Customer Reviews

Palm-of-the-Hand Stories

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If you like Sudden Fiction as a genre but not the usual silliness which accompanies it, this is the perfect union of very short fiction, craftsmanship and seriousness. Not always serious in tone but in effort. For the most part they are tender stories of rememberance, loss and the betterments of life. They are brief and dream-worthy, almost as if they were prose acting as poetry:

"Startled by a sharp pain, as if her hair were being pulled out, she woke up three or four times. But when she realized that a skein of her black hair was wound around the neck of her lover, she smiled to herself. In the morning, she would say, "My hair is this long now. When we sleep together, it truly grows longer."

Quietly she closed her eyes.

"I don't want to sleep. Why do we have to sleep? Even though we are lovers, to have to go to sleep, of all things!" On nights when it was all right for her to stay with him, she would say this, as if it were a mystery to her." from Sleeping Habit

Even when the stories are harsh they aren't beleagured with excess, but consequential life and its misgivings with some ironic humor interjected amongst the living ghosts. The same can be said for the norm: lush stories that are kindly felt but never over-sentimentalizations and mush. A great bed-side companion to make you dream better and wake a little more human.

This book is filled with over 100 short stories, most between 1 and 3 pages long. Each story is somewhat plotless, but is more of a brief character study. A quick sketch, at the most, that captures the essence of the character rather than the details. Each character and situation is a glimpse into the past, of Japan at that time. The stories have the quiet patience of a haiku, and the miniature perfection of a well-tended bonsai tree.

Like a haiku, the limitation of form requires that each sentence be important. There are no throw-away lines in any of the "Palm-of-the-Hand Stories." The sparse loveliness of the English language as used is interesting because the book is translated from Japanese. The book was translated by two translators, and each story is signed so you know who translated what. This allows for subtle variance in the stories.

Kawabata is Japan's first Nobel prize winner. This is the first book by Kawabata that I have read, and I will be sure to seek other's out. A final recommendation, because of the length of the stories, I have found this to be one of the best bedside books I own. I can read a quick story before going to sleep.

Palm-Of-The-Hand Stories by Yasunari Kawabata is a collection of over 100 stories written over 40 years time period starting in early 1920s. This collection includes the 6 page compressed version of novel a "Snow Country"; "Thank you", a masterpiece of minimalist expression (made into a movie); other stories where themes familiar to Kawabata readers are told. Kawabata pen has a sharpness of the journalist; immediacy of the witness and wisdom of a contemplator. Frankly, most of those stories are so sad, that I could not read more then a few a setting. However, I always returned for more. I do not think your Kawabata collection will be complete without it.

House of the Sleeping Beauties is one of my favorite anthologies, and I couldn't wait to get my hands on another book from this brilliant author. The stories in Palm of the Hand are full of poetic and philosophical undertones and magical realism. My favorite one is "Bamboo-Leaf Boats," a poignant tale about a woman who grieves the loss of her fiance. The pain the protagonist goes through moved me. The other stories are beautiful as well. I suggest you read this wonderful book...

I was first loaned this book by a Canadian I met travelling in India. It was out of print at the time (7 years ago) - I loved it so much I offered him $50.00. That is alot of rupees! He refused. I have since gone through many copies, since every copy borrowed is never returned. A beautiful, haunting book. Buy! Buy! Buy!

This was the sixth Kawabata book that I have read. As other reviewers have said before me, this book contains over 100 short stories. When one at first thinks of 100 short stories in one book one yends to think that the book must be massive. This book is 238 pages long. At first I was taken aback by the shortness of the stories. I mean after reading 20 pages I had finished something like 8 stories, but as i continued to read the stories started to have a larger impact on me especially the story "Bamboo-Leaf Boats" This little story was about a young girl whose fiance had not returned from WW II. She had lived her life thinking that she would never married because she was crippled by polio, but a marriage had been arranged with this young man. But he didn't return from the war, so what she saw as a silver lining in a dark cloud turned into more cloud. "The Grasshopper and the Bell Criket" was one of the sweetest stories in the book. It like many other stories in this book is hard to describe, but I found myself with a big smile on my face after i read it. It is just a sweet story about young love.

Read this book I believe you will enjoy it if you are interested in Japanese literature, but for those unuse to Kawabata, I believe you should read Thousand Cranes or Snow Country first.

When I read my first of Kawabata's palm of the hand stories I can't admit that I was hooked, but I was definately intrigued. On the edition I own there is an entire story on the back cover, and after reading it I could pull NO MEANING from it what so ever. I thought, like one of the other reviewers put it, that the story was pointless. I have come to learn a harsh lession however. If there is one thing that Kawabata's works are not it is pointless. Every part of every word is overflowing with meaning. The truly pitiful part about his work is that to someone ignorant of Japan and Japanese culture it is sometimes hard to grasp what the meaning is. The simple enjoyment I received from reading the stories helped to inspire me to learn more about the country. I am by no means saying that you can't realish every word of this collection without knowing Japan, but I am saying to attempt to fully UNDERSTAND some of them it is truely a desireable asset.

It is somewhat difficult to categorize these very short stories by Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata. Some are funny tales of village life, some are tragic existential tales, many are about women. So many of the tales are about the roles of women, the relationships between women or between men and women that I would say that this is a central theme that Kawabata explores in these short works. However, the dream and dream imagery begins to play a greater role in the stories written later in Kawabata's career. Some don't seem to be short stories but are recollections, such as the story of delivering puppies at home. Often the stories tell of a pivotal event in the life of a person, usually a woman, who embarks upon a new direction after some new insight or event. The vulnerability of women in a male dominated world comes into most of the tales and highlights the paradox of how men become intoxicated by women but also are cruel and repressive to women. Another theme is that people become other people, especially the personalities and roles of deceased family members. Several stories tell of a sister not only taking on the roles but also the persona and tastes of a deceased sister.

The stories are listed in chronological order and end with the superb longer work "Gleanings from Snow Country" an example of the highest level of short story writing. After reading it, I found I had goose bumps on my arms, and the story became even more rich and rewarding upon my second reading. Most all of the stories virtually beg for a second reading because Kawabata is a master in the unsaid, the implied, the hidden, the sensory impression.

Another short story of incredible power is "Snow" where an elderly man checks into a hotel for 3 days to lay in bed and dream. Across from his bed is a hotel painting of snow and this cheap snow scene is the path for his unconscious to open and flow forth, which was the wise old man's initial goal. In three pages Kawabata is able to illustrate the relationship between the desire to fully know the self, human unconscious content, psychological projection, and the flow of the creative process.

The stories are written over a period of 50 years. The final story was written prior to Kawabata's suicide. Death is a theme frequently explored in the stories and is treated very naturalistically, as an event in the life flow of a family or community. He tends to embed Death into the larger tale of the pattern of family life before and after the death.

The work is minimalistic, poetic, and impressionistic with no attempts to over-explain or over-describe anything. He is far more minimalistic than Hemingway or Cormac McCarthy. The short stories integrate brief character study and situations and sensory impressions. Sight and blindness are especially emphasized. Each sentence is essential. The stories are both light in form and infinite in possibilities. Much is said with little.

The story of the children and the lanterns was so lovely - the others were a treat to read too, but the lantern story is definitely my favorite. I also loved the story about the women waiting with umbrellas at the train station. There's also a really great one about a straw hat.

These stories are often very short (a couple of pages each, sometimes just one) and often they have a dream-like quality - they reminded me of magical realism a little, because like dreams the flow of events is not always linear or logical. I found them very soothing, though. I mean, I feel like some dreams are horrifying, all choppy and disorienting, everything just a little bit "off", and you never know what's going to happen next... these stories weren't like that. In spite of the dreamy "weirdness" at play in some of these, I found them really easy to relate to, but magical at the same time - aw, man, I wish I could describe it better, but they were just really nice!

I agree with another reviewer who said this'd make a great coffee table book (or - ha, sorry to be crude but - it'd probably be great in the bathroom too!). These are great stories to "chew on", because they hint at all kinds of meaning, sort of like a bunch of puzzles - you can read one quickly if you're bored, and they're still interesting on the second or third read. These stories are not all "weird", by the way - some of them are just funny, or touching, or cute. In any case, this is really just a lovely collection. Highly recommended!

nobel prizes are only standard for such a writer as Kawabata. and as too many before and after his, a tragic artist's life ends in a controversial suicide. great reading for quiet evenings alone or on a subway train home.