Yasunari Kawabata

Palm-of-the-Hand Stories is the name Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata gave to more than 140 short stories he wrote over his long career, though he reputedly preferred the reading Tanagokoro for the 掌 character. The earliest story was published in 1920 with the last appearing posthumously in 1972. The stories are …

The Old Capital is one of the three novels cited specifically by the Nobel Committee when they awarded Kawabata the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968. With the ethereal tone and aesthetic styling characteristic of Kawabata's prose, The Old Capital tells the story of Chieko, the adopted daughter of a Kyoto kimono …

The successful writer Oki has reached middle age and is filled with regrets. He returns to Kyoto to Otoko, a young woman with whom he had a terrible affair many years before, and discovers that she is now a painter, living with a younger woman as her lover. Otoko has continues to love Oki and has never forgotten him, …

Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata’s Snow Country is widely considered to be the writer’s masterpiece: a powerful tale of wasted love set amid the desolate beauty of western Japan. At an isolated mountain hot spring, with snow blanketing every surface, Shimamura, a wealthy dilettante meets Komako, a lowly geisha. …