Thousand Cranes By Yasunari Kawabata - 1370 Words

The novel Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata exposes the emerging movement from tradition to westernization in post-war Japan. Kawabata enriches his novel with a variety of intricate relationships between children and their parents, exposing how loss of tradition begins at home. Ironically, Kawabata then depicts how even teachers of tradition manipulate it with their hate and jealousy to achieve their sinister motives, tainting the new generation’s knowledge of tradition and thus moving them away from it. The movement away from tradition allows the new generation to easily recognize and be influenced by the westernization during post-war Japan. Through parents, Chikako’s poison, and the new generation; Kawabata explores the decaying tradition of the tea ceremony, successfully exposing the shift from tradition to westernization in post-war Japan. Children observe their parents, assess them carefully, and know their parents better than parents do their children, which explains why the power parents have towards influencing their children is substantial. In the novel Kawabata exposes this power by linking the parents and their children together, revealing how as parents begin to lose their tradition, so do their children. The protagonist of the story Kikuji states that â€Å"he had never been tempted to take up the [tea ceremony] himself, however...his father had never pressed him [to]† (Kawabata 52). Kikuji directly states that because his father had never pressed him to take teaShow MoreRelatedThousand Cranes By Yasunari Kawabata1194 Words   |  5 Pagesof the biggest causes being unfulfilled desire; depending on the significance of the desire the greater the suffering. In the novel Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata there is this intricate web of suffering that takes place between the main characters, Kikuji, his father’s, Chikako, Mrs. Ota, and Fumiko. All as an outcome of unfulfilled desire. For Yasunari Kawabata, suffering is a close friend to him. At the age of two he lost his father, and as the years went on he would eventually lose his motherRead MoreThousand Cranes By Yasunari Kawabata2175 Words   |  9 Pagesthe biggest causes being unfulfilled desire; depending on the significance of the desire the greater the suffering. In the novel Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata there is this intricate web of suffering that occurs between the main characters, Kikuji, his father’s, his father’s mistresses and Fumiko. All as an outcome of unfulfilled desire. For Yasunari Kawabata, suffering is a close friend to him. At the age of two he lost his father, as the years went on he would eventually lose his motherRead MoreThe Bluest Eye And Yasunari Kawabata s Thousand Cranes1345 Words   |  6 Pagesused today and convey different meanings depending upon one’s cultural background. Hence, the significance of a symbol is not inherent in the symbol itself but is rather cultivated in society. Both Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Yasunari Kawabata’s Thousand Cranes explore the significance of such symbols, focusing on the basal reader of Dick and Jane and the ritualized practice of the Japanese Tea Ceremony, respectively. These two symbols, while disparate on the surface, share fundamental similaritiesRead More A Comparison of the Heat and Cold Imagery Used in Woman at Point Zero and Thousand Cranes1142 Words   |  5 Pagesand Cold Imagery Used in Woman at Point Zero and Thousand Cranes In the books Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi, and Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata, both authors use various forms of imagery that reoccur throughout the works. These images are used not to be taken for their literal meanings, but instead to portray a deeper sense or feeling that may occur several times in the book. One type of imagery that both Saadawi and Kawabata use in their works is heat and cold imagery. InRead MoreThe Tea House By Lao She1646 Words   |  7 Pagespeople surviving is slim. In comparison to Lao She s Tea House, Yasunari Kawabata s Thousand Cranes takes on a different approach. Kawabata s moral vision was divided between a respect for the greater moral coherence of the past and a realism about the degeneracy and freedom of the modern world. Yasunari Kawabata was born in Osaka in 1899. In 1968, he became the first Japanese writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. Kawabata served as the chairman of the P.E.N. Club of Japan for severalRead MoreAnalysis Of Yasunari Kawabatas Thousand Cranes1433 Words   |  6 Pagesasked what he thought of western civilization, answering that â€Å"it would be a very good idea†, and in Yasunari Kawabata’s Thousand Cranes, Kawabata exposes the emerging movement from tradition to westernization in post-war Japan. Kawabata enriches his novel with a variety of intricate relationships between children and their parents, exposing how the loss of tradition begins at home. Ironically, Kawabata then depicts ho w even the teachers of tradition manipulate it with their hate and jealousy, tainting