Kawabata revisited

Having been deeply influenced by such greats as Yasunari Kawabata and Yukio Mishima, there was a strong urge to return to the pristine mosaic of their prose after a decade and a half.

I picked up Kawabata’s ‘Palm–of–the–hand’ short stories which has some extremely moving pieces but the one that plucked a deep chord lies in a piece called ‘Canaries’ where the narrator writes to his mistress for the last time about a pair of canaries (gifted by her when they parted finally) he wishes to now bury with his dead wife since she was their caretaker and through them kept alive the moving mind picture of their memories together. The poignancy peaks when he ends by saying that in addition to doing many other things for him besides being a loving and devoted wife, she saved him from great pain by never reminding him of his duplicitous life and in doing so allowed him the freedom to enjoy, sustain and revel in those frozen memories.

Written in 1924, this along with many other stories is a mirror of Japan and it’s social fabric – especially treatment of women at that time. Unfortunately, far from chivalrous ! But am not getting into that.

What punctures the soul is the infinitely delicate detail of emotion that Kawabata bares and presents with such deceptive simplicity and ease. His ability to penetrate the very core of his characters is evidence of his fine sense of intuition, caring, sensitivity and craft.

Rightly said, Kawabata ‘has the soul of a miniaturist’, especially apt for his short stories which are reminiscent of Haiku, known for its lingering and timeless quality.

Am sure to be back with more once I’ve coursed through the anthology.

Here’s my interpretation of its essence in Waka

Pale and sombre the

canaries waiting to die

water marks of love

red lantern, she kept alive

memories of her for him.