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59-621: Seidensticker is closely associated with the work of three major Japanese writers of the 20th century: Yasunari Kawabata , Jun'ichirō Tanizaki , and Yukio Mishima . His landmark translations of novels by Kawabata, in particular Snow Country (1956) and Thousand Cranes (1958), led, in part, to Kawabata being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968. Seidensticker was born in 1921 on an isolated farmstead near Castle Rock, Colorado . His father, also named Edward G. Seidensticker,

118-536: A clue to Kawabata's suicide in 1972, a year and a half after Mishima had committed suicide. Kawabata apparently committed suicide in 1972 by gassing himself, but several close associates and friends, including his widow, consider his death to have been accidental. One thesis, as advanced by Donald Richie , was that he mistakenly unplugged the gas tap while preparing a bath. Many theories have been advanced as to his potential reasons for killing himself, among them poor health (the discovery he had Parkinson's disease ),

177-487: A commemorative work created by those whose lives he affected, New Leaves: Studies and Translations of Japanese Literature in Honor of Edward Seidensticker (1993). After retirement, he divided his time between Honolulu and Tokyo. He described the latter as "the world's most consistently interesting city". Yasunari Kawabata Yasunari Kawabata ( 川端 康成 , Kawabata Yasunari , 11 June 1899 – 16 April 1972 )

236-549: A distinction. In awarding the prize "for his narrative mastery, which with great sensibility expresses the essence of the Japanese mind", the Nobel Committee cited three of his novels, Snow Country , Thousand Cranes , and The Old Capital . Kawabata's Nobel Lecture was titled "Japan, The Beautiful and Myself" ( 美しい日本の私―その序説 ). Zen Buddhism was a key focal point of the speech; much was devoted to practitioners and

295-500: A number of his short stories shortly after he graduated, receiving acclaim for " The Dancing Girl of Izu " in 1926, a story about a melancholy student who, on a walking trip down Izu Peninsula , meets a young dancer, and returns to Tokyo in much improved spirits. The work explores the dawning eroticism of young love but includes shades of melancholy and even bitterness, which offset what might have otherwise been an overly sweet story. Most of his subsequent works explored similar themes. In

354-425: A possible illicit love affair, or the shock caused by the suicide of his friend Yukio Mishima in 1970. Unlike Mishima, Kawabata left no note, and since (again unlike Mishima) he had not discussed significantly in his writings the topic of taking his own life, his motives remain unclear. However, his Japanese biographer, Takeo Okuno , has related how he had nightmares about Mishima for two or three hundred nights in

413-437: A provincial geisha , which takes place in a remote hot-spring town somewhere in the mountainous regions of northern Japan. It established Kawabata as one of Japan's foremost authors and became an instant classic, described by Edward G. Seidensticker as "perhaps Kawabata's masterpiece". After the end of World War II, Kawabata's success continued with novels such as Thousand Cranes (a story of ill-fated love), The Sound of

472-420: A row, and was incessantly haunted by the specter of Mishima. In a persistently depressed state of mind, he would tell friends during his last years that sometimes, when on a journey, he hoped his plane would crash. Kawabata's works have been translated into languages such as English, French, German, and Turkish, Korean. Niji ikutabi Mount Suribachi Mount Suribachi ( 摺鉢山 , Suribachiyama )

531-399: A very active social life among the many other writers and literary people residing in that city during the war years and immediately thereafter, in his later years he became very reclusive. One of his most famous novels was Snow Country , started in 1934 and first published in installments from 1935 through 1937. Snow Country is a stark tale of a love affair between a Tokyo dilettante and

590-513: A walk near Shinobazu Pond in the Ueno district of Tokyo, he fell and later died because of head injuries. He was 86. Seidensticker is widely regarded as one of the greatest translators of classic and modern Japanese literature into English. His translations have been described as "brilliant" and "elegant." One contemporary scholar noted that in Seidensticker's translations, "You could feel

649-489: A way to manage through the war without being drafted , saw the Japanese Language School as a solution. He traveled to Washington, D.C. for a school-admittance interview, the first time he had been east of Chicago , and was accepted. Upon completion of the 14-month intensive program, he was able to read a Japanese language newspaper, albeit with some difficulty. The "Boulder Boys," as the men who attended

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708-449: A young age. Kawabata left many of his stories apparently unfinished, sometimes to the annoyance of readers and reviewers, but this goes hand to hand with his aesthetics of art for art's sake, leaving outside any sentimentalism, or morality, that an ending would give to any book. This was done intentionally, as Kawabata felt that vignettes of incidents along the way were far more important than conclusions. He equated his form of writing with

767-409: Is a 169-metre (554 ft)-high mountain on the southwest end of Iwo Jima in the northwest Pacific Ocean under the administration of Ogasawara Subprefecture , Tokyo Metropolis , Japan . The mountain's name derives from its shape, resembling a suribachi or grinding bowl. It is also known as "Mount Pipe" ( パイプ山 , paipu-yama ) , since the volcanic gas and water vapor that rolls in from

826-439: Is not very interesting. There was little I felt inclined to ask Tanizaki about." Not so with Kawabata. "Do you not, my esteemed master, find this a rather impenetrable passage?" Mr. Seidensticker recalled asking him, ever so gently, during the translation of Snow Country . "He would dutifully scrutinize the passage, and answer: 'Yes, ' " Mr. Seidensticker wrote. "Nothing more." The last work he supervised translating into English

885-640: Is pure stream-of-consciousness writing . He was even involved in writing the script for the experimental film A Page of Madness . Kawabata met his wife Hideko (née Matsubayashi) in 1925, and they registered their marriage on 2 December 1931. In 1933, Kawabata protested publicly against the arrest, torture and death of the young leftist writer Takiji Kobayashi in Tokyo by the Tokkō special political police. Kawabata relocated from Asakusa to Kamakura , Kanagawa Prefecture , in 1934 and, although he initially enjoyed

944-597: Is rather to explore feelings about death. The tea ceremony utensils are permanent and forever, whereas people are frail and fleeting. These themes of impossible love and impending death are again explored in The Sound of the Mountain (serialized 1949-1954), set in Kawabata's adopted home of Kamakura. The protagonist, an aging man, has become disappointed with his children and no longer feels strong passion for his wife. He

1003-459: Is represented. He often gives the impression that his characters have built up a wall around them that moves them into isolation. In a 1934 published work Kawabata wrote: "I feel as though I have never held a woman's hand in a romantic sense [...] Am I a happy man deserving of pity?”. Indeed, this does not have to be taken literally, but it does show the type of emotional insecurity that Kawabata felt, especially experiencing two painful love affairs at

1062-411: Is strongly attracted to someone forbidden – his daughter-in-law – and his thoughts for her are interspersed with memories of another forbidden love, for his dead sister-in-law. The book that Kawabata himself considered his finest work, The Master of Go (1951), contrasts sharply with his other works. It is a semi-fictional recounting of a major Go match in 1938, on which he had actually reported for

1121-530: The Mainichi newspaper chain. It was the last game of master Shūsai 's career and he lost to his younger challenger, Minoru Kitani , only to die a little over a year later. Although the novel is moving on the surface as a retelling of a climactic struggle, some readers consider it a symbolic parallel to the defeat of Japan in World War II. Through many of Kawabata's works the sense of distance in his life

1180-481: The "workers'" or proletarian literature movement of the Socialist/Communist schools. It was an " art for art's sake " movement, influenced by European Cubism , Expressionism , Dada , and other modernist styles. The term Shinkankakuha , which Kawabata and Yokomitsu used to describe their philosophy, has often been mistakenly translated into English as "Neo- Impressionism ". However, Shinkankakuha

1239-434: The 1920s, Kawabata was living in the plebeian district of Asakusa , Tokyo. During this period, Kawabata experimented with different styles of writing. In Asakusa kurenaidan ( The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa ), serialized from 1929 to 1930, he explores the lives of the demimonde and others on the fringe of society, in a style echoing that of late Edo period literature. On the other hand, his Suisho genso ( Crystal Fantasy )

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1298-738: The Great Earthquake (1990), Seidensticker's two-volume history of Tokyo, he weaves a tale of cultural history of how the city was impacted by the advent of Westernization, and how it responded to the twin disasters of the 20th Century—the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923 and the massive destruction incurred in World War II due to Allied bombing raids. He published his autobiographical observations in Tokyo Central: A Memoir in 2001. A biography and bibliography are included in

1357-550: The Mountain , The House of the Sleeping Beauties , Beauty and Sadness , and The Old Capital . Thousand Cranes (serialized 1949-1951) is centered on the Japanese tea ceremony and hopeless love. The protagonist is attracted to the mistress of his dead father and, after her death, to her daughter, who flees from him. The tea ceremony provides a beautiful background for ugly human affairs, but Kawabata's intent

1416-604: The New York publishing house Alfred A. Knopf about translating Japanese literature for Knopf, and was soon at work. As the 1960s began to unfold, Seidensticker, growing weary of life in Japan and living life as an outsider, began to consider returning to the United States. In 1962, when an invitation was extended by Stanford University to substitute for a professor on special assignment, he readily accepted and returned to

1475-568: The Tokyo University literary magazine Shin-shichō ( New Tide of Thought ), which had been defunct for more than four years. There he published his first short story, "Shokonsai ikkei" ("A View from Yasukuni Festival") in 1921. During university, he changed faculties to Japanese literature and wrote a graduation thesis titled "A short history of Japanese novels". He graduated from university in March 1924, by which time he had already caught

1534-723: The U.S. Foreign Service and, after further studies during a summer at Yale University and a year at Harvard , was placed in Tokyo assigned to the Diplomatic Section of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP). In May 1950, roughly two years after he arrived in Japan, Seidensticker decided the Foreign Service was not his calling and he resigned on his own initiative. He had not been promoted while colleagues had, and had deemed himself not

1593-552: The U.S. after having lived full-time in Japan from 1948 to 1962. Seidensticker taught at Stanford as professor of Japanese from 1962 to 1966. He then joined the faculty at the University of Michigan and remained there for 11 years before being drawn away in 1978 to join the faculty of Columbia University as professor of Japanese. He retired from Columbia in 1985 and was thereafter professor emeritus. During retirement he divided his time between Hawaii and Japan. In 2007, while taking

1652-529: The attention of Kikuchi Kan and other noted writers and editors through his submissions to Kikuchi's literary magazine , the Bungei Shunju . In October 1924, Kawabata, Riichi Yokomitsu and other young writers started a new literary journal Bungei Jidai ( The Artistic Age ). This journal was a reaction to the entrenched old school of Japanese literature, specifically the Japanese movement descended from Naturalism , while it also stood in opposition to

1711-412: The battle, but before long, found himself on the beach "loaded down with dictionaries." By then the gunfire had ceased as the Japanese had retreated north to bunkers and caves. Later, he reminisced in his memoirs that while he may have been in danger a few times, he had little awareness of being afraid. Near the end of his deployment, after the island had been declared "secure," he climbed Mount Suribachi ,

1770-793: The emotions and nuances that the original writer wanted to convey." He has even been described as "the best" translator of Japanese literature. Seidensticker won the National Book Award in category Translation for his edition of Kawabata's The Sound of the Mountain (a split award). He also translated The Decay of the Angel , the last volume of Yukio Mishima 's Sea of Fertility tetralogy , and several of Mishima's stories. Seidensticker translated Jun'ichirō Tanizaki 's The Makioka Sisters and Some Prefer Nettles and authored important criticism on Tanizaki's place in 20th-century Japanese literature. The New York Times obituary allowed

1829-417: The entire canon of modern Japanese literature. By the mid-1950s, having exhausted the fellowship circuit, he found work as a lecturer of both American and Japanese literature at Sophia University . While Seidensticker enjoyed his time at Sophia, at the time it did not pay well and he took on a free-lance writing assignments and other part-time jobs. In 1954 he was contacted by Harold Strauss, the chief editor at

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1888-468: The footsteps of his grandfather and several uncles, but he chose economics, then switched to English, a choice that displeased his family. In June 1942, he graduated with a degree in English. As the 1940s unfolded, the U.S. Navy began to expand its Japanese Language School , then located at the University of California at Berkeley . After the attack on Pearl Harbor , an invitation was issued to shift

1947-420: 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 enter salvation only through their efforts, where they are isolated for several hours at a time, and 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

2006-407: The ink painting is in space, abbreviation, what is left undrawn." From painting he moved on to talk about ikebana and bonsai as art forms that emphasize the elegance and 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 topic that was briefly mentioned in Kawabata's lecture

2065-474: The inspiration for some of his works, including the novella The Dancing Girl of Izu and several Palm-of-the-Hand Stories . She died following complications from a stroke in 1951, aged 44, but Kawabata was not informed of her death until 1955. An unsent love letter to her was found at his former residence in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, in 2014. While still a university student, Kawabata re-established

2124-409: The islands of Tsushima and Hirado. It was during his few months at Sasebo that Seidensticker began to develop a deeper appreciation of Japan and the Japanese people. In early 1946 he was sent to San Diego and discharged. On his return to the United States, Seidensticker enrolled at Columbia University and took a master's degree in 1947 in what was then known as "public law and government." He joined

2183-673: The junior high school (comparable to a modern high school) to which he had formerly commuted by train. After graduating in March 1917, Kawabata moved to Tokyo just before his 18th birthday. He hoped to pass the exams for Dai-ichi Kōtō-gakkō (First Upper School), which was under the direction of the Tokyo Imperial University . He succeeded in the exam the same year and entered the Humanities Faculty as an English major in July 1920. The young Kawabata, by this time,

2242-820: The language school were fondly called (a handful of women later joined the program as well), were given the choice of becoming officers in the Navy or Marine Corps . Seidensticker selected the Marines due to an abundance of "boyish romanticism." Seidensticker received basic training with the Marines in North Carolina, after which he was shifted to Camp Pendleton on the West Coast. It was in California that he first encountered Japanese prisoners of war, with whom he

2301-417: The mountain is a cinder cone of andesite , formed by volcanic activity. It is thought that the mountain is a dormant vent to a still active volcano (designated Iō-tō, the name of the island as a whole). From 1889 to 1957, the Japanese government recorded sixteen eruptions on the peak. One eruption lasted for sixty-five minutes, and created a crater with a diameter of 35 meters and a depth of fifteen meters on

2360-409: The runway near the former airfield from World War II . The Japanese Meteorological Agency reported that on May 2, 2012, a small eruption caused water discoloration to the northeast, and confirmed the appearance of a new fumarole . During World War II , the Japanese built tunnel and bunker systems in and on Mount Suribachi. In February 1945, United States Marines invaded the island and initiated

2419-737: The salaryman type. Moreover, he sensed a "witch-hunting" in which bachelors were subjected to "peculiar rumors" and a skeptical eye. He also suspected his room at the Daiichi Hotel, his billet, was bugged. After his short Foreign Service tenure, Seidensticker studied Japanese literature at the University of Tokyo on the GI Bill and later under a Ford Foundation grant. With the Ford fellowship, Seidensticker switched his focus from studying Heian literature to that of modern Japanese literature. In his remaining years at Tokyo University he read virtually

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2478-518: The school to the University of Colorado. The navy was amenable because the forced relocation of citizens and residents of Japanese ancestry was underway along the West Coast, and most of the program's instructors were in danger of being caught up in the expanding net. By the middle of 1942, the school had completed its move to Colorado. Among those who came east to Boulder with the program was student Donald Keene . Seidensticker, who had been seeking

2537-427: The site of Joe Rosenthal 's iconic flag-raising photograph . He was then rotated back to Hawaii. During that stay, the atomic bombs were dropped and the war with Japan came to an end . Although Seidensticker was deeply unsettled by the dropping of the bomb, he approved of Truman 's decision. In his memoirs, he noted, "Had I been at Harry's Desk, I would have made the decision he made. The important things were to get

2596-516: The summit, alongside the rest of the island, give the appearance of a smoking pipe when viewed from the sea. Joe Rosenthal 's iconic World War II photograph, Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima , depicting United States Marines raising an American flag, was taken at the mountain's peak during the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945. Ammunition ship USS Suribachi was named after this mountain. Geologically,

2655-478: The traditional poetry of Japan, the haiku . In addition to fictional writing, Kawabata also worked as a reporter, most notably for the Mainichi Shimbun . Although he refused to participate in the militaristic fervor that accompanied World War II , he also demonstrated little interest in postwar political reforms. Along with the death of all his family members while he was young, Kawabata suggested that

2714-643: The translator to speak for himself: During his years in Japan Mr. Seidensticker became friends with many of the writers he translated, though the friendships were sometimes tested during the delicate diplomatic dance that is central to the translator's art. As Mr. Seidensticker recalled in Tokyo Central , some writers required more dancing than others: "Tanizaki wrote clear, rational sentences," Mr. Seidensticker wrote. "I do not, certainly, wish to suggest that I disapprove of such sentences; but translating them

2773-501: The war over and to save lives; and that more lives, American and Japanese, were saved by the bombing than were destroyed by it seems the next thing to certain." About a month after General Douglas MacArthur arrived in Tokyo to assume control of Japan, Seidensticker landed with the Marines at Sasebo , a naval base city in Nagasaki Prefecture. He was assigned duties disarming Japanese forces and disabling heavy weapons on

2832-425: The war was one of the greatest influences on his work, stating he would be able to write only elegies in postwar Japan. Still, many commentators detect little thematic change between Kawabata's prewar and postwar writings. As the president of Japanese P.E.N. for many years after the war (1948–1965), Kawabata was a driving force behind the translation of Japanese literature into English and other Western languages. He

2891-423: The works of Mark Twain the least. He was one of the only two students in his graduating class at Douglas County High School to go off to college, the other being his older brother, William. Seidensticker wanted to attend an East Coast university, but because of his family's financial situation he grudgingly enrolled in the University of Colorado at Boulder . It was assumed that he would study law, following in

2950-501: Was You Were Born for a Reason on Japanese Buddhism . Seidensticker wrote widely on Japan , its people, as well as the city of Tokyo . His first major non-translation work, "Kafū the Scribbler: The Life and Writings of Nagai Kafū, 1879–1959" (Stanford University Press, 1965), was a biography of Kafū Nagai , the Japanese writer who is noted for his sensitive depictions of the denizens of Tokyo's pleasure quarters. It

3009-498: Was a Japanese novelist and short story writer whose spare, lyrical, subtly-shaded prose works won him the 1968 Nobel Prize in Literature , the first Japanese author to receive the award. His works have enjoyed broad international appeal and are still widely read. Born into a well-established family in Osaka , Japan, Kawabata was orphaned by the time he was four, after which he lived with his grandparents. He had an older sister who

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3068-626: Was awarded the Goethe Plaque of the City of Frankfurt in 1959, appointed an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters of France in 1960, and awarded Japan's Order of Culture the following year. In 1969, Kawabata was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Hawaiʻi . Kawabata was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature on 16 October 1968, the first Japanese person to receive such

3127-415: Was enamoured of the works of another Asian Nobel laureate, Rabindranath Tagore . One of Kawabata's painful love episodes was with Hatsuyo Itō ( 伊藤初代 , 1906–1951), whom he met when he was 20 years old. They were engaged to be married in 1921, but only one month later Hatsuyo broke off the engagement for unclear reasons. Kawabata never completely recovered from the blow of losing her. Hatsuyo may have been

3186-403: Was not meant to be an updated or restored version of Impressionism; it focused on offering "new impressions" or, more accurately, "new sensations" or "new perceptions" in the writing of literature. An early example from this period is the draft of Hoshi wo nusunda chichi (The Father who stole a Star), an adaption of Ferenc Molnár 's play Liliom . Kawabata started to achieve recognition for

3245-623: Was taken in by an aunt, and whom he met only once thereafter, in July 1909, when he was ten. She died when Kawabata was 11. Kawabata's grandmother died in September 1906, when he was seven, and his grandfather in May 1914, when he was fifteen. Having lost all close paternal relatives, Kawabata moved in with his mother's family, the Kurodas. However, in January 1916, he moved into a boarding house near

3304-426: Was that of suicide. Kawabata reminisced of other famous Japanese authors who committed suicide, in particular Ryūnosuke Akutagawa . He contradicted the custom of suicide as being a form of enlightenment, mentioning the priest Ikkyū , who also thought of suicide twice. He quoted Ikkyū, "Among those who give thoughts to things, is there one who does not think of suicide?" There was much speculation about this quote being

3363-507: Was the first study to examine the life and works of Nagai to appear in any Western language. As the book includes a number of Seidensticker translations of Nagai's short stories and novellas, it is neither pure biography nor criticism. Seidensticker, to his lifelong regret, never met Kafū, even though there were opportunities to be introduced. In Low City, High City: Tokyo from Edo to the Earthquake (1983) and Tokyo Rising: The City Since

3422-445: Was the owner of a modest ranch that struggled financially during the 1920s and early 1930s. His mother, Mary E. Seidensticker (née Dillon), was a homemaker. Seidensticker was raised Catholic and was of German, English and Irish heritage. By high school, cognizant that he was neither athletic nor mechanically adept, he began to slip away during spare time to read Dickens and Thackeray , among others. He found Tolstoy most to his liking,

3481-486: Was to practice his Japanese. Late in 1944 he and his language-officer colleagues were transferred to the Hawaiian Islands and Pearl Harbor. They were given duties to translate captured documents and to interrogate prisoners of war, a task Seidensticker found increasingly distasteful. In February 1945, Seidensticker was boarded on a ship bound for Iwo Jima . He was not among the first waves of troops to land during

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