The Dancing Girl of Izu, and Other Stories [Hardcover]

Yasunari Kawabata (Author), J. Martin Holman (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1997

One of the most influential figures in modern Japanese fiction, Yasunari Kawabata is treasured for the intensity of his perception and the compressed elegance of his style. This new collection compiles twenty-two stories now appearing in English for the first time in book form. In moving selections that sketch the outlines of the young author's life of survivorship, Martin Holman's graceful translation captures the delicate nuances of Kawabata's enduring prose.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Included in this selection of short stories are two of the author's more successful pieces. Both were first published in Japan, in 1925. The title story is about a university student's travels though Tokyo. During his trip, he meets a group of traveling entertainers and falls in love with a dancing girl. Later, he discovers that she is a child, which alters his feelings for her. "The Diary of My Sixteenth Year" details the painful relationship between a boy and his dying grandfather. An overwhelming sense of sadness and isolation permeates both these stories; at the end of each, the main character feels completely alone and unloved. The remaining stories are characterized by melancholy. The Japanese social and family relationships depicted are often vague and difficult for Westerners to understand, and much is lost in translation. For larger collections?Janis Williams, Shaker Heights P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Kawabata lusted for purity; his characters live the contradiction." -- Boston Globe --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint; 1st edition (July 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1887178147
• ISBN-13: 978-1887178143
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #583,234 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kawabata at his best, December 23, 2001

By 

Nathan - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dancing Girl of Izu and Other Stories (Paperback)

Although Kawabata is most often associated with his better than good Palm-of-the-hand stories, I don't view them as my favorate Kawabata work. The Dancing Girl of Izu (mandatory reading for Japanese Junior High School Students) is a sort of coming of age story that made me step back and reflect. The semi-autobiographical work is tender, heart warming, and a keen glimpse into Japanese life. If you have read and enjoyed earlier works of this author I would strongly suggest this collection to you. If you have yet to discover Kawabata, I say there's no better place to start!

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Innocence and love, age and death, riddles with no meaning, April 6, 2004

By 

Zack Davisson "japanreviewed" (Seattle, WA, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Dancing Girl of Izu and Other Stories (Paperback)

"The Dancing Girl of Izu and Other Stories" is an odd collection of sorts, mixing an elegant, straight-forward short story together with some autobiography and a fluttering of palm-of-the-hand tales. Each element contributes a unique flavor, and a different facet of Kawabata's style.

J. Martin Holman proves himself again a master translator of Kawabata, retaining the flow and most importantly the feeling of the originals, far more than other translators I have read. The only flaw I found was that he splits the book into two sections, which I personally found a bit jarring. I think it more naturally flows into three distinct chapters.

"The Dancing Girl of Izu" is as fine a short story as you are likely to read anywhere. Every necessary element is contained, with no superfluous decoration. It is heartbreaking in its subtlety, and masterful in its craft. Everything important is unsaid. Kawabata can manipulate emotions so deeply using so little, leaving the reader with an aching emptiness as great as that of the narrator. Beautiful, and fully worth the cost of the collection alone.

"Diary of my Sixteenth Year," "Oil," "The Master of Funerals" and "Gathering Ashes" are four short autobiographical sketches of Kawabata's relationship with his only relative, a blind grandfather who would figure into several tales. Not factual per se, but true impressions. They present an intimate portrait of youth trying to understand the aged, of responsibility and resentment of responsibility, and of the numbness of death. The stories are presented as recovered diary accounts Kawabata wrote when he was 16, and they may be so. I believe the feelings, and that is enough.

The third section contains the 18 remaining unpublished palm-of-the-hand stories, Kawabata's personal trademark and contribution to literature. A page or three at the most, each story functions like a Zen koan, a story or riddle with no obvious meaning used as a contemplation tool by meditating monks to clear their minds and make them go hmmm...as they try to decipher. Koans have been called "extremely brief vignettes enabling the individual to hold entire universes of thought in mind all at once," and I think this sums it up nicely. Do not attempt to decipher these palm-of-the-hand stories, but instead read them and feel them and go hmm...

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Biographical, mythical and realistic short tales, July 9, 2000

By 

M. J. Smith (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Dancing Girl of Izu and Other Stories (Paperback)

The first section of this book is autobiographical - the author's fictionalization of his own tragic childhoon. The diary of the period just before his grandfather's death is moving but I am uncertain that his appended notes add anything.

Of the autobiographical section, Oil is the best piece. In his learning that his hatred for oil had its origins in his father's funeral - a father of whom he had no memories - is a telling piece about the human mind in general. This piece alone is worth the cost of the book.

The second section has a variety of his early short-short stories bounded together, seemingly, only by when they were written and when they were published. The most interesting of these are the retelling of folktales - either directly or by writting a story that plays off one. The two tales I find most satisfying in this section are The Princess of Dragon Palace which is straight myth and The Money Road which is a setting of a folktale in contemporary times.

A number of other stories are very well done and could easily be the one that speaks best to you.