Lecture: Four Japanese Novelists: Yasunari Kawabata

February 22, 1999

Lecture: Four Japanese Novelists: Yasunari Kawabata
Prof. Donald Keene (University Professor Emeritus and Shincho Professor Emeritus, Columbia University)
GSAS Lounge, Philosophy Hall, Columbia University (116th St. & Amsterdam Ave.)
6:00 PM

Donald Keene, the Western world’s most celebrated scholar of Japanese literature and culture, will relate personal reminiscences about Yasunari Kawabata and comment on his literary legacy.  Awarded the Nobel prize for Literature in 1968, Kawabata wrote of impossible love and fragility of human life.  His works include “The Izu Dancer” (“Izu no Odoriko,” 1955), Snow Country (Yukiguni, 1956), A Thousand Cranes (Sembazuru, 1959), and The Sound of the Mountain (Yama no Oto, 1970).   This lecture is the first in a series of four by Prof. Keene.  In the coming weeks, Prof. Keene will also lecture about Jun’ichiro Tanizaki (3/8), Kobo Abe (4/5), and Yukio Mishima (4/19).