Great Master's Picture Gallery - Ancient Capital

Author: Yasunari Kawabata
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-04-27
Features: From Snow Country to The Thousand Cranes and Koto, the publication of these works demonstrated that Yasunari Kawabata had already contemplated 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 to create the beauty of the Heian Court, as well as the historical experience of absorbing Western culture over the past century since the Meiji Restoration 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 integrated Western literary influences into the spirit and form of Japanese classical tradition, more consciously establishing his position as a "common bridge and thinker connecting Eastern and Western cultures."