Who Is Yasunari Kawabata?

Yasunari Kawabata was the first Japanese novelist to win the Nobel Prize for literature in 1968. The works of this Japanese author are always referred to as lyrical and melancholy. His works are a fine blend of ancient beauty and modern viewpoints, the realistic and the surreal.

Yasunari Kawabata studied literature at Tokyo University, and his first works were published in literary journals which opposed modern realistic writing. They were influenced by the surreal approach such as that common in European avant-garde literature, looking for a new writing style.

Yasunari Kawabata gained recognition throughout Japan for his abundant collection of work that displayed a constant change in style, from his stream of conscious writing technique to semi-fictitious observational works.

His writing reached world renowned status from 1960 onwards. He lectured in the United States and famously publicly condemned Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution, before receiving the Nobel Prize. His career and life ended in 1972 after a successful suicide attempt.