Can we talk about this?

I read it out in the snow for extra effect. It was a good novel, I understand it was built up from like a poem or something. I think the descriptions in it were the best, they really paint a picture.

I read it half a year ago. I enjoyed it quite a bit, calm and poetic. The way Kawabata depicts human interaction seems weird to me though.

Japanese social interactions? Weird? ...no

Haven't read it yet, but I liked Master of Go and The Lake.
Probably my favourite japanese author.

>slow buildup
Slow buildup to what, the fire? The fire isn't really important at all. There is no buildup. The story doesn't go anywhere. The end of the novel, the very last sentence of the novel are their to emphasize the impermanence of their lives, not as some climax to a series of events.
The Japanese are quite strange in that for the most part they value the parts of something more than the whole. Kabuki stories are a loose framework to allow things that often don't really go together into a series of events. Often single scenes of Kabuki are played by themselves. You are meant to pay attention to everything as it happens. The story of Snow Country is just base for the important things to happen, which is noticing the "nowness" of things.

I think you like Master of Go a lot because of everything he wrote it's easily his work that is the least Japanese. The work itself, while being about the decline of a certain Japanese way of living isn't actually stepped in Japanese ideas in the way it is written. It makes it much easier for a westerner to understand because you don't need to know as much about Japan to understand the nuances of what is happening.

I really wanted to fuck a geisha after reading it.

Snow Cuntry

more like Snow Crash

No.

I read this a few years ago in college and I remember absolutely nothing about it.

I preferred the dancing girl of izu and his other short stories like house of sleeping beauties. I couldn't quite 'get' snow country for some reason and often felt like I was struggling through it at times. But my favourite kawabata story is One Arm, which is by far the most bizzare yet unique piece of fiction I've read. I like to see the ending as an allegory for the loss of female virginity. Probably going to read a full length kawabata novel next like the capital or sound of the mountains

So what's it about? I'm not googling it. I like Murakami and Oe but that's about all the J-lit I know about besides cartoons.

A reminder that Kawabata added chapters to the novel after it was already finished and published in one form.

Kawabata struggled to establish a connection with other people. Even though he wasn't a hermit and chaired the Japanese PEN club for some years for example. He said he felt more comfortable with animals than people. The result of his being orphaned.

>For me love, more than anything else, is my lifeline. But I have the feeling that I have never taken a woman's hand in mine with romantic intentions. Some women may accuse me of lying, but it is my impression that this is not a mere figure of speech. And it is not only women I have never taken by the hand. I wonder if it isn't true of life itself as far as I'm concerned?

Note that Kawabata himself felt Snow Country was incomplete.

He also stated:
>what I have described is none other than my own sadness

it's interesting you mention the Master of Go as being his least Japanese, as someone who's read Snow Country and Thousand Cranes and didn't really 'get' Kawabata the same I understood and enjoyed Mishima, Murakami and Oe. If the human element is more easily comprehended in that novel, I'll have to add it to my reading list.

The Dancing Girl of Izu was great. Looking to get into other works of his soon as well.

Mishima, Murakami and Oe aren't all that Japanese either, or at least their Japanese elements aren't hard-coded into every aspect of their writing. If you aren't all that much into that sort of more 'authentic' Japaneseness then you might quite enjoy Master of Go.

I read The Dancing Girl of Izu in a collection that came with three stories by Inoue. I absolutely fell in love with The Counterfeiter by him. It ranks up there with my all time favorites. I read his first two novels and was underwhelmed though. He also has written a lot of books so I don't know where to jump in next.

jeje

K-Kanbayashi?

It's because it has a very haikuesque, concise feel to it.

With regard to Kawabata, you also have to keep in mind he started out as part of an avant-garde movement and always used modernist techniques. The perceived vagueness is not necessarily about his being more Japanese, so to speak, than other Japanese writers. It's more about his personality and disinterest in engaging the day's issues in the world around him.

>The perceived vagueness
I never used the term vague in regards to Kawabata. I also don't see how he is an advant garde writer. The association he was part of at the very start of his career may have had advant garde aspects to it but the only things that manifest in his writing that align with the philosophy of this group is the art for art's sake attitude but this idea is as old as Japanese literature. Kato said that Kawabata was on the extreme end of the spectrum of Japanese authors that reject everything western that hasn't been heavily filtered by the national character.
Without doubt he was influenced by western literature as all Japanese authors were from the late Meiji onward but whatever he took from the west was only used to engage with things of a very Japanese nature.

>disinterest in engaging the day's issues in the world around him
This is also something as old as Japanese literature itself.

isn't this the guy who killed himself because he thought Mishima's ghost was haunting him?

The theme is decay or something or other

lmgtfy.com/?q=snow country

Maybe. We don't actually know if he killed himself so naturally if he did kill himself we don't know why.

He was sad because the Empire lost the war.

[citation needed]