The Sound of the Mountain by Yasunari Kawabata

without major interruption by invasion or collapse of civilization) for thousands of years. All of these places have been inhabited, more or less continuously, and more or less peacefully (i.e. Whenever I read a Japanese novel, I’m struck by the weight of history. I don’t know enough about Japanese culture to be able to speculate accurately about the reason for this difference.

We Americans are extremely disconnected from our traditional art forms, but we don’t seem to miss the absence. You don’t often see characters in our novels seriously think about the ballet or the opera or classical music or even poetry. This is pretty interesting to me, because there’s nothing similar in English literature. the masks that actors would wear in a No drama) and spends some time contemplating them. In this case, the narrator buys several No masks (i.e. He thinks about the distance that’s grown up between him and his wife.Ī lot of Japanese novels include some attempt, by the characters, to enjoy traditional Japanese art forms. He attends the funerals of a few of his friends and meditates on their absence.

Much of it is about contemplating the mountain and the gardens. The plot has that aimless quality that I’ve noticed in many Japanese novels. The book is about 62 year old old man with a failing memory whose household includes his wife, his son, his daughter-in-law, his daughter, and his two grand-daughters. And a day later, I picked up his book The Sound of the Mountain and found myself really responding to it. A few days ago, I posted on Twitter lamenting about how I’d never managed to get into anything by Kawabata other than Beauty and Sadness (an amazing book that you should all read).

The Sound of the Mountain by Yasunari Kawabata