Customer Reviews

The Old Capital

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
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For years I'd been anxiously awaiting another Kawabata novel to appear in translation. When I finally got a copy of "The Old Capital" I was initially disappointed because Seidenstecker wasn't the translator, but, if anything, I like Holman's style of translation better. Cheiko, the novel's twenty-year-old heroine, embodies Kawabata's ideals of deep sensitivity, beauty, modesty, and virginal purity. She works in her parents' wholesale silk goods store, which is failing like so many traditional Kyoto shops because the Japanese are falling under the spell of Western cultural values. This is especially significant because Kyoto is the cultural center of Japan--the most ancient and traditional of her cities. The successful stores now carry Sony radios and other nontraditional items to satisfy new Western tastes. "Anything for a buck," quips the successful store owner's son. A foundling raised by loving middle-class parents, Cheiko might seem to be on a kind of spiritual quest to find her lost background--rather, the book itself is on a quest to help her find her origins, for she unconsciously unravels the mystery without really trying. Of all Kawabata's novels, this one most resembles "The Sound of the Mountain" in its exquisite evocation of beauty, sensitivity, and the invasion of Western values--but without the heartbreak attached. It's one of the few Kawabata novels that doesn't end in some tragedy or disappointment. Kawabata suffuses the story in a gentle patina of longing. His subtle humor softens any edges, as in the parents' comic insistence that they stole her as a baby when, in reality, she had been left in front of her father's shop. Cheiko doesn't know what to make of this, but she accepts it because she knows her parents love her. According to the introduction, more translations of Kawabata novels are in the works. We can only be grateful. In the meantime, if you've read all his novels and stories in translation, you can either reread your favorites or learn Japanese!

This is my favorite Kawabata book and I've read quite a few. I think it is much better than more famous "Snow Country". It is also much more complex than other Kawabata books, which are somewhat similar in their repetitive descriptions of the relationship between weak man and unhappy woman. This book is mysterious, eerie, awe-inspiring, beautiful, touchingly tender and somewhat weird. At the center of the story are two female twins, their incomprehensible inner universes and strange sensibilities. "Old Capital" is Kyoto - ancient center of Japan and cradle of the beautiful Heian culture. The city is portrayed as a place where past is mixed with present and aestetic sensibilities is combined with everyday routine of protagonists, who are but simple people with their life centered around family, work and small bussinesses.

Reading this book in both Russian and English translations made me realize that a lot of meanings in the book are lost when it is translated in English, because of the complex system of dialogues where the manner of speech is changed accordingly to the status of people conversing and their relationship to each other. Russian, being a much more hierarhical and polite language than English, produces better translation, but than again - as I dont know Japanese, I cant really say how much inferior the translation is compared to the original work.

rather than the usual study of twisted eroticism and revenge, this story is amazingly calm, gentle but still wonderfully crafted. the emotions of muted longing and subtle sadness match perfectly with the descriptions of kyoto. well worth a read for kawabata fans.

The Old Capital, though mentioned along with Snow Country and A Thousand Cranes in the announcement of Kawabata's Nobel Prize in literature, is not as well-known as either of the other two. Yet it is my favorite of his novels.

Kawabata explores the distances between people, the differences between them, the value of tradition, and the difficulties of knowing in his narration of Chieko's discovery of her twin sister, from whom she was separated shortly after birth by a kidnapping - or was it by an abandonment?

I neither speak nor read Japanese, but J. Martin Holman's translation must be a good one. Virtually every page held me entranced with its beauty.

The Old Capital is a beautifully written book. The sentences as translated are elegant in their simplicity and the book makes clear the conflict between old and new Japan. I found the author to be exceedingly gentle and delicate in the manner in which the characters are portrayed and somehow even in a translation the story is exceptionally layered. The story is about a young woman, Chieko, who is a "foundling" of her childless parents. It follows her as she discovers her past and wrestles with her place in the present. For such a short book, the complexity of the stories and the characters would require a dissertation to describe. And yet, read on its own, many of its messages are easy to grasp. I recommend this book highly.

The aesthetic distance of Kawabata's "Snow Country" is revisted here, in "The Old Capital". The mysterious inner world of twins torn asunder before they knew it-then, by chance reunited is the central story line of this strangely quiet, beautiful book. Kyoto is the "Old Capital" and retains the physical and phsychic remnants of the Heian period.

Within the pages you travel close enough to the main figures to look them in the face, and deep within their eyes, but recognize that, ultimately, they are unknowable in some deep way-that the human heart has mysteries that cannot be solved. Even in translation, this book communicates an aesthetic sadness, a "mono-no-aware" sense of the fleeting beauty of falling cherry blossoms.

Anyone who has made the journey to the old capital Kyoto or spent anytime in the land of the rising sun will truly appreciate the poetic nature of Yasunari Kawabata's work. Yasunari's avid descriptions are enough to make you feel as though you are there again or visiting for the first time if you have not already. Distinctively Japanese in the themes of nature, tradition and gender roles, this book is sure to touch the soul of any reader. Recommened for the disconcerning reader in search of a little subtle complexity rapped in hidden charm, Japanese style.

As with so many Japanese novels of this period, and more so with Kawabata, the enormity of the emotions of the characters is expressed through their relationship to their context: a mountain rain shower, a festival, the uncanny resemblance of two teenage girls. A halting courtship and headstrong rebellion are expressed through arguments over the design for a custom-woven obi. Kawabata reveals so much while saying so little. The reader is almost encouraged to pause and reflect after scenes of particular intensity. The protagonists only graze their sentiments, but the reader is drawn into their turbulence. The novel is sparingly translated by Holman - in the North Point Press edition, one suspects from his preface that he received many criticisms of his first draft.

An amazing book! Most of us have never been to Japan or have little knowledge of its customs. The translator has given us a readable and fascinating look at early customs and ancient traditions. I am taking a course using this book with a Japanese instructor.

Kuwabata portrays a post war Kyoto with a busy cultural life, but signs of modernity loom. Some festivals have been cut back due to the economy and proprietors of traditional family businesses worry about the future. Through the daughter of a textile wholesaler and her sister the issue of class is introduced.

I thought the ideas were more powerful than the prose. Kawabata gives some good descriptions of Kyoto, its festivals, the geisha and the life in the cedar groves that surround the city. He seems to be saying something about traditional life, family ties and class. What comes through is good, but was too subtle for me to fully understand.