The Old Capital by Yasunari Kawabata Search Amazon for other books by or about Yasunari Kawabata. Rating: Reviewed by: John Walsh

This is one of the three works cited by judges who awarded Yasunari Kawabata the Nobel Prize for literature in 1968. As might be expected, therefore, it is a quite exceptional piece, notable for a distillation of the traits which made the Japanese author such a master of his trade. It is, as ever, a fairly slim novel which focuses on a small number of events in the lives of several not terribly exceptional characters, who are captured in the midst of the daily life of the city of Kyoto in all of its mundane and ceremonial aspects. A kimono designer, Takichiro, with his wife Shige, adopt a young baby girl who has been abandoned. They are unwilling to reveal the details to the girl, Chieko, when she grows up and maintain a fiction, therefore, that they actually kidnapped her from her real parents. Chieko grows up to be a loved and loving child and is quite happy in her adopted, middle class home. It is only when she is discovered by her long-lost twin sister that she is given cause to reconsider her life and her position in society.

As mentioned, this is apparently a small story concerning not very many people but Kawabata has the skill and humanity to infuse the story with a much larger concept of reality and society. The act of designing a kimono, for example, has the additional meaning of comparing the past with the present and commenting on the latter and the people living in it. When Chieko considers using prints by Paul Klee to create new forms of kimono designs, then, her attitude and the reactions of those who might make the clothes can reveal a great deal about them, which needs not be expressed in words. Similarly, the ways in which the characters interact with the ceremonial functions of Japanese society also contrast their situations with all the others known to have acted in different ways in the past. In this way, a great deal can be expressed in a very small piece of text, rather like a miniature in painting. It also opens the way for the zen-like lightning bolt which brings sudden understanding or enlightenment to an individual who may have spent an extended period of time performing what is apparently the same act over and over again. This is one of the themes in The Master of Go, where the link between zen and Go is made quite explicit. Here, the physical is more evident, with the comparison between Chieko and her sister rooted in the actual circumstances in which they live. Chieko has never had to work while her father runs a business which may or may not be being cheated by the clerks; the sister has worked for years in an apparently kindly but absent family, all of whom are concerned with tree farming. She cuts down trees which, being artificially planted for commercial gain, are not trees as symbols but trees which are economic commodities. The traditional contrast of city and countryside is thus undermined by physical reality and the need to make money. Hence, the work of time is always evident even in what are considered to be the most timeless elements of Japanese art.

This is a splendid story which will linger in the memory long after it has been read. Small but poignant details assume greater significance when the observant reader is reminded of similar patterns in real life. Recommended.