Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata Search Amazon for other books by or about Yasunari Kawabata. Rating: Reviewed by: John Walsh

The tea ceremony is perhaps the quintessential symbol of Japanese society and the way in which Japanese people view themselves and the world. In itself, it is an apparently simple and plain set of ritual movements aimed at providing refreshments to a guest--the ritual takes different forms in the various countries of the world. Yet in Japan, every movement and every gesture has an important freight of meaning. Every movement and gesture offers the opportunity for a zen moment of sudden, startling enlightenment. Hence, constant practice is always beneficial since it might lead to the path to heaven. Owing to the need for self-abnegation in traditional Japanese society, such gestures and movements are used to denote feelings, passions even, rather than the self-expression that has become common in western societies and especially in the USA. Instead, fiery passions may be expressed in almost total silence and be almost completely unknown or indeed unknowable to outsiders unable to interpret those tiny signs. This is the background for Nobel Prize-winning Japanese novelist Yasunari Kawabata's short but very beautiful novel Thousand Cranes. A young man, a bachelor living in the slowly decaying family home he resides in with a small staff only, deals with the various women in his life. There is his father's mistress and her rival, together with a daughter and another potential bride. The man, Kikuji, inherits his father's mistress and might, in due course, marry her daughter. At the same time, the conversations between them all are mediated by the various items of tea-ware--the bowls, cups, and whisks--that each possesses and which are also handed down from the past. The pieces date to as long as several hundred years previously and they serve to weave the characters into the tapestry of Japanese history. To what extent do these things belong to individuals such that they can be given or even sold to other people? In the same way, to what extent can people be exchanged by their "owners" and "masters?" The power of social pressure (in fact, many would argue this is merely a symptom of the underlying economic structure of society which determines who owns or dominates whom) requires all of the characters to follow certain predetermined paths and, when there is any divergence from one of these paths, whether occasioned by strong emotion or not, tragedy seems inevitable.

Japanese society, especially in the years before the end of the twentieth century, was what is termed a "high context" culture, which means that the culture really does matter and is difficult for outsiders to understand. When literature faithfully represents this, then it can be difficult for non-Japanese readers to appreciate exactly what is going on--indeed, it may appear that very little is actually happening or even that the events are randomly occurring. Overcoming this difficulty requires acquiring the necessary knowledge and understanding, which might be achieved through the slow absorption of information in the wake of emotion (the Wordsworthian approach) or through the Wikipedia approach (just look up everything when it comes along). Individual readers can chose their own approach--it seems reasonable to assume that those people who are not interested in doing so will not have made it through the review this far.

In short, this is a wonderfully written novel which rewards contemplation after reading. It has been translated from the Japanese by Edward G. Seidensticker and the best that can be said for the translation (for any translation) is that it does not get in the way of the text. Readers who have yet to discover Kawabata have a treat in store for them.