Contents
Yasunari Kawabata
Writing Snow Country and becoming Japan’s first Nobel laureate in literature.
Snow Country · Thousand Cranes
- Born
- 11 June 1899
- Birthplace
- Osaka, Japan
- Died
- 16 April 1972
More people
Yasunari Kawabata
Yasunari Kawabata was a Japanese writer whose spare, lyrical fiction explored beauty, memory and emotional distance.
Early life
Early loss
Lost his parents in childhood and was raised by relatives.
University
Studied at Tokyo Imperial University.
Career
- 1924
Literary magazine
Co-founded Bungei Jidai.
- 1930s onward
Major fiction
Developed the novels that established his reputation.
- 1968
Nobel Prize
Became Japan’s first literature laureate.
Selected work
Snow Country
Developed a story of an elusive relationship in a hot-spring town.
Thousand Cranes
Set desire and inherited tensions around tea ceremony culture.
The Old Capital
Explored family and tradition in Kyoto.
Beyond work
Literary service
Led Japan’s PEN organisation.
Art
Collected and wrote about Japanese visual art.
Sources & photo credit
Life, career and references ↗Nobel Prize biography and award ↗Photo: Unknown author Unknown author. Public domain · Original image. Cropped and displayed in monochrome.
