With a restraint that barely conceals the ferocity of his characters' passions, one of Japan's great postwar novelists tells the luminous story of Kikuji and the tea party he attends with Mrs. Ota, the rival of his dead father's mistress. A tale of desire, regret, and sensual nostalgia, every gesture has a meaning, and even the most fleeting touch or casual utterance has the power to illuminate entire lives—sometimes in the same moment that it destroys them. Translated from the Japanese by Edward G. Seidensticker.


“A novel of exquisite artistry...rich suggestibility...and a story that is human, vivid and moving.”—New York Herald Tribune

Kawabata is a poet of the gentlest shades, of the evanescent, the imperceptible. This is a tragedy in soft focus, but its passions are fierce."—Commonweal

With a restraint that barely conceals the ferocity of his characters' passions, one of Japan's great postwar novelists tells the luminous story of Kikuji and the tea party he attends with Mrs. Ota, the rival of his dead father's mistress. A tale of desire, regret, and sensual nostalgia, every gesture has a meaning, and even the most fleeting touch or casual utterance has the power to illuminate entire lives—sometimes in the same moment that it destroys them. Translated from the Japanese by Edward G. Seidensticker.


" A novel of exquisite artistry...rich suggestibility...and a story that is human, vivid and moving." —New York Herald Tribune

Kawabata is a poet of the gentlest shades, of the evanescent, the imperceptible. This is a tragedy in soft focus, but its passions are fierce." —Commonweal

Review
“A literary habitat like no other . . . quietly devastating fiction. . . . Behind a lyrical and understated surface, chaotic passions pulse.”
—“The Independent ”(London)

"“Thousand Cranes” has the qualities of the best Japanese writing: a stunning economy, delicacy of feeling, and a painter's sensitivity to the visible world."
—“The Atlantic”

Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972) won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1968. His 1937 novel “Snow Country ”secured his position as one of Japan's leading authors. Alisa Freedman is a visiting assistant professor of Japanese literature at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Donald Richie—novelist, critic, essayist, travel writer, and former director of the Japanese cinema collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York—is author of “The Films of Akira Kurosawa. ”