Criticism

Anderer, Paul. review of Palm-of-the-Hand Stories. The Journal of Asian Studies 48, No. 4 (November 1989): 865-66.

Admires the "sense of warmth and fragility" that "offsets the cool formalism of Kawabata's spare and rigorous method" in the stories in this volume.

Brown, Sidney DeVere. "Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972): Tradition versus Modernity." World literature Today 62, No. 3 (Summer 1988): 375-79.

Retrospective survey that attempts to "put Kawabata in the context of his times and reconstruct those times . . . from the fragments about the world around the writers and artists, the dilettantes and lovely traditional Japanese women who inhabit his stories."

——. Review of Palm-of-the-Hand Stories. World literature Today 64, No. 1 (Winter 1990): 197.

Favorable assessment of the juxtaposition of images, the "spare, elliptical style," and the suggestiveness of the short pieces in this collection.

Dunlop, lane. "Three Thumbprint Novels from the Japanese of Yasunari Kawabata." Prairie Schooner 53, No. 1 (Spring 1979): 1-10.

Translations of three stories: "The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket," "The Silverberry Thief," and "The Young lady of Suruga."

Grigson, Geoffrey. "Stories by Kawabata." In his The Contrary View: Glimpses of Fudge and Gold, pp. 200-03. london: The Macmillan Press, 1974.

Praises the "maximal artistry" evident in the stories in House of the Sleeping Beauties.

Jordan, Clive. "Sleeping and Waking." New Statesman 78, No. 2003 (1 August 1969): 153-54.

Review of House of the Sleeping Beauties that extols the way in which Kawabata "creates an elegiac sadness which comes from balancing life's rich potential against lost and limited opportunities" in the title story.

Makoto Ueda. "Kawabata Yasunari." In Modern Japanese Writers and the Nature of literature, pp. 173-218. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1976.

Broad-ranging interpretation of Kawabata's long and short fiction in relation to major literary theories and the views expressed in the author's own expository essays and criticism.

Stuewe, Paul. review of House of the Sleeping Beauties. Books in Canada 12, No. 3 (26 March 1983): 26.

Offers high praise for Kawabata's writing, which "confronts the most basic contradictions of human life with poise and serenity, and makes high art of the existential ebb and flow that will ultimately lay us low."

Additional coverage of Kawabata's life and career is contained in the following sources published by Gale Research: Contemporary Authors, Vols. 93-96, 33-36 (rev. ed.); and Contemporary literary Criticism, Vols. 2, 5, 9, 18.