With emerald shades,Dance eternal cranes.In the pristine rains,A warm koicha shared.Upon poignant chests.Tranquil prayers kneltJust as Bolaño teases my psyche, Kawabata plays with my rhythmic senses. In his words I find songs of a wintry heart waiting for a prosperous spring. I cannot refrain myself from scribbling lost thoughts in the shadows of Kawabata’s characters. Speaking of shadows; what an enigmatic delusion? The more you walk into it the more it grows; a loyal companion who never departs your physicality no matter how much you want it to leave. And then somehow, on a rainy day you crave for the sun, once again to be able to walk with your humble silhouette. Kikuji lived in and among numerous shadows of his past and present. Like the serpentine birthmark on Chikako’s breast, Kikuji’s past was conspicuous as warts on a toad. The ugliness of the birthmark that marred Chikako’s luminous skin spewed venomous ghosts through the intoxicated brew. The novel opens with Chikako inviting Kikuji to meet a prospective bride in pretense of a tea ceremony. The purplish mark on Chikako’s breast was all Kikuji remembered about his father’s mistress. As if the mark was an effigy of his father’s betrayal, the anguish of his mother and yet somehow it made him desire its touch in a bizarre way. Yukiko Inamura , a girl with the thousand cranes patterned kerchief was chosen for Kikuji’s miai(matchmaking).Kawabata interlaces the complex emotions in simple characterizations; analogous to the meticulous procedures that of a tea ceremony. Sen no Rikyū is considered as a profound historical figure in the tradition of wabi-cha(the Japanese Way of Tea). In the early 1500s, Rikyū integrated the teachings of Zen philosophies with the simplicity of tea to achieve aesthetics with pristine lucidity. Based on the four Zen principles of Harmony, Respect, Purity and Tranquility; the tea ceremony is more of a spiritual experience than mere drinking of tea. The ceremony that commences with the cleaning of the tea utensils before the tea is whisked, is symbolic to achieving stillness of mind and heart, by eradicating the worldly filth and strives for simplicity. Kawabata however fills the beauty of the tea ceremony with repulsiveness of human complexities and rigid destinies; a befitting paradox to the traditional Japanese art of Tea. Regarding his novel, Kawabata once said, “It is a negative work, and expression of doubt about and warning against the vulgarity into which the tea ceremony has fallen." Unlike other tea masters, Mr. Mitani left a legacy of guilt and melancholic irregularities to his son (Kikuji). With the passing of tea utensils through generations, Kikuji not only inherited the embellished porcelains but also his father’s revolting past and his women. Kawabata uses various tools of the tea ceremony as pictures on a nostalgic wall of grotesque sentimentalities. When Chikako serves tea to Kikuji in his father’s favourite Oribe(a black bowl) for the first time, Kikuji snubs the wistfulness brought by the kitchen-ware."But what difference does it make that my father owned it for a little while? It’s four hundred years old, after all – its history goes back to Momoyama and Rikyū himself. Tea masters have looked after it and passed it down through the centuries. My father is of very little importance.’ So Kikuji tried to forget the associations the bowl called up.It had passed from Ota to his wife, from the wife to Kikuji’s father, from Kikuji’s father to Chikako; and the two men, Ota and Kikuji’s father, were dead, and here were the two women. There was something almost weird about the bowl’s career."The same outlook is displayed when Fumiko brings the Shino Jar over to the cottage."A jar that had been Mrs. Ota’s was now being used by Chikako. After Mrs Ota’s death, it had passed to her daughter, and from Fumiko it had come to Kikuji.It had had a strange career. But perhaps the strangeness was natural to tea vessels. In the three or four hundred years before it became the property of Mrs Ota, it had passed through the hands of people with what strange careers?"The ceramics that once were proud of their serene concoctions were now symbols of forlorn tragedies. Kawabata delineates the corruption of sanctimonious tea ceremony by whisking in human greed and viciousness. Resembling the serene tea that gets muddied by loosened clay particles., the essence of chaste spirituality vanishes into emotional turmoil ridden by jagged history of the human soul In this book, the tea ceremony upstages the mortals as it takes the centre stage of vanishing traditions and escalating materialistic vulgarity transforming into a laudable protagonist. Furthermore, when Fumiko brings the red and the black Raku bowls over to Kikuji’s cottage, the molded clay become symbols of an incomplete love. The love between Mrs. Ota and Mr. Mitani that was haunted by immoral ramifications; Mrs. Ota’s love for Kikuji as she could not detach herself from his father’s memories; Kikuji’s love for Fumiko that dwelled in sinister shadows of his bedding Mrs. Ota; Fumiko’s apprehensions in reciprocating the warmth burdened with her mothers sins and the malice of Mr. Mitani in Chikako’s sexless existence. In a peculiar way all of it appeared to juxtapose the ghosts raised from the antique bowls."Though they were ceremonial bowls, they did not seem out of place as ordinary teacups; but a displeasing picture flashed into Kikuji’s mind. Fumiko’s father had died and Kikuji’s father had lived on; and might not this pair of Raku bowls have served as teacups when Kikuji’s father came to see Fumiko’s mother? Had they not been used as ‘man-wife'...."With artistic perfection Kawabata paints the red and black Raku giving a heart to these lifeless objects. The crimson love blackened by shame. The dreaminess of a man’s love and a woman’s devotion perished in morbid fancies.Kawabata does not romanticize suicide. He explores death in depths of salvation for it being the definitive pardon to mortal transgressions. Mrs. Ota’s untimely death or rather suicide brought closure to several irregularities. Her guilt that lived in the Raku bowls churned venom in a sorrowful Shino. Even though one forgives the dead ; the viciousness of the past becomes sorrows of the present. An urge to spit out all the venom.“Death only cuts off understanding. No one can possibly forgive that”....."Guilt never goes away but sorrow does."Gravely haunted by her mother’s death; ”Maybe mother died from not being able to stand her own ugliness”; Fumiko could not bring herself to love Kikuji for she felt the burden of acquiring the touch that once belonged to her mother. Even the smashing of the Shino did not mitigate Fumiko’s grief of her mother’s ignominy.Conversely, the “death” of the Shino in some way freed Kikuji from the paralytic curse induced by Mrs. Ota’s bond to him. Now, he sensed freedom and for the first time saw Fumiko in a pristine cleanness detached from the all the repulsiveness that once followed her existence. Fumiko was then an enlightened soul achieving the primitivism of the tea ceremony.“He could think of no one with whom to compare her. She had become absolute, beyond comparison. She had become decision and fate."Leaving traces of the mono no aware concept(Beauty and Sadness), Kawabata puts forth the idea of 'perishability' being the essence of nature. The indigo morning glory that hung on the gourd in Kikuji’s cottage, in its short life span bestowed flavor in the morning tea fading in the watery oblivion.Chikako’s greed for the antique tea bowls and Kikuji’s guilt over Mrs.Ota’s suicide and his intriguing affinity to the lipstick stained Shino creates a nauseating sense of filth; contradicting the simplistic spirit of the tea ceremony that Kawabata speaks so fondly; gradually disappearing in human greed. The aesthetic transience of beauty that envelops the wabi-sabi concept of accepted transience and imperfection is vivid through the quixotic words of this text and the flawed existence of its people. “Does pain go away and leave no trace, then?’‘You sometimes even feel sentimental for it.” Personally, the picture of thousand cranes is synonymous with Sadako Sasaki, a book that I had read years ago. Sadako, a victim of the Hiroshima bombing, prepared thousand origami cranes as a prayer for her recovery from leukemia. Legend has it that Sadako could not finish the said number of paper cranes; however, her brother Masahiro Sadako asserts that she indeed completed the 1000 paper cranes and it was during her second origami cycle that her youthful life was cut short. In the Japanese culture the crane stand for longevity and good fortune. The tradition of folding 1000 cranes is done when someone has a wish for better health, peace and happiness. Sardonically, the kerchief of patterned crane that the Inamura girl held represented the tragedy of missed chances and missed chances of luck and hope that eluded Kikuji’s fated destiny. The ‘bird of happiness’ after all did not nest in Kikuji’s life .In his Nobel Prize speech Kawabata commented:-"A tea ceremony is a coming together in feeling, a meeting of good comrades in a good season. That spirit, that feeling for one's comrades in the snow, the moonlight, under the blossoms, is also basic to the tea ceremony. A tea ceremony is a coming together in feeling, a meeting of good comrades in a good season. I may say in passing, that to see my novel Thousand Cranes as an evocation of the formal and spiritual beauty of the tea ceremony is a misreading. It is a negative work, and expression of doubt about and warning against the vulgarity into which the tea ceremony has fallen.As the fragrant tea emits transitory life into the tinted ceramics, Kawabata brilliantly bring beauty in the dynamism of nothingness exposing the conundrum veiled within the peaceful periphery of mortality.
When Kikuji's father died it seemed he inherited not only his material properties--the house and the antique tea bowls. His father's mistresses seemed to claim their hold onto him too. At the beginning of the novel, his father's first mistress Chikako sought him out to participate in a tea ceremony. But it seemed there was more to her invitation than tea drinking. She was arranging for Kikuji to meet a young beautiful woman as a marriage prospect. Mrs. Ota, his father's second mistress, with whom his father had had a longer lasting affair, was also present in the tea ceremony, together with her daughter. Her presence turned out to be a prelude to sexual relations with her former benefactor's son, with Kikuji himself. The novel was another slippery haiku performance from Kawabata. As with his earlier novel Snow Country, nature and culture functioned as more than backdrops to sexual encounters. They were the very settings on which human frailties and beauties were heated to bubble up to the surface like steam on a tea kettle. Over fiery coals the tea boils to perfection. The smoke couldn't hide the hushed desires, meaningful evasions, and raging passions of the characters. The elaborate tea ceremony at the opening almost obscured the all-too-civilized catfight between two mistresses soliciting the attention of a young man. Thousand Cranes was a work of high symbolism and lyricism. It could be seen as a novel of cultural inheritance, the transference of culture through the generations, like a valuable heirloom in a family. Before Mrs. Ota's ashes it [Shino tea ware] had been a flower vase, and now it was back at its old work, a water jar in a tea ceremony.A jar that had been Mrs. Ota's was now being used by Chikako. After Mrs. Ota's death, it had passed to her daughter, and from Fumiko it had come to Kikuji.It had had a strange career. But perhaps the strangeness was natural to tea vessels.In the three or four hundred years before it became the property of Mrs. Ota, it had passed through the hands of people with what strange careers?"Beside the iron kettle, the Shino looks even more like a beautiful woman," Kikuji said to Fumiko. "But it's strong enough to hold its own against the iron."The novel could also be seen as a description of "cultural niche" (cf. ecological niche), the unique functions and inherent values of products and artifacts like tea bowls, in which the essence of culture dwells since immemorial time. There was a kind of mutual agreement between tea bowls and tea drinkers: the drinkers maintain the beauty of the bowls; the drink rejuvenates its drinkers."It's a great waste not to use Shino [sixteenth century ware] for tea. You can't bring out the real beauty of a tea piece unless you set it off against its own kind."...In black enamel touched with green and an occasional spot of russet, thick leaves of grass encircled the waist of the bowl. Clean and healthy, the leaves were enough to dispel his morbid fancies.The proportions of the bowl were strong and dignified.One appraised the value of tea vessels in terms of their aesthetic qualities and utility. Beauty and function defined their place in the world. The tea bowls were a valuable inheritance and were acquired at a high price. One left one's soul in them, like the stain of a lipstick that couldn't be rubbed off a teacup's rim.The Shino was reddish to begin with, but Mother used to say that she couldn't rub [her] lipstick from the rim, no matter how hard she tried. I sometimes look at it now that she is dead, and there does seem to be a sort of flush in one place.There was coevolution between cultural artifacts and people. As with The Old Capital, Kawabata was concerned with how cultures and traditions are transferred like genetic traits, like birthmarks. The imprint of culture was consistent to the way a birthmark was imprinted on a person. In the novel, Chikako had a birthmark on her breast. This mark, one character had noted, could leave a lasting impression on a child suckling on it.From the day it was born it would drink there; and from the day it began to see, it would see that ugly mark on its mother's breast. Its first impression of the world, its first impression of its mother, would be that ugly birthmark, and there the impression would be, through the child's whole life.As for the figure of the "thousand cranes", it was the striking pattern on a young woman's kerchief. It had so affected Kikuji's perception of her (the Inamura girl, the marriage prospect) that she came to embody it, becoming for him the "girl of the thousand cranes". The pattern could symbolize the vitality of youth, or the exhilarating freedom in flying. In the flight of the thousand cranes, flapping wings bring bird blood into the bristles of every feather. She probably inherited this piece of cloth from someone.First posted in my blog.
What do You think about Thousand Cranes (1996)?
Fine book - but very strange, very japanese, austere to the point of the vanishing point... a series of strange love affairs are reduced to identifications with three-hundred year tea bowls fired in the kilns of 9th cen. tea masters. The underlying idea is quite fascinating, however. The tea-ceremony (Seidensticker explains) allows the drinker to sit briefly at the intersection of time and eternity, as he contemplates -- while he sips his tea, in his quiet rustic cottage -- the permanence of the cup and utensils as against the impermanence of their present (and transient) owners -- and thereby attains something of the imperturbability of the Stoic sage.Not as 'fun' as Snow Country -- so only a "4" on the pleasure scale -- but pleasure is not everything in literature.
—AC
"In a masterpiece there is nothing unclean"An achingly simple story, unfolding in conversations that are tantilizingly suggestive of its character's histories.Each nuance, each action is laden with emotional weight. Even the atmosphere, whenever described, serves to add to that mystical aura behind which - the reader knows - hide intentions, destinities, and fates.Kawabata's narrative can be best described as a floating, fleeting sort, which gives a feeling of sparseness and economy; although it must be said that the areas of focus have been rendered in a dizzying level of visual detail.One is compelled to read this book twice. It demands of the reader the same effort as good poetry, though its rewards are arguably greater.
—Tanuj Solanki
Another wonderful offering from Yasunari Kawabata, this novel is darker and more nuanced than the exuberant Old Capital aka Kyoto though that one is still my favorite of the current ones I am reading precisely for that exuberance. The same beautiful style to lose oneself in and superb descriptions of nature and Japanese associated objects (here tea sets and porcelain as opposed to kimonos, obis and such there)In essence this novel is about obsession - with women and death (from a man) and with men and death (from two women, a mother and her daughter whose relation to the young man in question are tricky to say the least) all expressed in very subtle ways - through the traditional Japanese Tea Ceremony and artifacts associated with it and through the meddling of an older woman who runs tea ceremony classes and who tries to influence the young man toward a girl of her choiceBeautiful writing and a lot of psychological suspense keeps one on the edge of the seat till the very appropriate end
—Liviu
