Yasunari Kawabata — Profile, Rankings & Fame Trend

Summary

Updated 2026-06-08

The first Japanese writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1968, for prose so spare and lyrical it reads like ink wash painting — subtlety as craft, restraint as power.

Biography

About

Yasunari Kawabata was born on 11 June 1899 and built a career as a novelist and short story writer whose style turned on what wasn't said: prose that shaded meaning rather than declared it. That approach, lyrical and precise, earned him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968, making him the first Japanese author to receive it. His works found readers far beyond Japan and have held them since. He died on 16 April 1972.

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Yasunari Kawabata

Yasunari Kawabata

said12 Dec 1968

Seeing the moon, he becomes the moon, the moon seen by him becomes him. He sinks into nature, becomes one with nature.

— On the poetry of Myōe and ideas of Saigyō Hōshi

Yasunari Kawabata

said12 Dec 1968

That spirit, that feeling for one's comrades in the snow, the moonlight, under the blossoms, is also basic to the tea ceremony.

— Nobel lecture (12 December 1968) as translated in Nobel Lectures, Literature 1968-1980 (1993), Editor-in-Charge Tore Frängsmyr, Editor

Yasunari Kawabata

said12 Dec 1968

I have an essay with the title "Eyes in their Last Extremity". The title comes from the suicide note of the short-story writer Akutagawa Ryunosuke...

— Nobel lecture (12 December 1968) as translated in Nobel Lectures, Literature 1968-1980 (1993), Editor-in-Charge Tore Frängsmyr, Editor

Yasunari Kawabata

said12 Dec 1968

Among those who give thoughts to things, is there one who does not think of suicide?" With me was the knowledge that that fellow Ikkyu twice contemplated suicide.

— Nobel lecture (12 December 1968) as translated in Nobel Lectures, Literature 1968-1980 (1993), Editor-in-Charge Tore Frängsmyr, Editor

Yasunari Kawabata

said1962

The "secret" of their being up in the tree had continued for almost two years now. Where the thick trunk branched out near the top, the two could sit comfortably.

— "Up in the Tree" [Ki-no Ue] (1962).

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

Gallery