To the literature of Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972) fuses traditional Japanese aesthetics with the impact of modernity and the postwar period. He left deep reflections such as the phrase: «Sadness can also be a form of beautyFriend and mentor of Yukio Mishima, they shared a deep intellectual relationship that began in 1945 and lasted for decades.
Although with different approaches, both shared themes such as death and beauty. Kawabata was the first Japanese writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968 thanks to his style that fused the modernity of Western literature and traditional Eastern sensibility.
He focused on texts that explored the states of mind of human beings, rather than on the great problems of humanity. Among his best-known books are «Snow Country»; «Izu’s Dancer»; «The Master of Go» and «Kyoto»among others.
Kawabata was characterized by writing with unique poetry and melancholy, and beauty was a recurring theme in which explored relationships with deep feelings of the human being. Throughout his career he left reflections that continue to invite us to think about what his vision of the world was like.
His life was marked by loss from a very young agesince his parents, his only sister and his grandparents died when he was just a child. These experiences profoundly influenced his thinking and literature. Thus, loneliness, the passage of time, death and fragility are present in his writings.
The phrase that titles this article reflects a central idea of the writer: sad or less happy experiences are also valuable. For Kawabata, some painful emotions have an aesthetic dimension capable of moving and enriching those who experience them.
In its pages, beauty is never static or perfectbut it shines more strongly when it is about to disappear or coexists with the nostalgia of what is no longer. But be careful, the author does not propose sadness as something desirable, but rather the phrase invites us to observe how some experiences, no matter how bad they may be, can awaken a special sensitivity or add unique experiences.
So, for him, beauty does not arise solely from joy. Several of his characters often face situations that leave them on the edgelike impossible loves, bad memories that cannot be erased from the mind or relationships crossed by distance and time.
In a report from the Secretary of Culture of the Argentine Nation, They dedicated a report to Kawabata 122 years after his birth, in which they synthesized his notion of beauty as a mystical force, ephemeral and inseparable from sadness, death and the Zen spiritual tradition. There it is indicated that what he was most interested in portraying and evoking was the beauty of the world.
In his speech «Beautiful Japan and me«He detailed how in a simple glass crossed by the morning light, he found beauty very clearly. «I thought I had never seen it until that moment,» Kawabata highlighted. Through his characters and his texts, the author tried to portray this beauty, trying to move the reader.
Not only did he use simple description for this purpose, but sadness and feelings of nostalgia flooded his texts, also related to beauty. Kawabata, 70 years old and depressed, decided to end his life inhaling gas in his house near the sea, after his friend and colleague Mishima had a harakiri to take off his.
