WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.679 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are doing 00:00:01.679 --> 00:00:04.700 something a little different. We're sinking our 00:00:04.700 --> 00:00:08.119 watches to a very specific, very turbulent year 00:00:08.119 --> 00:00:12.599 in history. 1968. Ah, 1968. I mean, that year 00:00:12.599 --> 00:00:15.140 just conjures up so many images. It really does. 00:00:15.320 --> 00:00:18.039 We've got riots in Paris, protests across America, 00:00:18.179 --> 00:00:21.219 the Vietnam War heating up. It really felt like 00:00:21.219 --> 00:00:23.480 the whole world was on fire. Exactly. The West 00:00:23.480 --> 00:00:26.260 was just loud. Right. It was chaotic and screaming 00:00:26.260 --> 00:00:29.980 for change. But if you if you sort of pan the 00:00:29.980 --> 00:00:32.820 camera over to Stockholm, Sweden in December 00:00:32.820 --> 00:00:35.039 of that year, something much quieter, but I'd 00:00:35.039 --> 00:00:37.340 argue equally revolutionary was happening. Right. 00:00:37.439 --> 00:00:39.659 For the very first time in history, the Western 00:00:39.659 --> 00:00:41.520 literary establishment talking about the Nobel 00:00:41.520 --> 00:00:44.079 Committee, they finally looked east. They opened 00:00:44.079 --> 00:00:47.140 the gates to Japan. It was a huge moment, a watershed 00:00:47.140 --> 00:00:49.380 moment, really. They awarded the Nobel Prize 00:00:49.380 --> 00:00:52.700 in literature to Yasunori Kawabata. Yeah. And 00:00:52.700 --> 00:00:55.119 in doing so, they weren't just honoring one man. 00:00:55.259 --> 00:00:57.880 No. They were, for the first time, acknowledging 00:00:57.880 --> 00:01:00.500 an entire aesthetic universe that the West had, 00:01:00.700 --> 00:01:03.479 for the most part, just completely ignored. And 00:01:03.479 --> 00:01:05.700 that's the hook for me. That's what I couldn't 00:01:05.700 --> 00:01:07.859 let go of. Because when you look at the pictures 00:01:07.859 --> 00:01:11.140 of Kawabata, this frail, silver -haired man in 00:01:11.140 --> 00:01:13.620 a tuxedo standing among all these towering Western 00:01:13.620 --> 00:01:17.060 figures, he just looks like the epitome of traditional 00:01:17.060 --> 00:01:20.709 Japan. He really does. You read his citation 00:01:20.709 --> 00:01:23.849 and it's all about narrative mastery and great 00:01:23.849 --> 00:01:26.609 sensibility. You read descriptions of his prose 00:01:26.609 --> 00:01:30.629 and they use words like spare, lyrical, haiku 00:01:30.629 --> 00:01:34.519 -like. It all sounds so... It does. It sounds 00:01:34.519 --> 00:01:37.120 like a Zen garden in literary form. Right. But 00:01:37.120 --> 00:01:38.859 then you start digging. You open the file on 00:01:38.859 --> 00:01:41.540 his life and you realize that this piece is actually 00:01:41.540 --> 00:01:44.040 a fortress. It's a wall he built to hold back 00:01:44.040 --> 00:01:46.959 this absolute tidal wave of trauma. Yeah. The 00:01:46.959 --> 00:01:49.000 more I read about his early life, the more I 00:01:49.000 --> 00:01:51.239 realized that his obsession with beauty wasn't 00:01:51.239 --> 00:01:53.620 really about flowers and tea ceremonies. It was 00:01:53.620 --> 00:01:56.260 a survival mechanism. You've just hit on the 00:01:56.260 --> 00:01:59.599 central paradox of Kawabata. He is so often misread, 00:01:59.620 --> 00:02:02.500 especially here in the West, as this gentle purveyor. 00:02:02.599 --> 00:02:06.040 of exotic Japan. But if you actually read the 00:02:06.040 --> 00:02:08.740 texts and if you look at the biography we have 00:02:08.740 --> 00:02:11.560 in front of us, you see that his work is defined 00:02:11.560 --> 00:02:16.759 by a profound, almost terrifying isolation. He 00:02:16.759 --> 00:02:19.319 was a man who stared right into the abyss and 00:02:19.319 --> 00:02:22.819 then just decided to describe how beautiful the 00:02:22.819 --> 00:02:25.319 darkness was. So that is our mission today. We 00:02:25.319 --> 00:02:26.919 are not just doing a book report. We are going 00:02:26.919 --> 00:02:29.460 to try to unpack the psychology of a survivor. 00:02:29.780 --> 00:02:31.699 Yeah, let's do it. We're going to look at how 00:02:31.699 --> 00:02:34.280 a man who lost literally everyone he loved before 00:02:34.280 --> 00:02:36.620 he could even vote managed to bridge this huge 00:02:36.620 --> 00:02:40.319 gap between ancient Japanese tradition and like 00:02:40.319 --> 00:02:42.840 cutthroat European modernism. And we're going 00:02:42.840 --> 00:02:44.659 to try to answer the question that I think everyone 00:02:44.659 --> 00:02:46.360 has when they first read him. Oh, I know what 00:02:46.360 --> 00:02:48.219 you're going to say. Why do his stories, which 00:02:48.219 --> 00:02:50.969 famously never seem to have real endings. Why 00:02:50.969 --> 00:02:53.030 do they stick with us so hard? It's a journey 00:02:53.030 --> 00:02:56.229 into art for art's sake, but an art that was 00:02:56.229 --> 00:02:58.569 born from a kind of loneliness that most of us, 00:02:58.610 --> 00:03:01.449 thankfully, can't even begin to imagine. So let's 00:03:01.449 --> 00:03:03.870 start right there with the loneliness. Because 00:03:03.870 --> 00:03:06.449 lonely feels, I don't know, it feels like too 00:03:06.449 --> 00:03:08.509 small a word for what happened to this kid. It's 00:03:08.509 --> 00:03:10.590 an understatement. When I was going through the 00:03:10.590 --> 00:03:12.789 timeline of his childhood in Osaka, I honestly 00:03:12.789 --> 00:03:14.430 had to stop and check the source material because 00:03:14.430 --> 00:03:16.509 I thought there must have been a typo. It's brutal. 00:03:17.000 --> 00:03:19.139 It reads less like a biography and more like 00:03:19.139 --> 00:03:22.400 a Victorian horror story. It is the orphan narrative. 00:03:22.659 --> 00:03:25.840 And in Japanese literary criticism, this isn't 00:03:25.840 --> 00:03:28.080 just, you know, a footnote in his life. Yeah. 00:03:28.159 --> 00:03:30.500 It is considered the foundational trauma of his 00:03:30.500 --> 00:03:33.800 entire existence. It explains everything. Okay, 00:03:33.860 --> 00:03:35.500 so let's walk through this because the sheer 00:03:35.500 --> 00:03:39.060 pacing of it matters. Kawabata is born in 1899 00:03:39.060 --> 00:03:41.840 in Osaka. His father's a doctor from a highly 00:03:41.840 --> 00:03:44.860 educated wealthy family. On paper, things look 00:03:44.860 --> 00:03:47.900 good. Right, a privileged start. But then the 00:03:47.900 --> 00:03:50.979 dominoes just start to fall. So fast. Unbelievably 00:03:50.979 --> 00:03:54.300 fast. First, his father. He dies of tuberculosis 00:03:54.300 --> 00:03:56.620 when Kawabata is just two years old. Okay, that's 00:03:56.620 --> 00:03:58.599 a tragedy. But he still has his mother. For one 00:03:58.599 --> 00:04:01.280 more year, his mother dies when he's three. So 00:04:01.280 --> 00:04:04.460 at age three, an age where you barely have forming 00:04:04.460 --> 00:04:08.099 memories, he is, for all intents and purposes, 00:04:08.419 --> 00:04:11.219 an orphan. He's sent to live with his grandparents. 00:04:12.250 --> 00:04:14.169 Now, he had an older sister, right? He does. 00:04:14.889 --> 00:04:16.970 This is where the isolation starts to become 00:04:16.970 --> 00:04:20.509 structural. It's not just about loss. It's about 00:04:20.509 --> 00:04:22.850 separation. He isn't kept with his sister. They 00:04:22.850 --> 00:04:24.850 split them up. They split them up. She is sent 00:04:24.850 --> 00:04:27.430 to live with an aunt. Kawabata stays with the 00:04:27.430 --> 00:04:30.970 grandparents. That separation alone is just brutal. 00:04:31.110 --> 00:04:33.449 I mean, do they even see each other? Almost never. 00:04:34.269 --> 00:04:36.629 The records we have show they met only one time 00:04:36.629 --> 00:04:39.189 after that initial separation. One time? One 00:04:39.189 --> 00:04:43.439 time. It was in July 1909. Kawabata was 10 years 00:04:43.439 --> 00:04:46.220 old. Just try to imagine that reunion. This is 00:04:46.220 --> 00:04:48.060 your only sibling, your only living link to your 00:04:48.060 --> 00:04:50.720 parents. And then what happened? She died the 00:04:50.720 --> 00:04:53.060 next year. He was 11. Oh, my God. It's relentless. 00:04:53.220 --> 00:04:55.540 And we aren't even done. Not even close. Yeah. 00:04:55.639 --> 00:04:57.839 So he's living with his grandparents. His grandmother 00:04:57.839 --> 00:05:00.100 is the matriarch, the primary caregiver. And 00:05:00.100 --> 00:05:04.560 she dies in September 1906. Kawabata is 7. So 00:05:04.560 --> 00:05:07.180 from the age of 7 to the age of 15, his entire 00:05:07.180 --> 00:05:11.040 world shrinks down to just one person. His grandfather. 00:05:11.560 --> 00:05:14.399 And this isn't some spry, active grandfather 00:05:14.399 --> 00:05:16.560 who takes him fishing. The sources are pretty 00:05:16.560 --> 00:05:18.500 clear that he was blind and very ill, right? 00:05:18.759 --> 00:05:22.100 Yes. And this is a really crucial detail for 00:05:22.100 --> 00:05:25.379 his development as a writer. Imagine being a 00:05:25.379 --> 00:05:29.399 young boy, seven, eight, nine years old, living 00:05:29.399 --> 00:05:33.720 in this dark... quiet house with a blind, dying 00:05:33.720 --> 00:05:36.240 old man. He became a caretaker. He became his 00:05:36.240 --> 00:05:38.740 nurse. He was changing bedpans. He was feeding 00:05:38.740 --> 00:05:40.959 him. He was describing the world outside the 00:05:40.959 --> 00:05:42.819 window to him. He was essentially living in a 00:05:42.819 --> 00:05:45.339 hospice as a child. And then the final blow, 00:05:45.459 --> 00:05:47.680 the one that leaves him completely alone, comes 00:05:47.680 --> 00:05:51.259 in May of 1914. His grandfather dies. Calabado 00:05:51.259 --> 00:05:53.680 is 15. Let's just pause there. Let's look at 00:05:53.680 --> 00:05:56.160 that scorecard. Right. By the age of 15, he has 00:05:56.160 --> 00:05:58.389 lost his father. His mother, his grandmother, 00:05:58.569 --> 00:06:01.009 his only sister, and his grandfather. He is the 00:06:01.009 --> 00:06:04.170 last one standing. He has lost every single close 00:06:04.170 --> 00:06:06.689 paternal relative he has in the world. That is 00:06:06.689 --> 00:06:08.470 the definition of what you call the orphan psychology. 00:06:08.850 --> 00:06:11.449 It's more than just grief, isn't it? It's a lesson. 00:06:11.649 --> 00:06:13.290 It's the universe teaching him a lesson, yes. 00:06:13.470 --> 00:06:15.490 And the lesson is that connection is cursed. 00:06:15.569 --> 00:06:17.850 If you love someone, they die. That's what he 00:06:17.850 --> 00:06:19.709 learned before he even hit puberty. There's a 00:06:19.709 --> 00:06:21.769 detail in the biography that just chilled me. 00:06:22.250 --> 00:06:26.170 He was known in his local area as the master 00:06:26.170 --> 00:06:29.769 of funerals. Can you imagine that label on a 00:06:29.769 --> 00:06:33.610 teenager? It's unthinkable. The master of funerals. 00:06:33.610 --> 00:06:35.750 It sounds like a character from one of his own 00:06:35.750 --> 00:06:38.430 novels. So practically speaking, where does he 00:06:38.430 --> 00:06:41.449 go? He's 15 years old. He's on his own. Well, 00:06:41.529 --> 00:06:43.389 he moves in briefly with his mother's family, 00:06:43.550 --> 00:06:47.569 the Corotas. But, and this is so telling, he 00:06:47.569 --> 00:06:50.269 doesn't stay. He can't seem to integrate into 00:06:50.269 --> 00:06:52.370 a new family. It's like the habit of being alone 00:06:52.370 --> 00:06:54.029 is already too strong. He doesn't know how to 00:06:54.029 --> 00:06:55.990 be part of a family anymore. It seems that way. 00:06:56.089 --> 00:07:00.069 By January 1916, at age 16, he moves into a boarding 00:07:00.069 --> 00:07:02.430 house near his junior high school. That image 00:07:02.430 --> 00:07:05.230 just haunts me. A 16 -year -old boy coming home 00:07:05.230 --> 00:07:07.610 from school to an empty boarding house room. 00:07:07.870 --> 00:07:11.170 No parents to ask about his day. No family dinner. 00:07:11.750 --> 00:07:14.629 Just silence. And that silence is where the wall 00:07:14.629 --> 00:07:16.850 comes from. That's where it's built. Decades 00:07:16.850 --> 00:07:18.870 later, critics would talk about the distance 00:07:18.870 --> 00:07:20.889 in his writing, how his characters always feel 00:07:20.889 --> 00:07:22.410 like they're watching life from behind a sheet 00:07:22.410 --> 00:07:24.870 of glass. Yeah. That wasn't some stylistic choice 00:07:24.870 --> 00:07:27.310 he picked out of a catalog. That was his lived 00:07:27.310 --> 00:07:29.730 reality. He learned to observe the world without 00:07:29.730 --> 00:07:32.350 actually participating in it. Because for him, 00:07:32.509 --> 00:07:35.129 participating meant losing. But he's still human. 00:07:35.689 --> 00:07:38.670 He did try to participate again. And this brings 00:07:38.670 --> 00:07:40.949 us to what the biographers call the first heartbreak. 00:07:41.110 --> 00:07:43.029 Because you'd think after all that death, the 00:07:43.029 --> 00:07:45.129 universe might finally cut him a break. It did 00:07:45.129 --> 00:07:48.209 not. This is the story of Hatsuyo Ito. Okay, 00:07:48.250 --> 00:07:50.689 so he meets her in Tokyo, right? He's 20 now. 00:07:51.230 --> 00:07:53.930 He's made it to university. He's trying to have 00:07:53.930 --> 00:07:57.009 a normal life. Yes, and he falls deeply, madly 00:07:57.009 --> 00:07:59.509 in love. And from all accounts, it seemed to 00:07:59.509 --> 00:08:02.529 be reciprocal. In 1921, they actually got engaged. 00:08:02.769 --> 00:08:05.149 Wow. He was ready to restart his life. He was 00:08:05.149 --> 00:08:06.850 ready to finally build the family that he had 00:08:06.850 --> 00:08:09.509 lost. And then just one month later. She breaks 00:08:09.509 --> 00:08:11.589 it off. And this is the part that drives me crazy. 00:08:11.730 --> 00:08:14.529 The why. I was digging through all the sources. 00:08:14.709 --> 00:08:17.509 I was looking for a scandal. Did he cheat? Did 00:08:17.509 --> 00:08:20.089 her parents object? What was it? The historical 00:08:20.089 --> 00:08:23.399 record is maddeningly vague. It just says unclear 00:08:23.399 --> 00:08:26.259 reasons. She wrote of a letter ending it and 00:08:26.259 --> 00:08:29.459 she cited some vague emergency or impossibility. 00:08:29.560 --> 00:08:32.879 It was abrupt. It was absolute. And it was unexplained. 00:08:32.879 --> 00:08:34.899 In a way, that has to be more damaging than a 00:08:34.899 --> 00:08:37.539 death. How so? Because death is inevitable. It 00:08:37.539 --> 00:08:40.899 happens to you. But rejection, that's a choice 00:08:40.899 --> 00:08:44.600 someone makes. Precisely. It confirmed his deepest, 00:08:44.639 --> 00:08:47.740 darkest fear that he was fundamentally unlovable 00:08:47.740 --> 00:08:50.450 or that he was just destined to be alone. And 00:08:50.450 --> 00:08:52.029 we know for a fact he never really recovered 00:08:52.029 --> 00:08:54.169 from this because of a discovery made very, very 00:08:54.169 --> 00:08:57.149 recently. The unsent letter. Yes. In 2014, researchers 00:08:57.149 --> 00:09:00.289 were going through his former residence in Kamakura, 00:09:00.370 --> 00:09:02.990 and they found a letter. It was addressed to 00:09:02.990 --> 00:09:05.450 Hatuyo. It was written presumably around the 00:09:05.450 --> 00:09:07.870 time of the breakup or maybe shortly after. But 00:09:07.870 --> 00:09:09.929 he never mailed it. The fact that he kept it. 00:09:10.429 --> 00:09:13.509 For 50 years, he held on to that physical artifact 00:09:13.509 --> 00:09:16.230 of his pain for his entire life. It's devastating. 00:09:16.429 --> 00:09:18.370 And there's another layer to it. Hatsuyu actually 00:09:18.370 --> 00:09:22.149 died in 1951 at age 44. But Kawabata didn't even 00:09:22.149 --> 00:09:24.889 know she was dead until 1955. So he was living 00:09:24.889 --> 00:09:26.750 with a ghost for four years without even knowing 00:09:26.750 --> 00:09:28.690 it. He was living with a ghost his whole life. 00:09:29.169 --> 00:09:32.909 And he put that ghost to work. This relationship 00:09:32.909 --> 00:09:35.610 is the direct inspiration for The Dancing Girl 00:09:35.610 --> 00:09:38.049 of Izu. And you can argue it's the template for 00:09:38.049 --> 00:09:40.799 almost every tragic romance he ever wrote. He 00:09:40.799 --> 00:09:43.720 took that raw, bleeding wound and turned it into 00:09:43.720 --> 00:09:47.039 high art. Okay, so let's pivot to that art. Because 00:09:47.039 --> 00:09:49.679 there's a huge misconception we need to clear 00:09:49.679 --> 00:09:52.299 up right away. We've established he's this tragic 00:09:52.299 --> 00:09:54.919 figure, right? He's the ultimate orphan. So when 00:09:54.919 --> 00:09:57.159 he starts writing in the 1920s at the University 00:09:57.159 --> 00:09:59.840 of Tokyo, you'd expect him to write these sad, 00:09:59.960 --> 00:10:03.080 traditional stories about samurais or, I don't 00:10:03.080 --> 00:10:05.639 know, tea ceremonies. You would, but you'd be 00:10:05.639 --> 00:10:08.320 completely wrong. He was a rebel. He was a punk 00:10:08.320 --> 00:10:10.919 in a literary sense. He co -founded a movement 00:10:10.919 --> 00:10:15.279 literary school called the Shinkangakuha. Shinkangakuha. 00:10:15.419 --> 00:10:16.980 Okay, that is a mouthful. What does that actually 00:10:16.980 --> 00:10:19.879 mean? Well, it's often translated as neo -impressionism, 00:10:19.879 --> 00:10:22.340 but scholars really hate that translation. A 00:10:22.340 --> 00:10:24.419 much better one is the New Sensation School or 00:10:24.419 --> 00:10:27.299 the New Perception School. New Sensations. Okay, 00:10:27.360 --> 00:10:30.000 so what were they trying to do? What was so new 00:10:30.000 --> 00:10:32.090 about it? You've really got to understand the 00:10:32.090 --> 00:10:36.090 battlefield of 1920s Japanese literature. On 00:10:36.090 --> 00:10:38.409 one side, you had the old guard, the naturalists. 00:10:38.450 --> 00:10:40.929 These were the hardcore realists. They wanted 00:10:40.929 --> 00:10:44.490 to describe life exactly as it was, gritty, boring, 00:10:44.769 --> 00:10:47.250 flat. Think of it as a black and white documentary. 00:10:47.669 --> 00:10:50.269 The goal was objectivity. Then on the other side. 00:10:50.409 --> 00:10:51.909 You had the proletarian literature movement, 00:10:52.070 --> 00:10:55.309 the Marxists. For them, literature had one job, 00:10:55.389 --> 00:10:58.870 to be a tool for social revolution. It was essentially 00:10:58.870 --> 00:11:02.809 propaganda. Workers of the world unite in literary 00:11:02.809 --> 00:11:05.669 form. So Kawabata looks at the boring realists 00:11:05.669 --> 00:11:07.769 on one side and the angry communists on the other 00:11:07.769 --> 00:11:10.429 and just says, no, thanks. Exactly. He and his 00:11:10.429 --> 00:11:12.710 group basically said art is not a camera and 00:11:12.710 --> 00:11:15.509 art is not a weapon. Art is a sensation. The 00:11:15.509 --> 00:11:17.710 Shinkan Kakuha group was absolutely obsessed 00:11:17.710 --> 00:11:21.230 with European modernism. Like what? Cubism, expressionism, 00:11:21.409 --> 00:11:24.490 daddyism. Hold on, daddyism. As in the absurdity 00:11:24.490 --> 00:11:26.750 movement from Zurich? That seems so incredibly 00:11:26.750 --> 00:11:29.029 far removed from the whole beautiful, lyrical 00:11:29.029 --> 00:11:32.289 Japan image we have of him. It is. But it's absolutely 00:11:32.289 --> 00:11:35.309 crucial. Kawabata wanted to write sentences that 00:11:35.309 --> 00:11:37.850 felt like a cubist painting looks. He wanted 00:11:37.850 --> 00:11:40.889 to smash reality into fragments and then reassemble 00:11:40.889 --> 00:11:43.759 it based on feeling, not logic. So how do you 00:11:43.759 --> 00:11:45.320 do that in writing? I mean, give me a technical 00:11:45.320 --> 00:11:46.860 example. What does that look like on the page? 00:11:47.159 --> 00:11:49.559 Well, one technique they used was dropping grammatical 00:11:49.559 --> 00:11:52.299 particles to create this jarring, sped -up rhythm. 00:11:52.879 --> 00:11:57.919 But the big one was mixing the senses and what's 00:11:57.919 --> 00:12:00.340 called anthropomorphism. Giving human qualities 00:12:00.340 --> 00:12:03.820 to inanimate objects. Precisely. So instead of 00:12:03.820 --> 00:12:05.820 writing, I felt sad when I looked at the flower, 00:12:06.059 --> 00:12:09.120 a Shinkankakua writer, like Kawabata, might write 00:12:09.120 --> 00:12:11.399 something that translates to, the flower's silver 00:12:11.399 --> 00:12:14.480 grief pierced my eye. Wow. So the flower itself 00:12:14.480 --> 00:12:17.340 possesses the grief. Exactly. The boundary between 00:12:17.340 --> 00:12:19.360 the observer and the object is dissolved. It 00:12:19.360 --> 00:12:23.100 becomes subjective, psychological, almost hallucinatory. 00:12:23.320 --> 00:12:25.519 This wasn't just theory either. He was actively 00:12:25.519 --> 00:12:27.879 writing in this style. He wrote screenplays for 00:12:27.879 --> 00:12:30.179 experimental films. Like a page of madness. Yes. 00:12:30.240 --> 00:12:32.080 He wrote the script for A Page of Madness in 00:12:32.080 --> 00:12:35.129 1926. I've seen clips of that film. It's set 00:12:35.129 --> 00:12:37.669 in an asylum. It's silent. It's terrifying. There 00:12:37.669 --> 00:12:40.470 are all these masks and distorted stream of consciousness 00:12:40.470 --> 00:12:43.730 visuals. And that is the real young Kalabata. 00:12:43.970 --> 00:12:46.590 He wasn't some old monk meditating in a garden. 00:12:46.669 --> 00:12:49.809 He was an avant -garde experimenter. He was trying 00:12:49.809 --> 00:12:52.590 to find a brand new way to see the world. Because 00:12:52.590 --> 00:12:55.009 the old way, the way of his family, the way of 00:12:55.009 --> 00:12:57.370 tradition, had died along with his grandfather. 00:12:57.919 --> 00:13:00.980 So he takes this new sensation toolkit, this 00:13:00.980 --> 00:13:04.639 fragmented sensory modernist style, and he aims 00:13:04.639 --> 00:13:07.740 it directly at his own trauma. And that collision, 00:13:07.840 --> 00:13:10.419 that's what produces the masterpieces. That's 00:13:10.419 --> 00:13:12.840 where the magic happens. We have to dive deep 00:13:12.840 --> 00:13:15.139 into these because this is the body of work that 00:13:15.139 --> 00:13:17.580 eventually wins him the Nobel. Let's start with 00:13:17.580 --> 00:13:19.740 the one that made him famous. The Dancing Girl 00:13:19.740 --> 00:13:22.899 of Izu. Published in 1926. This is the story 00:13:22.899 --> 00:13:24.620 that pretty much every Japanese student reads 00:13:24.620 --> 00:13:27.059 in high school. It's iconic. And the plot is 00:13:27.059 --> 00:13:30.039 deceptively simple. A student who is, let's be 00:13:30.039 --> 00:13:32.820 honest, basically Kawabata. Oh, absolutely. It's 00:13:32.820 --> 00:13:35.039 thinly veiled autobiography. Is on a walking 00:13:35.039 --> 00:13:38.500 tour of the Izu Peninsula. He's feeling melancholy. 00:13:38.519 --> 00:13:41.299 He's got the orphan blues, if you will. And he 00:13:41.299 --> 00:13:44.559 comes across a troupe of traveling performers. 00:13:44.820 --> 00:13:47.450 And specifically. a young dancer in that troupe. 00:13:47.450 --> 00:13:50.049 She's very young, barely an adolescent. And the 00:13:50.049 --> 00:13:53.409 student feels this immediate rush of, well, it's 00:13:53.409 --> 00:13:56.110 hard to pin down. It's not just lust. It's attraction, 00:13:56.509 --> 00:13:59.570 affection. It feels like the dawning of eroticism, 00:13:59.649 --> 00:14:01.830 but it's always kept at a very safe distance. 00:14:02.250 --> 00:14:04.809 Distance is the key word for his entire body 00:14:04.809 --> 00:14:07.269 of work. He walks with them, he talks to them, 00:14:07.350 --> 00:14:10.019 but he never really crosses the line. There's 00:14:10.019 --> 00:14:11.580 this beautiful scene where he's at a hot spring 00:14:11.580 --> 00:14:14.039 and he sees her waving to him from across a ravine 00:14:14.039 --> 00:14:17.139 and he realizes her innocence. And that realization 00:14:17.139 --> 00:14:19.620 kind of cleanses him. But the ending, it's not 00:14:19.620 --> 00:14:22.220 a happily ever after situation. No, it's the 00:14:22.220 --> 00:14:24.580 opposite. He gets on a boat to go back to Tokyo. 00:14:24.620 --> 00:14:26.679 She stays on the shore. They part ways forever. 00:14:27.019 --> 00:14:29.419 And as the boat pulls away, he just cries. He 00:14:29.419 --> 00:14:31.820 just weeps uncontrollably. It's that specific 00:14:31.820 --> 00:14:34.179 Kawabata flavor, isn't it? The beauty is in the 00:14:34.179 --> 00:14:37.720 separation. Yes. If he had stayed, if they had 00:14:37.720 --> 00:14:39.200 tried to have a relationship, it would have been 00:14:39.200 --> 00:14:41.820 ruined by reality. The fact that it ended, the 00:14:41.820 --> 00:14:44.159 fact that it's just a memory makes it perfect. 00:14:44.440 --> 00:14:47.340 It's that Hatsuyo Yututrama all over again. The 00:14:47.340 --> 00:14:49.940 only safe love is a love that leaves you. Exactly. 00:14:49.940 --> 00:14:52.419 And he takes that theme and he just perfects 00:14:52.419 --> 00:14:54.320 it in what many people consider his absolute 00:14:54.320 --> 00:14:57.639 masterpiece. Snow Country. Yuki Guni. This is 00:14:57.639 --> 00:14:59.419 the big one. If you're going to read only one 00:14:59.419 --> 00:15:02.559 book by Kawabata, this is probably it. It's a 00:15:02.559 --> 00:15:05.440 novel he worked on for over a decade, from 1935 00:15:05.440 --> 00:15:09.360 all the way to 1947. And it is a novel of breathtaking 00:15:09.360 --> 00:15:12.720 coldness and beauty. Let's set the scene for 00:15:12.720 --> 00:15:14.860 you. We are in the snow country. That's the western 00:15:14.860 --> 00:15:17.059 side of the Japanese Alps, where the snow gets 00:15:17.059 --> 00:15:19.639 incredibly, incredibly deep in the winter. The 00:15:19.639 --> 00:15:21.740 opening sentence is one of the most famous in 00:15:21.740 --> 00:15:24.720 all of modern literature. The train came out 00:15:24.720 --> 00:15:27.279 of the long tunnel into the snow country. The 00:15:27.279 --> 00:15:30.360 earth lay white under the night sky. It just 00:15:30.360 --> 00:15:31.980 immediately transports you. It's like you go 00:15:31.980 --> 00:15:34.200 through this dark tunnel, a birth canal maybe, 00:15:34.240 --> 00:15:36.720 or a passage to the underworld, and you emerge 00:15:36.720 --> 00:15:39.820 into this white, silent, frozen world. And in 00:15:39.820 --> 00:15:42.460 this world, we meet our protagonist, Shimomura. 00:15:43.059 --> 00:15:46.600 He's a Tokyo dilettante. He's wealthy. He's married. 00:15:47.120 --> 00:15:49.879 But he is profoundly bored with his life. And 00:15:49.879 --> 00:15:51.960 he's this expert in Western ballet. But here's 00:15:51.960 --> 00:15:54.460 the kicker. He has never actually seen a ballet. 00:15:54.889 --> 00:15:57.149 He just reads about it in books and writes about 00:15:57.149 --> 00:15:59.149 it. Which is the ultimate irony, right? He prefers 00:15:59.149 --> 00:16:01.529 the idea of the dance, the fantasy of it, to 00:16:01.529 --> 00:16:03.429 the reality of the sweat and the muscles and 00:16:03.429 --> 00:16:05.750 the effort. He lives in a world of abstraction. 00:16:06.169 --> 00:16:09.049 So this guy who lives entirely in his head travels 00:16:09.049 --> 00:16:11.909 to this remote hot spring town in the snow country 00:16:11.909 --> 00:16:14.950 and meets Komako, who is a provincial geisha. 00:16:15.110 --> 00:16:17.250 And Komako is one of the most vivid characters 00:16:17.250 --> 00:16:19.870 in all of Japanese literature. She's described 00:16:19.870 --> 00:16:22.570 as being incredibly clean, almost shining with 00:16:22.570 --> 00:16:25.679 a kind of purity. But she's also messy. She drinks 00:16:25.679 --> 00:16:27.580 too much. She falls in love too hard. She bites 00:16:27.580 --> 00:16:30.659 her arm in frustration. She's just pure, hot, 00:16:30.759 --> 00:16:33.799 vibrant life. And Shimomura, how does he treat 00:16:33.799 --> 00:16:36.740 this vibrant life force? He watches her. He studies 00:16:36.740 --> 00:16:38.960 her. It's like she's a beautiful bug in a jar. 00:16:39.480 --> 00:16:42.080 There's this recurring phrase he uses, both in 00:16:42.080 --> 00:16:45.460 his mind and out loud, to describe her life and 00:16:45.460 --> 00:16:48.639 especially her love for him. He calls it wasted 00:16:48.639 --> 00:16:52.600 effort. Wasted effort. That is so unbelievably 00:16:52.600 --> 00:16:55.139 crude. It's devastatingly cool. She pours her 00:16:55.139 --> 00:16:57.440 heart out to him. She practices the shamisen 00:16:57.440 --> 00:17:00.039 until her fingers bleed. She walks through blizzards 00:17:00.039 --> 00:17:02.740 just to see him for an hour. And he looks at 00:17:02.740 --> 00:17:05.259 all this passion and thinks it's beautiful because 00:17:05.259 --> 00:17:07.640 it's futile. He knows he's going back to his 00:17:07.640 --> 00:17:09.559 wife in Tokyo. He knows he's going to leave. 00:17:09.740 --> 00:17:12.359 He knows she's trapped forever in this snowbound 00:17:12.359 --> 00:17:15.440 town. Her passion is beautiful to him specifically 00:17:15.440 --> 00:17:18.220 because it has no future. It's an aesthetic object 00:17:18.220 --> 00:17:20.779 for him to appreciate and then discard. There's 00:17:20.779 --> 00:17:22.299 a scene early in the book that I think perfectly 00:17:22.299 --> 00:17:24.740 captures that Shinkankakuha style we were talking 00:17:24.740 --> 00:17:27.059 about. The train window scene. Oh, the window 00:17:27.059 --> 00:17:30.180 scene is pure literary magic. So Shimomura is 00:17:30.180 --> 00:17:32.299 on the train at night looking out the window 00:17:32.299 --> 00:17:35.119 at the dark evening landscape flowing by. But 00:17:35.119 --> 00:17:37.700 because it's dark outside and lit inside, the 00:17:37.700 --> 00:17:40.460 window is also a mirror. So he can see the reflection 00:17:40.460 --> 00:17:43.960 of a girl's face in the glass. A different girl, 00:17:44.160 --> 00:17:46.940 Yoko, who is also on the train. Right. So he's 00:17:46.940 --> 00:17:49.519 seeing two things at once. The mountains and 00:17:49.519 --> 00:17:51.619 the fields are moving through her reflected face. 00:17:52.400 --> 00:17:55.299 It's a superimposition. A double exposure. Exactly. 00:17:55.660 --> 00:17:58.000 And at one point, he sees a light in the distance, 00:17:58.180 --> 00:18:01.079 a fire or a lamp out in the fields. And it signs 00:18:01.079 --> 00:18:03.900 directly through the reflection of her eye. And 00:18:03.900 --> 00:18:07.539 he thinks, the eye turned into a strange, unearthly 00:18:07.539 --> 00:18:11.740 fire. It's cubism in prose. He's seeing her internal 00:18:11.740 --> 00:18:13.819 beauty and the external coldness of the world 00:18:13.819 --> 00:18:16.440 simultaneously. And that defines his entire relationship 00:18:16.440 --> 00:18:18.339 with the world. He's always watching the reflection, 00:18:18.500 --> 00:18:20.660 never the reality. And that's why the book is 00:18:20.660 --> 00:18:23.059 such a masterpiece of isolation. Even when he 00:18:23.059 --> 00:18:24.859 and Kouanka were in bed together making love, 00:18:25.099 --> 00:18:27.819 he's a million miles away. analyzing the aesthetics 00:18:27.819 --> 00:18:29.779 of the situation. It's chilling. It really is. 00:18:29.920 --> 00:18:32.180 So if Snow Country is about this cold, beautiful 00:18:32.180 --> 00:18:35.000 isolation, the next big novel, A Thousand Cranes, 00:18:35.039 --> 00:18:37.680 kind of brings that toxicity indoors into the 00:18:37.680 --> 00:18:40.579 family. Yes. Published between 1949 and 1951, 00:18:40.759 --> 00:18:43.299 this book takes the sacred Japanese tea ceremony 00:18:43.299 --> 00:18:45.359 and, well, it basically drags it through the 00:18:45.359 --> 00:18:48.059 mud. I think most Westerners have this very specific 00:18:48.059 --> 00:18:51.359 idea of the tea ceremony. It's pure. It's zen. 00:18:51.460 --> 00:18:55.369 It's this quiet, holy moment. It is supposed 00:18:55.369 --> 00:18:57.769 to be. There are four principles, wakasijaku, 00:18:57.950 --> 00:19:01.890 harmony, respect, purity, and tranquility. But 00:19:01.890 --> 00:19:05.410 Kawabata asks a really disturbing question. What 00:19:05.410 --> 00:19:07.250 if the people holding the beautiful tea bowls 00:19:07.250 --> 00:19:10.250 are morally terrible? The plot is, I mean, it's 00:19:10.250 --> 00:19:12.410 like a dark soap opera. It's very soapy. It's 00:19:12.410 --> 00:19:15.150 very Freudian and messy. The protagonist, a young 00:19:15.150 --> 00:19:18.150 man named Kikuchi, goes to a tea ceremony and 00:19:18.150 --> 00:19:19.890 ends up getting involved with the mistress of 00:19:19.890 --> 00:19:22.069 his own dead father. And then he's also attracted 00:19:22.069 --> 00:19:25.099 to her daughter. It's a mess. It's a complete 00:19:25.099 --> 00:19:27.359 mess. But look at how Kawabata handles the objects, 00:19:27.559 --> 00:19:29.640 the tea bowls, the water jar, the tea caddy. 00:19:29.740 --> 00:19:32.279 There's a famous scene involving a specific Shino 00:19:32.279 --> 00:19:35.559 water jar and a generic tea bowl. He describes 00:19:35.559 --> 00:19:37.940 these ceramic objects as having a life, a history, 00:19:38.099 --> 00:19:40.759 a soul of their own. And he contrasts the permanence 00:19:40.759 --> 00:19:43.440 and purity of the bowls with the frailty and 00:19:43.440 --> 00:19:45.539 ugliness of the people using them. That's the 00:19:45.539 --> 00:19:48.279 core of the novel. The bowls are hundreds of 00:19:48.279 --> 00:19:51.099 years old. They are perfect. They've been passed 00:19:51.099 --> 00:19:55.200 down through generations. But the humans. We 00:19:55.200 --> 00:19:57.740 are jealous, we engage in adultery, we die, we 00:19:57.740 --> 00:20:01.200 rot. The ugliness of human affairs is set against 00:20:01.200 --> 00:20:04.880 the timeless beauty of the tea tools. It almost 00:20:04.880 --> 00:20:07.119 feels like the objects are judging the people. 00:20:07.420 --> 00:20:10.420 I think they are. Kawabata is asking, can beauty 00:20:10.420 --> 00:20:12.740 truly exist if the moral center is completely 00:20:12.740 --> 00:20:15.960 rotten? The tea ceremony in this book isn't a 00:20:15.960 --> 00:20:19.230 sanctuary from the world. It's a trap. It's a 00:20:19.230 --> 00:20:21.349 stage where the ghosts of the past, the dead 00:20:21.349 --> 00:20:23.690 father, the mistresses, come back to haunt the 00:20:23.690 --> 00:20:26.049 living through these inanimate objects. It's 00:20:26.049 --> 00:20:28.809 incredibly claustrophobic. And speaking of claustrophobic 00:20:28.809 --> 00:20:31.309 family dynamics, let's talk about The Sound of 00:20:31.309 --> 00:20:33.430 the Mountain. This is often called his most mature 00:20:33.430 --> 00:20:36.490 work. It's set in Kamakura, which is where Kawabata 00:20:36.490 --> 00:20:38.329 actually lived for much of his life. And the 00:20:38.329 --> 00:20:41.009 protagonist Shingo is an old man, and he starts 00:20:41.009 --> 00:20:43.009 hearing things at night. He hears the sound of 00:20:43.009 --> 00:20:45.690 the mountain. It's this deep, rumbling roar that 00:20:45.690 --> 00:20:48.589 seemingly only he can hear. And he interprets 00:20:48.589 --> 00:20:50.329 it as the announcement of his own approaching 00:20:50.329 --> 00:20:53.410 death. This book feels so incredibly modern to 00:20:53.410 --> 00:20:55.609 me because it deals with what we'd now call the 00:20:55.609 --> 00:20:58.710 sandwich generation problem. Shingo is deeply 00:20:58.710 --> 00:21:01.869 disappointed in his adult children. Deeply. His 00:21:01.869 --> 00:21:04.509 son is a serial cheater. His daughter is in a 00:21:04.509 --> 00:21:07.109 failed marriage and has moved back home. He looks 00:21:07.109 --> 00:21:09.950 at his own offspring and he just sees failure. 00:21:10.519 --> 00:21:13.319 A legacy of unhappiness. It's a fear of obsolescence, 00:21:13.339 --> 00:21:15.940 isn't it? He's aging. His memory is starting 00:21:15.940 --> 00:21:18.700 to slip. He feels no real passion for his wife 00:21:18.700 --> 00:21:20.859 anymore. And the only person in the house that 00:21:20.859 --> 00:21:23.039 he feels a real connection with is his daughter 00:21:23.039 --> 00:21:25.859 -in -law, Kikuko. The son's wife. Right. And 00:21:25.859 --> 00:21:28.099 here we go again with that forbidden, impossible 00:21:28.099 --> 00:21:31.119 connection. He's attracted to her. But it's layered. 00:21:31.579 --> 00:21:34.859 It's not just a simple attraction. The book reveals 00:21:34.859 --> 00:21:37.180 that he's drawn to her because she reminds him 00:21:37.180 --> 00:21:39.849 of his wife's sister. a woman he was secretly 00:21:39.849 --> 00:21:41.990 in love with in his youth, the Hatsuyu figure 00:21:41.990 --> 00:21:44.789 rearing her head again. He is an old man reaching 00:21:44.789 --> 00:21:47.630 for a phantom from his past through a taboo relationship 00:21:47.630 --> 00:21:49.789 in the present. And just like in Snow Country, 00:21:50.109 --> 00:21:52.170 nothing happens in the typical Hollywood sense. 00:21:52.369 --> 00:21:54.410 They don't run away together. There's no big 00:21:54.410 --> 00:21:57.950 dramatic confrontation. No. They just exist in 00:21:57.950 --> 00:22:00.789 this quiet state of shared longing and unspoken 00:22:00.789 --> 00:22:03.690 understanding. He watches a sunflower follow 00:22:03.690 --> 00:22:06.170 the sun across the sky and feels the immense 00:22:06.170 --> 00:22:09.759 tragedy of nature. It's a book about the quiet 00:22:09.759 --> 00:22:12.839 terror of getting old and realizing you never 00:22:12.839 --> 00:22:14.680 really connected with anyone the way you wanted 00:22:14.680 --> 00:22:16.480 to. Okay, now we have to talk about The Outlier. 00:22:17.000 --> 00:22:19.460 The one book that's completely different from 00:22:19.460 --> 00:22:21.619 all the others. The one that actually has a clear 00:22:21.619 --> 00:22:24.539 winner and a clear loser. The Master of Go. This 00:22:24.539 --> 00:22:27.059 is the book that Kawabata himself considered 00:22:27.059 --> 00:22:29.779 his finest work. And it's fascinating because 00:22:29.779 --> 00:22:32.569 it's a chronicle novel. It's based on a real 00:22:32.569 --> 00:22:35.369 Go match that he was assigned to report on for 00:22:35.369 --> 00:22:38.130 the Manichi newspaper back in 1938. And for any 00:22:38.130 --> 00:22:39.750 listeners who don't know Go, it's a board game. 00:22:39.809 --> 00:22:42.049 But saying that is like saying war is just a 00:22:42.049 --> 00:22:44.109 disagreement. It's infinitely complex. It's about 00:22:44.109 --> 00:22:46.230 territory control. It's about life and death 00:22:46.230 --> 00:22:49.549 on a grid. And this particular match, this was 00:22:49.549 --> 00:22:51.700 the Super Bowl of the Japanese mind. You had 00:22:51.700 --> 00:22:53.660 the reigning master, Shusai. He was the last 00:22:53.660 --> 00:22:55.619 of the old school. He represented feudal Japan, 00:22:55.859 --> 00:22:58.420 tradition, and almost divine intuition for the 00:22:58.420 --> 00:23:00.880 game. And you had the challenger, Otake, who 00:23:00.880 --> 00:23:03.440 was based on a real player named Minoru Kitani. 00:23:03.940 --> 00:23:07.799 He was young, modern, rational. He played by 00:23:07.799 --> 00:23:10.440 the clock. He represented the new scientific 00:23:10.440 --> 00:23:13.309 Japan. And this match took... months to play 00:23:13.309 --> 00:23:15.170 right it took forever they would play for a few 00:23:15.170 --> 00:23:17.509 hours then the referee would call time they would 00:23:17.509 --> 00:23:19.329 seal the next move in an envelope and everyone 00:23:19.329 --> 00:23:21.970 would go home for days or weeks the master was 00:23:21.970 --> 00:23:25.289 very sick he was dying and Kawabata was there 00:23:25.289 --> 00:23:28.069 watching every single move and the outcome the 00:23:28.069 --> 00:23:30.750 master loses the tradition loses the modern era 00:23:30.750 --> 00:23:33.509 wins and the master dies about a year later he 00:23:33.509 --> 00:23:35.950 does and the critical interpretation which is 00:23:35.950 --> 00:23:38.670 almost universally accepted, is that this is 00:23:38.670 --> 00:23:41.390 a massive symbolic parallel to the defeat of 00:23:41.390 --> 00:23:43.869 Japan in World War II. The invincible Japan, 00:23:44.130 --> 00:23:47.029 the master, losing to the cold, rational, industrial 00:23:47.029 --> 00:23:48.990 mechanics of the modern world, the challenger. 00:23:49.269 --> 00:23:51.849 It is an elegy, but not for a person. It's an 00:23:51.849 --> 00:23:54.109 elegy for an entire culture. In his other books, 00:23:54.150 --> 00:23:56.970 the loss is personal and lyrical. In this book, 00:23:57.009 --> 00:23:59.250 the loss is national and devastatingly final. 00:23:59.410 --> 00:24:02.049 So we have this incredible body of works no country, 00:24:02.289 --> 00:24:05.960 thousand cranes, the master of go. And then in 00:24:05.960 --> 00:24:08.980 1968, the Nobel Committee in Sweden looks at 00:24:08.980 --> 00:24:12.720 all of this and says, this is it. This expresses 00:24:12.720 --> 00:24:15.819 the essence of the Japanese mind. Which is a 00:24:15.819 --> 00:24:17.819 pretty heavy weight to put on one person's shoulders. 00:24:18.019 --> 00:24:20.880 No kidding. His acceptance speech is titled Japan, 00:24:21.099 --> 00:24:23.960 the Beautiful and Myself. And I really want to 00:24:23.960 --> 00:24:25.700 dig into this for a minute because it sounds 00:24:25.700 --> 00:24:29.380 like it could be a tourist brochure, but it's 00:24:29.380 --> 00:24:32.779 actually a deep philosophy lecture. It is a profound 00:24:32.779 --> 00:24:36.180 defense of ambiguity. He spends most of the speech 00:24:36.180 --> 00:24:39.240 talking about Zen Buddhism, but not the California 00:24:39.240 --> 00:24:41.759 Zen of just relaxing and feeling good. He talks 00:24:41.759 --> 00:24:43.960 about the Zen of discipline and emptiness. He 00:24:43.960 --> 00:24:46.279 uses this incredible phrase. He says, the heart 00:24:46.279 --> 00:24:49.400 of the ink painting is in space, abbreviation, 00:24:49.539 --> 00:24:52.359 what is left undrawn. And that right there is 00:24:52.359 --> 00:24:54.339 the deep dive takeaway for his entire style. 00:24:54.539 --> 00:24:56.460 When you read Kalabata, you have to read the 00:24:56.460 --> 00:24:58.660 white space on the page. He believed that if 00:24:58.660 --> 00:25:00.640 you describe everything, if you explain every 00:25:00.640 --> 00:25:04.059 motivation, you kill the imagination. You have 00:25:04.059 --> 00:25:06.079 to leave room for the reader to enter the story. 00:25:06.599 --> 00:25:09.400 He compares it to Ikebana, Japanese flower arranging. 00:25:09.640 --> 00:25:12.099 Where the empty space between the branches is 00:25:12.099 --> 00:25:14.440 just as important as the flowers themselves. 00:25:14.980 --> 00:25:16.599 It's more important than some schools of thought. 00:25:16.720 --> 00:25:19.039 That's where the beauty is. But then, in the 00:25:19.039 --> 00:25:21.400 middle of this beautiful, serene speech about 00:25:21.400 --> 00:25:24.700 flowers and empty space, he drops a bomb. He 00:25:24.700 --> 00:25:27.240 starts talking about suicide. He does. It's quite 00:25:27.240 --> 00:25:29.700 jarring. He discusses his friend, the famous 00:25:29.700 --> 00:25:32.740 writer Ryunosuke Akutagawa, who had killed himself 00:25:32.740 --> 00:25:36.680 decades earlier. And Kawabata says, Pretty explicitly, 00:25:36.940 --> 00:25:39.400 however alienated one may be from the world, 00:25:39.640 --> 00:25:42.759 suicide is not a form of enlightenment. So he 00:25:42.759 --> 00:25:45.480 rejects it. He condemns it. He seems to. But 00:25:45.480 --> 00:25:48.299 then, almost immediately after, he quotes the 00:25:48.299 --> 00:25:58.359 eccentric Zen priest Ikki who said, Wow. Is there 00:25:58.359 --> 00:26:01.029 one who does not think of suicide? That question 00:26:01.029 --> 00:26:02.910 just hangs over the rest of the speech. It's 00:26:02.910 --> 00:26:04.609 like he's admitting that the darkness is always 00:26:04.609 --> 00:26:06.730 there, lurking right underneath all the beauty. 00:26:06.970 --> 00:26:10.049 And that leads us, inevitably, to the final mystery. 00:26:10.569 --> 00:26:13.630 The last unfinished chapter of his own life. 00:26:13.890 --> 00:26:16.950 April 16th, 1972. Four years after winning the 00:26:16.950 --> 00:26:19.589 Nobel Prize. Kawabata is found dead in his work 00:26:19.589 --> 00:26:22.450 apartment in Zushi. He had gassed himself. Now, 00:26:22.490 --> 00:26:24.309 the immediate reaction, especially in the West, 00:26:24.390 --> 00:26:26.730 is, of course, he did it. He followed the pattern 00:26:26.730 --> 00:26:28.789 of so many other writers. But the source material 00:26:28.789 --> 00:26:30.829 we have says it's much more controversial than 00:26:30.829 --> 00:26:33.509 that. It is deeply controversial in Japan. The 00:26:33.509 --> 00:26:37.730 main reason is that he left no note. Zero. Nothing. 00:26:38.390 --> 00:26:41.170 This is a man who wrote millions of words, a 00:26:41.170 --> 00:26:43.369 master of expressing the most subtle nuances 00:26:43.369 --> 00:26:46.170 of the heart. And he left nothing to explain 00:26:46.170 --> 00:26:49.049 his final act. His widow, Hideko, always claimed 00:26:49.049 --> 00:26:51.569 it was an accident, right? She did. She maintained 00:26:51.569 --> 00:26:53.470 until her death that he was just clumsy, that 00:26:53.470 --> 00:26:55.950 he was maybe preparing a bath and mistakenly 00:26:55.950 --> 00:26:58.190 unplugged the gas tap. And many of his close 00:26:58.190 --> 00:27:00.609 friends supported that theory. They said he seemed 00:27:00.609 --> 00:27:03.190 normal, even happy in his final days. But there 00:27:03.190 --> 00:27:05.289 are these darker currents. There were rumors 00:27:05.289 --> 00:27:07.950 of an illicit affair. And more concretely, he 00:27:07.950 --> 00:27:09.750 had just been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. 00:27:10.109 --> 00:27:13.210 And for a writer, that's a death sentence. He 00:27:13.210 --> 00:27:15.769 was terrified of losing his ability to hold a 00:27:15.769 --> 00:27:18.339 pen. To write. And then there's the giant shadow 00:27:18.339 --> 00:27:20.400 hanging over everything, the Mishima factor. 00:27:20.799 --> 00:27:24.240 Yukio Mishima. The brilliant, flamboyant, controversial 00:27:24.240 --> 00:27:27.859 rock star of Japanese literature. He was Kawabata's 00:27:27.859 --> 00:27:31.619 protege and friend. And in 1970, two years before 00:27:31.619 --> 00:27:34.700 Kawabata's death, Mishima committed ritual suicide 00:27:34.700 --> 00:27:37.740 seppuku after a failed coup attempt at a military 00:27:37.740 --> 00:27:41.400 base. It was bloody, it was public, it was theatrical 00:27:41.400 --> 00:27:44.019 and shocking. It was the polar opposite of everything 00:27:44.019 --> 00:27:46.500 Kawabata stood for. How did Kawabata take it? 00:27:46.619 --> 00:27:48.819 It absolutely broke him. He was one of the first 00:27:48.819 --> 00:27:51.240 people to identify the body. He went to the morgue, 00:27:51.240 --> 00:27:54.500 and afterwards, his biographer, Takeo Okuno, 00:27:54.700 --> 00:27:57.440 said that Kawabata was relentlessly haunted. 00:27:58.109 --> 00:28:00.410 He told Okuno that he had nightmares about Mishima 00:28:00.410 --> 00:28:02.390 for two or three hundred nights in a row. Two 00:28:02.390 --> 00:28:04.170 or three hundred nights. Imagine that. For almost 00:28:04.170 --> 00:28:06.210 a year, every single night, you're seeing the 00:28:06.210 --> 00:28:08.549 specter of your friend's violent death. He started 00:28:08.549 --> 00:28:10.349 telling friends that he hoped his plane would 00:28:10.349 --> 00:28:12.410 crash. When he was traveling, he was passively 00:28:12.410 --> 00:28:15.670 seeking death. The shock of Mishima's very loud, 00:28:15.789 --> 00:28:19.609 very political suicide seems to have just hollowed 00:28:19.609 --> 00:28:23.210 him out. But the way he died, it was so different 00:28:23.210 --> 00:28:25.170 from Mishima. Mishima stood on a balcony and 00:28:25.170 --> 00:28:28.460 screamed at the world. Kawabata just turned on 00:28:28.460 --> 00:28:30.960 a tap and faded out. And that's the crucial difference. 00:28:31.859 --> 00:28:33.940 Mishima wanted to make a statement. His death 00:28:33.940 --> 00:28:37.180 was a final grand performance. Kawabata, it seems, 00:28:37.339 --> 00:28:39.680 just wanted to disappear. His death was silent. 00:28:39.759 --> 00:28:42.380 It was private. It was in a very tragic way, 00:28:42.460 --> 00:28:45.210 very Kawabata. It was an ending that... wasn't 00:28:45.210 --> 00:28:47.190 an ending. It was just a cessation. Like his 00:28:47.190 --> 00:28:49.410 books, they don't resolve, they don't tie everything 00:28:49.410 --> 00:28:52.410 up in a neat bow, they just stop. Exactly. Snow 00:28:52.410 --> 00:28:54.609 Country ends in the middle of a fire in chaos. 00:28:55.470 --> 00:28:57.970 Thousand Cranes ends on a note of deep uncertainty. 00:28:58.369 --> 00:29:01.289 His life ended in silence, leaving only questions. 00:29:01.910 --> 00:29:03.750 So let's bring this all back to the present. 00:29:03.930 --> 00:29:06.509 Why should you, our listener, driving to work 00:29:06.509 --> 00:29:09.210 or walking the dog in 2026, care about a quiet 00:29:09.210 --> 00:29:12.089 Japanese man who wrote about tea bowls and snow 00:29:12.089 --> 00:29:15.009 back in the 1930s? What's the takeaway? I think 00:29:15.009 --> 00:29:17.390 it's because we have lost the appreciation for 00:29:17.390 --> 00:29:19.910 the unfinished. We live in a world that absolutely 00:29:19.910 --> 00:29:23.049 demands closure. We binge watch shows because 00:29:23.049 --> 00:29:25.890 we need to know how it ends. We want clear answers, 00:29:26.150 --> 00:29:29.470 happy endings, definitive takes. Social media 00:29:29.470 --> 00:29:31.589 forces us to have a strong opinion on everything 00:29:31.589 --> 00:29:34.750 instantly. And Kawabata's entire body of work 00:29:34.750 --> 00:29:37.390 says, just slow down. You don't need a neat answer. 00:29:37.589 --> 00:29:39.809 He says there is profound beauty in the uncertainty. 00:29:40.589 --> 00:29:42.970 He teaches us to look at what he called the wasted 00:29:42.970 --> 00:29:45.710 effort. The failed relationships, the unfinished 00:29:45.710 --> 00:29:48.710 projects, the moments of loneliness. And to see 00:29:48.710 --> 00:29:52.089 them not as failures, but as art. He validates 00:29:52.089 --> 00:29:54.890 the sadness in a way that's incredibly powerful. 00:29:55.150 --> 00:29:57.289 It's the power of negative space. In a world 00:29:57.289 --> 00:29:59.049 that is just getting louder and louder and louder, 00:29:59.210 --> 00:30:01.730 he's the silence. And silence is where the truth 00:30:01.730 --> 00:30:04.130 usually hides. I want to leave you with one final 00:30:04.130 --> 00:30:05.990 thought. We talked about that quote he used in 00:30:05.990 --> 00:30:08.890 his Nobel speech from the priest Ickes. Among 00:30:08.890 --> 00:30:11.150 those who give thoughts to things, is there one 00:30:11.150 --> 00:30:14.960 who does not think of suicide? It's a dark, troubling 00:30:14.960 --> 00:30:18.259 question. It is. But maybe we can flip it. Among 00:30:18.259 --> 00:30:20.700 those who give thoughts to things, is there one 00:30:20.700 --> 00:30:24.180 who does not find beauty in the void? Kawabata 00:30:24.180 --> 00:30:27.039 didn't leave a suicide note. He left us a Nobel 00:30:27.039 --> 00:30:30.039 Prize -winning bibliography. He left the final, 00:30:30.079 --> 00:30:33.319 most important page undrawn. And maybe, as he 00:30:33.319 --> 00:30:35.619 told us in his speech, that's where the real 00:30:35.619 --> 00:30:38.579 heart of the painting lies. A haunting but beautiful 00:30:38.579 --> 00:30:40.759 way to think about it. Thanks for traveling to 00:30:40.759 --> 00:30:42.279 the snow country with us. We'll see you on the 00:30:42.279 --> 00:30:42.980 next Deep Dive.