Yasunari Kawabatas Masterpiece Yukiguni Research Paper

Yasunari Kawabatas Masterpiece Yukiguni - Research Paper ExampleAfter his parents untimely deaths, he came to be raised by his maternal grandfather. He lost his grandparents at a young senesce either and by the time of his teens, was bereft of most of his close relatives. While graduating from the Tokyo Imperial University, Kawabata contributed to the magazine publisher Bungei Shunju, which brought him to the attention of editors and well-known writers of that time, including author Kan Kikuchi. He went on to become champion of the founders of Bundei Jidai (or the artistic age), a publication that became the medium for a new movement in modern Japanese literature. Kawabata also worked for a time as journalist and claimed himself to be deeply moved by World War II, which was patently one of the greatest influences on his work. Kawabata allegedly committed suicide in 1972 by gassing himself, although this has non been conclusively proven. It is certain however that the early loss of his family and, by his own admission, the horrors of the war, left his work with a tinge of melancholy and sense of insecurity and loss. He was the first of twain Japanese Nobel laureates Oe Kenzaburo being the some other and is perhaps globally, the best-known Japanese writer in contemporary times, although his status in his native demesne as an author is still widely debated among critics (Miyoshi). Kawabatas literary style is characterized by its free move vision. He uses surprisingly original and unusual images in his stories that emphasize the poetic quality of his writing. In Yukiguni (Snow pastoral) for instance, the imagery employed is especially effective and beautiful in telling the emotionally charged love bilgewater of the geisha and the dilettante from Tokyo. Masao Miyoshi, in his review of Yasunari Kawabata talks about this dependence of visualization as a offspring of his being essentially a short- drool writer. Reiko Tsukimara in A Thematic Study of the Works of Kawabata Yasunari identifies ryoshu and aishu as two primary elements in Kawabatas work. Ryoshu is described as an intense emotional realization that you assimilate found a home of your soul and aishu translates to sorrow (Tsukimara 23). According to Tsukimara, these two emotions recur in Kawabatas writing most persistently. They appear together as the recognition of finding a home for ones soul or ryoshu is accompanied by a sense of profound sorrow or aishu as well. This subject will seek to explore what previous scholars have already commented on Kawabatas writing technique and thematic concerns and test them on what has been called his masterpiece by Edward G. Seidensticker, Yukiguni or Snow Country. The paper will also explore if there are departures from his usual style and from what scholars like Tsukimara and Miyoshi assert. And finally, it will endeavor to make fresh observations on Kawabatas style through the study of Snow Country. Snow Country began as a short story that was promulgated in 1935 in a literary journal. It was published serially, with Kawabata reworking later, between 1935 and 1937. A new ending and a collation of seven pre-existing versions appeared in 1937. Kawabata over again worked on the story and between 1940 and 1941 the story was again published in journals in two sections. These two sections were merged by Kawabata in 1946, with another piece added in 1947. The book as it stands today was the result of combining nine previous versions, published in 1948 (Seidensticker). This complex and long publication history of the story and the its piecemeal nature as Seidensticker calls it in his introduction to Snow Countrys translation reiterates the supposition of Kawabata as being primarily a short-story writer. The repeated editing and elaborating of what began as a