Talk:Yasunari Kawabata

Untitled
I think the first name is Yasunari, the second Kawabata (in English at least). Pibwl 19:47, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

There is a great debate about Japanese name order in Wikipedia. See Manual of Style for Japan-related articles/Naming order. Until this gets resolved I think we should not make changes. In the original Japanese, the name order is Kawabata Yasunari. CES 21:12, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Dates of works
I'd like to get the dates of the works accurate. One I already fixed (Master of Go), as the date given was that of the English translation. I left the translation date for the moment - do we want to bother with those, or just give the original Japanese publication dates? There is a discrepancy with my sources for Izu Dancer - they give 1925, not the 1927. I have left the latter until we can get a definitive answer. Beauty and Sadness seems to have been published in installments from 1961-65 - can anyone confirm that? Noel (talk) 14:17, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I took the liberty of changing a number of dates and fleshing out Kawabata's earlier life. I did that based on a biography published in Japan in 2004. The dates are corroborated by a number of other sources that I have, though all in Japanese. Truthfully, this is my first time to write anything on Wikipedia, so I thought that my adjustments would go through some kind of review process. I was a little surprised when my changes were immediately reflected on the Kawbata Wikipedia homepage.

Now that I look at the page it is lop sided with lots of information about Kawabata's early childhood and big holes elsewhere. I would like to continue to flesh it out, but also I would like to get the opinion of other web-writers and Kawabata aficionados who have an interest, as well as the original writer, whose prose style is quite good. I have lots of access to information about Kawabata, so I would be happy to check anything out for you all. (comicbooksR4children)

Izu Dancer
The official date of first publication for Izu Dancer is 1926 Jan-Feb.

Palm-of-the-Hand Stories
These stories were not collected and published in english until 1988, and as such, are of less importance to an english-speaking audience. However, the stories were considered central to Kawabata's ouvre by both himself and most of Japanese criticism. They present a wiki difficulty in that not all of the stories appear in all editions: the term palm-of-the-hand stories reffers to all of Kawabata's short short stories, not literally to any one publication. I beleive they deserve mention along side the novels in the body of the article. For discussion of the importance of the work see the introduction to Lane Dunlop and J. Martin Holman's very competent 1988 translation from North Point Press.

From ComicbooksR4children 14:02, 7 January 2007 (UTC)ComicbooksR4children: Unfortunately Holman only translated about half of the works. I am glad to see some more people are working on this. Let's watch our spelling to improve the professional quality of our work!

The third Asian, not second
Kawabata was the third Asian to win Nobel Prize for Literature. The second was Israeli Shmuel_Yosef_Agnon, in 1966. --Avia 29 June 2005 02:56 (UTC)

Asian?
Israel isn't really considered Asia, at least not in the modern era. I won't change it but someone else may want to.--Nomadicworld 14:34, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Israel may plays in European football, etc., but generally, esp. historically and geographically Israel really belongs to Asia, since it's in the Middle East (Southwest Asia). --Avia 02:43, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Forgive me, but I just removed the line. The fact of the mater is that places like the Middle East and Turkey are not included in the definition of "Asia" by a great number of English speakers. Futhermore, I'd also say that the term "Asian", as it was used in the line in question, was not a very good choice of language. In particular, your average American English speaker would most likely interpret "Asian" form the line as referring either, one, people from a country inhabited by an "asian" race (e.g. Japan, China, Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, etc., but certainly not Isreal and the like, and not even India, for instance), or two, people of this racial heritage not necessarily belonging to such a country. Point is, it was a phrasing likely to cause confusion for a significant number of English speakers, and thus I removed it. If someone thinks it needs to be in there, then I suggest significantly revising the line taking into account what I just said here. Reading over the Wikipedia entries for both Asia and Asian would also be recommended.--Kyabetsuyaki 05:32, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I believe his birthday was June 11th, not the 14th, but I might be wrong. It should probably be looked into though.

Birthday
I believe his birthday was June 11th, not the 14th, but I might be wrong. It should probably be looked into though.
 * The Japanese Wikipedia page has it at June 14th as well ... can you find a source that suggests otherwise? CES 04:35, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
 * After searching for about 20 seconds, I was able to find one page that lists him as the 11th. (http://k-z-y.hp.infoseek.co.jp/tanjobi/06-2.html) Of course this is just a random internet page, and there are other pages that list him as the 14th also, so it certainly doesn't prove anything. Still they did assumably got the information from somewhere, so perhaps there is some uncertainty regarding his birthdate. Perhaps someone would be willing to look further into the matter? :) --Kyabetsuyaki 13:54, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I just checked some biographical and criticism databases confirming the 11th, I'm going to make the edit.
 * This is a truly bizarre situation ... I became curious so I tried to find his real birthday in the Japanese print sources I had and on the internet. Most cited the 14th, but many had the 11th instead!  I think [this site] might solve the mystery: apparently Kawabata himself mistakenly thought his birthday was the 11th and did not find out until the year before he died that it was really the 14th!  I just searched again and found another site that says the same thing.  If anyone can find another source that disputes this, please say something.  Otherwise, it appears he was indeed born the 14th. CES 03:37, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Suicide
I found an article about the Master of Go. At the end, it is said that Kawabata committed suicide wearing a western polo shirt. Could this be significant enough to be put in the article? Here is the article: http://beta.uschess.org/frontend/magazine_124_125.php

This page lacks proper citing.
For example:

"The book which he himself considered his finest work, The Master of Go (1951) is a severe contrast with his other works."

Where was this information found? ComicbooksR4children 14:24, 20 December 2006 (UTC)ComicsR4children

Details about suicide method
Although his death is categorized as carbon monoxide poisoning, this is not corroborated by the article, which it should. Death by gassing usually means death by natural gas poisoning. If it can be confirmed that his suicide was by carbon monoxide poisoning, the article should be added to Category:Suicides by carbon monoxide poisoning. __meco (talk) 07:32, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Biography Issues
The 2nd paragraph in the biography section departs from a chronological story of his life into a four sentence tangent that should probably be moved further down the article. Isnoop (talk) 22:12, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Nobel Speech
I think that the Nobel Prize Lecture portion is not very helpful. I wouldn't say that it summarizes Kawabata's main points or the essence of the lecture well at all. There must be a better critical analysis of the lecture out there somewhere.

In my opinion, the lecture is more about defining the Japanese spirit with appeals to classic Japanese figures and artists that exemplified an unchanging Japanese cultural/psychological essence. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.111.249.229 (talk) 04:30, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Short story?
why is The Dancing Girl of Izu systematically described as a "short story" on Wikipedia? It's 176 pages long, and while first serialized in a magazine, it was later published as book. The Japanese wiki describes it as a 小説, "novel". Jpatokal (talk) 03:26, 15 September 2022 (UTC)