Nov 21, 2008
Beauty and Sadness | Beauty and Sadness
At a glance:
- Author: Yasunari Kawabata
- First Published: 1965
- Type of Work: Psychological realism
- Time of Work: 1961
- Setting: The cities of Kyoto and Kamakura, Japan
- Principal Characters: Toshio Oki, Fumiko, Taichiro, Otoko Ueno, Keiko Sakami
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction
- Subjects: 1960’s, Homosexuality or homosexuals, Jealousy, envy, or resentment, Novelists, Lesbianism or lesbians, Adultery, Accidents, Revenge, Painting or painters, Japan or Japanese people, Miscarriage
- Locales: Kyoto, Japan
The Novel
The action of Yasunari Kawabata’s Beauty and Sadness develops out of an affair
that Toshio Oki had twenty-four years earlier with a fifteen-year-old girl named Otoko Ueno. The
book begins with Oki’s decision to travel from his home in Kamakura, outside Tokyo, to
Kyoto in order to surprise his former mistress, now a distinguished painter, with a request. Oki
invites Otoko to listen to the tolling of Kyoto’s temple bells at midnight on New
Year’s Eve. On the surface, Oki’s motives are superficial and sentimental. He finds
himself intrigued by a...
[The entire page is 2453 words long]
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