Ancient Capital (The Only Global Illustrated Treasure Edition)

Author: Kawabata Yasunari
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-04-01
Features: From Snow Country to The Thousand Cranes and Koto, his works demonstrated that Kawabata was contemplating the issues of tradition and modernity, as well as local and foreign influences at a higher theoretical level. He summarized the experience and lessons of absorbing and assimilating Chinese Tang Dynasty culture a thousand years ago, which created the beauty of the Heian Court, as well as the historical experience of absorbing Western culture over a hundred years since the Meiji Era but failing to fully digest it. Combining his own creative practice, he proposed that one should "adopt a Japanese approach to absorption from the very beginning, learning according to Japanese tastes and then fully Japaneseizing it." In practice, he dissolved Western literary influences into the spiritual and formal traditions of Japanese classical culture, more consciously establishing his position as a "common thinker bridging Eastern and Western cultures." Koto depicts the touching story of a pair of twin sisters who grow up in drastically different socioeconomic backgrounds. The delicate Chokako and the upright, healthy Naoko, who resemble the vitality of a pine tree in the northern mountains, begin their dramatic life journey but end it prematurely—this can be said to be the charm of Koto. The author's aesthetic sensibility is particularly embodied in Naoko, as he believes that rather than allowing the already achieved "pure moment" to collapse, Kawabata inherited the beauty of lightness, innocence, and faint melancholy from The Tale of Genji, which is one of his most prominent traits. In his novels Snow Country and Koto, there is a strong sense of lyrical sentiment and melancholy.