Yasunari Kawabata - Nobel Prize

Nobel Prize

Kawabata Yasunari was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, the first Japanese to receive such a distinction. His Nobel Lecture was entitled "Japan, The Beautiful and Myself"(美しい日本の私). Zen Buddhism was a key focal point of the speech, of which much was devoted to practitioners and the general practices of Zen Buddhism, and how it differed from other types of Buddhism. He presented a severe picture of Zen Buddhism, where disciples can only enter salvation through their efforts and where they are isolated for several hours at a time, but how from this isolation there can come beauty. He noted that Zen practices focus on simplicity, and it is this simplicity that proves to be the beauty. "The heart of the ink painting is in space, abbreviation, what is left undrawn" From painting he moved on to talk about Ikebana and Bonsai, also as art forms that emphasize the simplicity and the beauty that arises from the simplicity. “The Japanese garden too, of course symbolizes the vastness of nature”

In addition to the numerous mentions of Zen and nature, one point that was briefly mentioned in Kawabata’s lecture was that of suicide. Kawabata reminisced of other famous Japanese authors who committed suicide, in particular Ryunosuke Akutagawa. He contradicted the custom of suicide as being a form of enlightenment, mentioning the priest Ikkyu, who also thought of suicide twice. He quoted Ikkyu, “Among those who give thoughts to things, is there one who does not think of suicide?” There was much speculation about this quote being a clue to Kawabata’s suicide in 1972, two years after Mishima had also committed suicide.