Customer Reviews

Thousand Cranes

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Yasunari Kawabata was truly an artist with great taste. He was a great painter in disguise of a writer. Reading his work is like wandering alone in Japanese art gallery in a chilly day, looking at painting after painting while pondering over your own thoughts, savoring the beauty of color and at the same time being transported by the delicacy or even the tiniest details of his literary brushstrokes. Every word or gesture in this story has meanings in itself even if it was inexpicitly expressed. The suppressed passion, guilt, revenge and jealousy intertwined beautifully among the backdrop of tea ceremony, thousand cranes kerchief, iris vase in the alcove, the lipstick stain on the rim of the teacup, the double star, the fireflies etc. This is certainly not the book for everyone. For those who are looking for a book that full of plots, or a book that inundated with overdone passion or actions, this is definitely not for you. But for those who want to explore complex and artistic Japanese minds, Zen philosophy which is the backbone of the famous cliche "less is more", the beautiful combination of domestic life and nature, this book is a gem. Kawabata is by all account worthy of Nobel prize for literature. This is the book I cherish and feel wonderful every time I read and re-read it.

Strongly recommend.

The metaphor used in "Thousand Cranes" is tea, but not simple dried leaves in boiled water. Along with tea, in the tradition of the Japanese tea ceremony, is the complete picture created by the individual pieces of the art, bowls and whisks and jugs for carrying water. The various utensils, each with their own pedigree, are only able to find their true use in the hands of a Master of tea.

In this story, the metaphor is skillfully brought to play in Kikuji, who has inherited his father's women and guilty past in the same way that he has inherited his tea cottage and collection or rare cups and utensils. Chikako, a discarded mistress of Kikuji's father, is the poisonous Master of tea, manipulating others with the same subtle skill she maneuvers the ceremony. In equal measure, Fumiko, daughter of Kikuji's father's favorite mistress, also struggles under the burden of inherited guilt, even while seeking to escape, giving her mother's tea items to Kikuji as gifts yet not able to free her mind with the same ease.

True to Kawabata's style, the unsaid rings much more loudly than the dialog, and surface tone of calm belies a raging whirlpool sucking the characters deeper and deeper. I found "Thousand Cranes" a captivating read, and was unable to put it down until I had finished the story. A small book, it does not lack for power.

Mishima Yukio, that troubled, brilliant, versatile author of numerous great novels, said that if a Japanese writer was going to receive the Nobel Prize, it should be Kawabata Yasunari. The latter did win the prize in 1968, four years before his death. Both Kawabata and Mishima should be numbered among the great writers of the 20th century, both committed suicide, and both were Japanese. That's where the similarity ends. Any novel of Kawabata's opens the deep treasure of Japanese understatement, the minimalist style of sumi-e, haiku, and Noh theatre. Every sentence says less than expected, but as some people like to say nowadays, "less is more." So true. THOUSAND CRANES is brief and to many Western readers could appear overly simple and without strong flavor. To assume this would be to miss the main attraction of the novel, which, admittedly, might not be for everyone. In delicate brush strokes, the author deftly paints the picture of a complex relationship which would have attracted Henry James, had he not been so stoutly Victorian in his choice of plots. A young man has an affair with Mrs. Ota, his father's former mistress, rejects the meddling of a second woman, also a former mistress of his father's, and is attracted, full of guilt and hesitation, to Mrs. Ota's daughter. Like much Japanese writing, the novel is full of natural symbols as well as the signs of the seasons. Tiny details assume great importance, take on important symbolism----two tea bowls used by deceased lovers, an ugly birthmark on a woman's breast----details which would be drowned in the mass of verbiage present in most Western writing. Tea ceremony and the delicate beauty of old ceramics suffuse the pages. The novel is about sex, love, guilt, revenge, and the need for children to outgrow their parents' transgressions. The stunning part is that these words are almost never mentioned ! There is a belief in Japan that if a sick person can make a thousand paper cranes (origami style), they will recover. The title thus refers to a healing process, though the thousand cranes appear only on a kerchief carried by a girl whom the protagonist does not marry. This novel is a tour de force by one of Japan's and the world's best modern writers. If you want to try something completely different, I strongly recommend THOUSAND CRANES.

Sex, lies, suicide, and tea. This slim novel by Nobel Prize winner Kawabata Yasuni deals with Kikuji Mitani and his encounters with a wide variety of women: the poisonous Chikako, the haunted Mrs. Ota, and Fumiko, caught between her shame and her desire. The books moves at a leisurely pace, touching upon numerous subject: propriety, shame, and revenge. Kawabata shows his mastery here, crafting each character carefully, with precise nuance. I would recommend this book if only for the character of Chikako: both monstrous and tragic, she is one of the most interesting characters you will encounter in literature. Some Western readers will be off put by it's slow pace and decentralized plot, but the details and characterization will win you over in the end. One word of warning: although extensive knowledge of the tea ceremony is not need, and a brief introduction will fill you in on basically everything you need to know, readers may miss some of Kawabata's lush symbolism when it comes to the tea ceremony and the tea utensils. But even without that layer, it remains a masterpiece.

Although told in a simple style, this book explores the very complex responses to human interaction. The setting of the initial scene is a tea ceremony with the following primary characters: Kikuji, a bachelor whose parents are dead; Chikako, a bitter ex-mistress of his father and the go-between for a proposed marriage; Mrs. Ota another mistress of his father and her daughter.

Kawabata is superb in showing us the complex feelings that Kikuji and Mrs. Ota's daughter have towards his father and the two mistresses. While the responses are primarily shown through the action, the tea ceremony and the utensils surrounding it play a significant symbolic role.

This book is well worth putting on a must read list.

This was the third Yasunari Kawabata book I have read and I have to say that this one is my favorite so far. The story centers around the figure of Kikuji, the son of a man who was fond of the Tea Ceremony. Sometime after his father's death, Kikuji goes to a tea ceremony led by Kurimoto Chikako his father's former mistress. Chikako had been tossed aside by Kikuji's father several years before, but had stuck by the family even becoming friends with Kikuji's mother. Chikako invited Kikuji to the tea ceremony because she wanted him to see a girl named Inamura Yukiko who Chikako hoped he would marry. However, things don't fall into place as easily as Chikako hoped because Mrs. Ota, another one of Kikuji's father's mistresses, brought her daughther to the tea ceremony. Things continue on from there. The characters of the book are under-developed so the reader does not really care for them there really is no attachment to the characters, but Kawabata uses his magnificent writing skills to make a world of beautiful detail, one can almost see and smell the roses in the Shino water jar, and feel the soft coolness of Mrs. Ota's skin. beautiful book. Quick and easy read. I look forward to reading _Sound of the Mountain_ next.

Although an appreciation for traditional Japanese culture and a knowledge of the ancient ritual of the tea ceremony are helpful. this book is enjoyable regardless of either. The protagonist, Kikuji Mitani, is caught in an intergenerational and gender war between two of his deceased father's mistresses. The jealous Chikako dutifully tries to arrange a marriage for the young Mr. Mitani after his natural mother's death. However, her rival, Mrs. Ota intervenes, bringing great shame to herself and her daughter, Fumiko, in whom all of her mother's transgressions are concentrated. This is a story about the power of tradition and social mores, and respecting our place in the great continuum of life. The novel is short (147 pages) and concise. The content is complex but beautifully illustrated by Kawabata. This is an excellent piece of literature in all aspects.

The crane is a symbol of long life in Japan, ironically enough for this story. The title of the book comes from the cranes decorating a kimono worn by a significant guest at the tea party about which this story revolves. My favorite of Kawabata's novels, there is in Thousand Cranes a deep primordial eroticism. That is normal in Kawabata's work, but this story evokes perhaps the best example, even better than Snow Country. One of the satisfying pleasures of reading Kawabata is that he puts you in touch with Japan's sexual tension in the way a good Bordeaux might have connected you with enjoying red wines. You realize immediately you're onto something complex, and it is going to take a while to understand its depth.

If you can imagine love and desire in the quality of an intense dream, that is how this story begins to unfold. But like a cherry blossom, that kind of love is fleeting. Reality barges in to destroy its budding beauty. Withering jealous resentment worms its way into love it cannot abide, insinuating itself to take its revenge for perceived offenses, perhaps inherited. Alexander Pope wrote a poem about love between Peter Abelard and his student Eloisa that on one level reminds me of the depth and quality of feeling Kawabata manages to craft in Thousand Cranes. It is the kind of love some cannot live with. Here is an excerpt from one stanza in Eloisa's voice that I think captures that understated texture of desperation in Kikuji's and Fumiko's relationship in this novel:

Far other dreams my erring soul employ,
Far other raptures, of unholy joy:
When at the close of each sad, sorrowing day,
Fancy restores what vengeance snatch'd away,
Then conscience sleeps, and leaving nature free,
All my loose soul unbounded springs to thee.
Oh curs'd, dear horrors of all-conscious night!
How glowing guilt exalts the keen delight!
Provoking Daemons all restraint remove,
And stir within me every source of love.
I hear thee, view thee, gaze o'er all thy charms,
And round thy phantom glue my clasping arms.
I wake--no more I hear, no more I view,
The phantom flies me, as unkind as you.
I call aloud; it hears not what I say;
I stretch my empty arms; it glides away.
To dream once more I close my willing eyes;
Ye soft illusions, dear deceits, arise!

The end of Thousand Cranes is haunting. I don't believe there is anything in Japanese culture more profoundly different from the Western view of things than how one lives with love or fails to do so, or for that matter how a good author writes about it. Restraint is the word that comes to mind. That, it seems, is what this story is about.

This masterpiece moved me to the very depths of my soul. The powerful writing beguiled me into its world. The book itself is the essence of Zen, the words the utterances of zen--in which the story and its characters pale in importance. No one has ever written more beautifully.

Snow Country and Thousand Cranes exemplify Kawabata's mastery of the subtle and not-so-subtle nuances of human psychology. Yet what amazes is his almost Haiku-like precision and pithy brevity. For me, each sentence exploded off the page. When I returned to the first paragraphs of Thousand Cranes I was amazed to see that these few spare sentences somehow contained, or rather encoded like DNA, the whole essence of the novel