving
a girl a bell cricket that he initially believed was a grasshopper (both these insects can also signify the
simplicity of the joys of childhood; the hunt for the insects is a simple game from which they derive their
pleasure), which he believes is a grand, philosophical, and romantic undertaking.
 The Man Who Did Not Smile
Plot
A man is writing a movie script and he wants the last scene to be the special and light. The shoot
takes place in a mental hospital and he hopes he ends the production with bright and joyful. He then gains a
desire to use a smiling mask. Obtaining the masks give them difficulty. Later, his children ask him to wear the
mask; when he declined, his wife obliged. He was horrified of the effect of the mask; it made his wifes face
just as artificial. He decided to remove the masks and change the final scene. In the end, he changed his mind
back to using the masks.

Analysis
In 1926 film director Kinugasa Teinosuke (1896-1972) asked Kawabata to write the scenario for his
first independent production. The collaborative effort is an early and excellent example of avant-gardism in
the Japanese Pure Film movement. (Tyler, 92) The movie begins with a sailor who, because of his absence
and distance from his daughter and wife, causes his wife to go insane and drown their infant child. He then
works as a janitor, or sometimes a handyman, for the asylum to be close to his wife.

Kawabata writes a few autobiographical pieces in Palm of the Hand Stories. His difficulty in writing a
scene is shown in the lines: The mask is no good. Art is no good. I wrote a telegram to send a studio room
in Kyoto. Cut the mask scene. He tore the telegram to shreds. Kawabata successfully portrays a tormented
man who ultimately chose to love art more than reality and who at least tried to trust in the illusions that art
can create. (Napier, 114) Ideas of expressionism (Western Modernism) are put across through the masks and
the mood of the asylum.

Sources:

"Yasunari Kawabata - Facts". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2013. Web. 29 Aug 2013.
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1968/kawabata-facts.html

Hemmann, Kathryn. Palm-of-the-Hand Stories.Contemporary Japanese Literature. Web. 29 Aug 2013.

http://japaneseliterature.wordpress.com/about/

Kawabata, Yasunari. Palm-of-the-hand Stories. Macmillan, 2006.

Kennedy, Patrick. Yasunari Kawabata: Author Profile About.com Web. 29 Aug 2013.
http://literatureintranslation.about.com/od/K/p/KawabataBio.htm

Liukkonen, Petri. Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972) Books and Writers. Ari Pesonen. Kuusankosken
kaupunginkirjasto 2008. Web. 29 Aug 2013. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/kawabata.htm

Napier, S. Monumenta Nipponica. Vol. 44, No. 1 (Spring, 1989), pp. 113-115

Schneider, Jessica. Book Review: Palm-of-the-Hand Stories by Yasunari Kawabata Blogcritics. Web. 29 Aug
2013. http://blogcritics.org/book-review-palm-of-the-hand/

Tyler, William Jefferson, ed. Modanizumu: Modernist Fiction from Japan, 1913-1938. University of Hawaii
Press, 2008.