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54-487: His illustrations were popular from the 1930s through the 1950s, and he contributed illustrations to numerous popular girls' novels by some of the period's most famous authors, including Yasunari Kawabata and Nobuko Yoshiya . He was also a prolific illustrator of children's books and created merchandise for babies, small children, and girls. The Gallery Katsuji Matsumoto in Tokyo is managed by his surviving children. Matsumoto

108-536: 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 ),

162-549: 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

216-586: A far cruder drawing style than Matsumoto's. The Mysterious Clover had been neglected for decades by manga scholars until it was displayed at a 2006 exhibition at the Yayoi Art Museum, where it caught the eye of Fusanosuke Natsume , who then wrote about it on his blog and in a newspaper column. Matsumoto's most famous work is his manga Kurukuru Kurumi-chan ( くるくるクルミちゃん ), which was serialized in Shōjo no tomo from January 1938 until December 1940. Featuring

270-557: A graduation thesis titled "A short history of Japanese novels". He graduated from university in March 1924, by which time he had already caught 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

324-500: 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

378-425: 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

432-437: 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

486-459: 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 Fusanosuke Natsume Fusanosuke Natsume ( 夏目 房之介 , Natsume Fusanosuke , born August 18, 1950)

540-630: A sturdy cardboard cover, and included as a premium in the April issue of Shōjo no tomo , The Mysterious Clover was a variation on The Scarlet Pimpernel and Zorro . The protagonist of The Mysterious Clover is a young girl who protects the poor peasants from the cruel and greedy nobles. This work is remarkable for its use of varying angles, including bird's-eye views, and variation in the size of panels. Sakō Shishido ( 宍戸左行 ), influenced by American newspaper strips, had used similar techniques in his 1930 Supiido Tarō ( スピード太郎 , "Speed Tarō") , but in

594-399: 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

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648-704: 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 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,

702-415: A wide range of styles, certain features remain consistent. His characters have an air of intelligence without melancholy, and of cheerful optimism that is never saccharine. Other popular illustrators of the day were better suited to the niches in which Matsumoto was not in his element. The multi-talented and enormously popular Jun'ichi Nakahara ( 中原淳一 ) drew girls who were intelligent and stylish, but humor

756-449: 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

810-590: Is a Japanese columnist and cartoonist . Born in Tokyo to Jun'ichi Natsume , grandson of novelist Natsume Sōseki , he attended Aoyama Gakuin University , where he graduated in 1973. He was awarded the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize (Special Award) in 1999 for excellence in criticism of manga. He has written the book Manga wa ima dō natte oru no ka? ( マンガは今どうなっておるのか? ) (2005), which

864-529: Is located at 4-14-18 Tamagawa, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo, 158-0094. Yasunari Kawabata Yasunari Kawabata ( 川端 康成 , Kawabata Yasunari , 11 June 1899 – 16 April 1972 ) 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

918-588: 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

972-597: 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

1026-459: 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

1080-411: 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

1134-530: 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

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1188-434: 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 )

1242-614: The English "combination" and is used in Japanese to mean "duo") in response to the popularity of the infant duo, "Haamu" ( ハーム ) and "Monii" ( モニー ), created by Matsumoto and featured on a wide array of the company's products. In 1971, now in his late 60s, Matsumoto built an atelier, "Chijunbō" ( 稚筍房 , "Young Bamboo Shoot Studio") in Kamishiraiwa ( 上白岩 on the Izu Peninsula , where he turned his creative talents from

1296-612: The Kurodas. However, in January 1916, he moved into a boarding house near 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

1350-550: 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

1404-531: The age of 18 and began attending the Kawabata ga gakkō ( 川端画学校 , "Kawabata Art School") . During this time he contributed drawings to such magazines as Shōjo sekai ( 少女世界 , "Girls' World") and Shōnen sekai ( 少年世界 , "Boys' World") . It was during this period that Matsumoto was inspired by illustrator Kōji Fukiya to become an illustrator in the field of girls' media. (Matsumoto's younger sister, Ryōko ( 龍子 ), would eventually marry Fukiya.) Following

1458-599: The age of 81. His cremated remains are interred in the Fuji Cemetery in Gotemba, Shizuoka , at the foot of Mount Fuji . Matsumoto's children, in addition to Ki Nimori, are, in order of birth: Ikki Matsumoto ( 松本一騎 , born 1935, deceased); Rumi O'Brien ( オブライエン瑠美 , born 1937, living in the U.S.A.); Motoi Matsumoto ( 松本基 , born 1939); Ken Matsumoto ( 松本賢 , born 1941, deceased); Meiko Matsumoto ( 松本明子 , born 1943); and Michie Utsuhara ( 宇津原充地栄 , born 1945). Two of

1512-434: The daily antics of a little girl named Kurumi ( クルミ , meaning "walnut"), each episode was a self-contained story, usually running 4 pages and 22 panels. The strip rarely ventured far from everyday reality, and was characterized by a gradually building absurdity that rarely descended to simple slapstick. In the earliest episodes, Kurumi-chan is roughly four heads tall , and would seem to be roughly nine or ten years old. Over

1566-496: The devastation of Tokyo, including its publishing industry, in the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake , Matsumoto decided to try his fortunes overseas, and managed to obtain free passage to Shanghai . His hope was to eventually make his way to Paris . In Shanghai, he earned money by contributing illustrations and articles to the Shanhai nichinichi shinbun ( 上海日日新聞 , "Shanghai Daily Newspaper") , but when he turned twenty years of age, he

1620-402: The engagement for unclear reasons. Kawabata never completely recovered from the blow of losing her. Hatsuyo may have been 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

1674-487: The exam the same year and entered the Humanities Faculty as an English major in July 1920. The young Kawabata, by this time, 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

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1728-670: The first successful female shōjo manga artists of the postwar period, Toshiko Ueda and Setsuko Tamura, were his apprentices. Michie, Matsumoto's youngest child, along with several of her siblings and Matsumoto's grandchildren, manages the Gallery Katsuji Matsumoto ( ギャラリーまつもとかつぢ ), soon to be renamed the Katsuji Matsumoto Archives ( 松本かつぢ資料館 ), the official Katsuji Matsumoto website and its on-line shop , and also writes " Kurumi-chan nikki ( クルミちゃん日記 , "Kurumi-chan Diary") . The gallery

1782-420: 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

1836-407: 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

1890-678: The kind of hyper-stylized, wryly adorable character epitomized by the later Kurumi-chan. His target audience accordingly shifted from preteen and low-teen girls to toddlers and young mothers. In addition to illustrating new and original children's books, Matsumoto illustrated numerous classics, including Little Red Riding Hood (1955), Andrew Lang 's Blue Fairy Book (1959, translated by Yasunari Kawabata ), and various other collections of classic Japanese and European fairy tales. In 1960, Matsumoto founded Katsu Productions ( 克プロダクション ), which specialized in illustrations for infants and toddlers and designing various infant merchandise. This merchandise

1944-514: The modern and cosmopolitan to the traditional and provincial. Using the bamboo that was so plentiful in the area, he designed a variety of toys and objects that could easily be reproduced by the local farmers to sell as souvenirs. For this work, Matsumoto was given a commendation by the Shizuoka Prefectural government. Although these works seem strikingly at odds with Matsumoto's cosmopolitan image, he in fact had always had an eye for

1998-478: 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

2052-567: The traditional, and was particularly fond of collecting carefully selected Japanese and Korean pottery and furniture. Modern or traditional, Western or Eastern, the common thread that runs through Matsumoto's aesthetic sense, and his work, is an appreciation of that which is refined, simple, elegant, and unpretentious. In 1986, Matsumoto suffered the last of a series of strokes, and was hospitalized, never to fully regain consciousness again. The stylish Matsumoto had been famously fastidious throughout his life, and his daughter, Meiko, has written that she

2106-425: 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

2160-503: The years, though, Kurumi's proportions changed, until by the 1950s she had become an extremely stylized character no more than two heads high, and of unknown age. The strip was revived after the war in the magazine Shōjo ("Girl") under the title Kurumi-chan and ran from November 1949 to February 1954. While working on Kurukuru Kurumi-chan , Matsumoto continued to do freestanding illustrations, in both color and black and white, and also to illustrate girls' fiction and poetry. Matsumoto

2214-650: 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 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

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2268-533: Was an only child, the decision was made to have the firstborn male child legally adopted by her parents in order to carry on the Nimori name. On official records, therefore, Ki Nimori ( 二森騏 , born 1933) is listed as the younger brother of Ayako, and therefore the brother-in-law of Matsumoto. In 1934, Matsumoto drew his first full-fledged manga, a 16-page story titled Nazo no kurōbaa ( ？（なぞ）のクローバー , "The Mysterious Clover") . Printed as an over-sized pamphlet with

2322-684: 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

2376-437: Was better suited to sunny, playful, or humorous work. In 1935, Matsumoto began to work for the magazine that would become his primary forum, Shōjo no tomo ( 少女の友 , "Girls' Friend") . Shōjo no tomo , with its modern, stylish image, was the ideal magazine for Matsumoto. In 1932, at the age of 28, Matsumoto was wed to Ayako Nimori ( 二森あや子 ). They went on to have seven children (four boys, three girls) together. Because Ayako

2430-468: Was born in Kobe, the son of Toraji ( 寅治 ) and Ishi ( いし ) Matsumoto, but moved with his family to Tokyo at the age of eight. At the age of 13, he began attending what was then called Rikkyō (St. Paul's) Middle School. Through the introduction of a teacher at Rikkyō, Matsumoto began drawing illustrations for the magazine Shinseinen ( 新青年 , "New Youth") at the age of 17. Matsumoto withdrew from Rikkyō at

2484-476: Was forced to return to Japan to report for the draft. He was rejected for military service because he was flat footed . Matsumoto's first forum for steady work was the magazine Shōjo Gahō ( 少女画報 , "Girls' Illustrated") , to which he contributed from 1928 to 1938. Matsumoto first ventured into manga in Shōjo Gahō , creating a series of illustrated narratives featuring a lively Chinese girl named Poku-chan, which

2538-566: Was found at his former residence in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, in 2014. While still a university student, Kawabata re-established 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

2592-484: Was irregularly published between November 1930 and March 1934. The Poku-chan strips were drawn in a stylized, almost abstract, Art Deco manner. At around this time, Matsumoto took on Toshiko Ueda as an apprentice. Matsumoto could draw in a wide range of styles, from the realistic to the near-abstract, but all of his work was distinguished by clean, almost geometrical lines and a strictly Modern sensibility. While he illustrated numerous dramatic girls' novels, his style

2646-401: Was not his forte. In the genre of sentimental melodrama, according to Akiko Horiguchi, no one was more popular than Hiroshi Katsuyama (勝山ひろし). But in an age when print media of all kinds were becoming increasingly visual, there was plenty of work to go around. In 1955, Matsumoto abandoned manga altogether. Although he continued to do illustration work in a variety of styles, his focus shifted to

2700-403: 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

2754-465: Was one of the most popular and influential illustrators working in girls' media, and he continued to be a popular illustrator through the early 1950s. He worked with such prominent Japanese authors and poets as Nobuko Yoshiya and Yaso Saijō, and adapted many works by non-Japanese author's, including Katherine Mansfield 's short story The Doll's House , to the short-lived genre of emonogatari ( 絵物語 , "picture stories") . Although Matsumoto drew in

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2808-462: Was spectacularly popular. Amateur manga scholar and blogger "lacopen" commented that "When I was a child, [Matsumoto's baby] goods were all the rage, so much so that it is no exaggeration to say they were everywhere." His designs for the infant merchandise company known originally as "Sanshin. Inc." were perhaps the mostly widely consumed and recognized, and it has been suggested that the company changed its name to Combi ( コンビ ) in 1961, which comes from

2862-447: Was startled to notice that on his hospital bed, where Matsumoto lay unconscious and barely responsive, he had been using his remaining good hand to remove the pills that had formed on the old hospital blanket. Furthermore, although doctors said he had lost his sight, Matsumoto would open his eyes, and, as if looking in a mirror, would straighten the hairs of his mustache with his fingers as he had habitually done for years. Matsumoto died at

2916-426: 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

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