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Thousand Cranes | 
 enlarge | Author: Yasunari Kawabata
Creator: Edward G. Seidensticker
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $12.95
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Rating:  20 reviews
Sales Rank: 41598
Media: Paperback
Pages: 147
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.5
ISBN: 0679762655
Dewey Decimal Number: 895.6344
EAN: 9780679762652
ASIN: 0679762655
Publication Date: November 26, 1996
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
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.brpbr"A novel of exquisite artistry...rich suggestibility...and a story that is human, vivid and moving."--New York Herald TribunebrbrbrKawabata 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
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| Customer Reviews: Read 15 more reviews...
 Subtle prose, powerful content July 23, 2008
Chappa (Olympus Mons, Mars)
Many consider _Snow Country_ to be Yasunari Kawabata's masterpiece, and while I am inclined to agree with this judgment, it would be a mistake to overlook _Thousand Cranes_, an amazing study of relationships by the modern Japanese novelist. br / br /Kawabata's writing is often compared to the haiku form of poetry due to its concise effectiveness. Each word in _Thousand Cranes_ seems to have been chosen with extreme care, and the result is an engaging tale about the consequences of a love affair. br / br /In a sense, _Thousand Cranes_ is about the presence of the dead among the living. One must keep in mind that Kawabata was a master observer when it came to relationships between men and women, and to the relationship that men and women have with death, that ultimate certainty in the life of every living being. _Thousand Cranes_ is a subtle, detailed, and profound exploration of these relationships. br / br /The writing style in this novel is the style that made Kawabata famous, and for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968. The characters are believable in their flaws and obsessions. Some of the images, such as that of Chikako's birthmark, will stay with you for a long time. The use of the Japanese tea ceremony as the background for the plot represents an interesting literary device and adds depth to the action, which takes on the character of an ancient ritual. br / br /_Thousand Cranes_ is a highly recommendable novel. If you have read Kawabata before, you won't be disappointed. If you have not, perhaps _Snow Country_ would be the ideal place to start (after all, _Thousand Cranes_ is considered to be the second part of the thematic trilogy that began with _Snow Country_, although the characters are not the same), but in any case, _Thousand Cranes_ is a fine example of the genius, subtlety and depth that established Kawabata as one of the most significant authors of world literature. br /This review was written by my brother.
Kawabata rocks! May 19, 2008
Textbook (Jacksonville, Florida)
This is the second book I've read by Kawabata and it was awesome. I first read Snow Country which is excellent as well. I find it better when reading this syle of prose to read slowly and little bits then let it sink in before moving on. I plan on reading all of Kawabata's works.
Essence of sublime August 28, 2007
Madame Butterfly (Seattle, WA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Thousand Cranes is a beautifully and simply written tale of human tragedy. Kawabata takes us, with subtle nuance and few words, into the strongly passionate and complex world of human relations. br / br /With the world of Cha dou (the way of tea) as the back drop, what follows is an intricate web of deceit and revival of old repressed emotions, which are intricately woven with a Zen like quality between the characters as the story progresses. br / br /A young man, Kikuji, gets an invitation to a tea ceremony by Chikako, the long ago spurned mistress of his dead father. He doesn't know that it is a manipulation on her part to set him up for an arranged marriage meeting with a student of hers. Also showing up at this ceremony is the woman, Mrs.Ota, who took Chikako's place as Kikuji's father's long time mistress. Chikako has been jealous of Mrs. Ota and conspires against her and her daughter while she insinuates herself into Kikuji's life. br / br /Mrs. Ota, still in deep grief over the loss of Kikuji's father, connects with Kikuji at the ceremony. The fine line of reality gets blurred when both of them start feeling a deep nostalgia about the father, and they sleep together, filling Kikuji with an awe of the sublimeness of woman that he has never felt before and offering Mrs. Ota a temporary reprieve from her pain. br / br /Ota's daughter, Fumiko, takes on the guilt of her mother's past with Kikuji's father and the new development of what has happened between her mother and Kikuji, and begs Kikuji to stay away from her mother and to forgiver her. br / br /Chikako is a bitter woman who stayed in Kikuji's household even after the affair with the father was over, and is: conniving, cruel, and cares not about who she hurts. She has become a Tea Ceremony master and it is in this context that she does her manipulating and ruining of lives. br / br /Centered in all of this is Kikuji, as was his father before him. While he doesn't really want to deal with the recriminations of his father's past, he is forced to do so. He feels loathe to marry even though he finds the girl introduced to him very fine. With Mrs. Ota he feels both something warm and freeing, and yet, he also feels the need to hurt her at the same time, wondering if she is seeing his father in him. Chikako keeps forcing herself into his space and he doesn't do much to deter her from doing so even though he despises her. And she takes advantage of that by trying to manipulate his life against him. br / br /Outside of that, he develops a very sweet relationship with Fumiko, who is really suffering about her mother's past and recent actions, and he tries in some way to ease her pain. The line gets blurred here as well as he has a hard time distinguishing between her and her mother, seeing her mother in her until the end when he sees her as separate. br / br /All of this culminates in a final tragedy that seems a waste. br / br /Although an actual traditional Tea Ceremony is not ever explicitly done in this book, the tradition and refinement of it is passed on through the accoutrements, which are hundreds of years old, and which have passed from Mrs. Ota to Kikuji's father and from Kikuji's father to him. The use of these tea bowls and utensils through out the story keeps a thread of connectivity and deep emotion going between the characters and suggests a continuum of tradition, and, breakage from it as some of the bowls get destroyed. br / br /Kawabata's writing is a pure expression of the Japanese mind and culture, which I feel westerners will not understand immediately unless they have had some exposure to the eastern way of thinking. I myself spent years living in Japan, studying the language, trying to grasp the Japanese mind, which is illusive at best, even now. However, if you are willing to read this book outside the confines of the western mind, with another part of you, then this book is an exquisite work of poetry and art that is well worth the experience. br /
Tea without Sympathy September 21, 2006
Samurai Girl (Michigan)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Kawabata, in this book, produces a characteristic sense that, yes, indeed, this is true: that the author not so much invents or writes as records facts. br /Repressed passions and pain, conflicted desires, apathy, pessimism and hopelessness are all part of Kawabata's landscape, as well, and here, he has found a setting for these emotions in tea. Know nothing about tea? It's allright, you know something about life, and that's what we're talking about.
Evanescent Eroticism and Death, the Japanese Forte June 14, 2006
Ii Naotaka (between Continents)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
The crane is a symbol of long life in Japan, ironically enough for this story. The title of the book comes from the cranes decorating a kimono worn by a significant guest at the tea party about which this story revolves. My favorite of Kawabata's novels, there is in Thousand Cranes a deep primordial eroticism. That is normal in Kawabata's work, but this story evokes perhaps the best example, even better than Snow Country. One of the satisfying pleasures of reading Kawabata is that he puts you in touch with Japan's sexual tension in the way a good Bordeaux might have connected you with enjoying red wines. You realize immediately you're onto something complex, and it is going to take a while to understand its depth. br / br /If you can imagine love and desire in the quality of an intense dream, that is how this story begins to unfold. But like a cherry blossom, that kind of love is fleeting. Reality barges in to destroy its budding beauty. Withering jealous resentment worms its way into love it cannot abide, insinuating itself to take its revenge for perceived offenses, perhaps inherited. Alexander Pope wrote a poem about love between Peter Abelard and his student Eloisa that on one level reminds me of the depth and quality of feeling Kawabata manages to craft in Thousand Cranes. It is the kind of love some cannot live with. Here is an excerpt from one stanza in Eloisa's voice that I think captures that understated texture of desperation in Kikuji's and Fumiko's relationship in this novel: br / br / Far other dreams my erring soul employ, br / Far other raptures, of unholy joy: br / When at the close of each sad, sorrowing day, br / Fancy restores what vengeance snatch'd away, br / Then conscience sleeps, and leaving nature free, br / All my loose soul unbounded springs to thee. br / Oh curs'd, dear horrors of all-conscious night! br / How glowing guilt exalts the keen delight! br / Provoking Daemons all restraint remove, br / And stir within me every source of love. br / I hear thee, view thee, gaze o'er all thy charms, br / And round thy phantom glue my clasping arms. br / I wake--no more I hear, no more I view, br / The phantom flies me, as unkind as you. br / I call aloud; it hears not what I say; br / I stretch my empty arms; it glides away. br / To dream once more I close my willing eyes; br / Ye soft illusions, dear deceits, arise! br / br /The end of Thousand Cranes is haunting. I don't believe there is anything in Japanese culture more profoundly different from the Western view of things than how one lives with love or fails to do so, or for that matter how a good author writes about it. Restraint is the word that comes to mind. That, it seems, is what this story is about. br /
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