The Classics Club spin has delivered number 17 on my list of 20 books which means I get to read a classic of Japanese literature. Mercifully, it is one of the shortest books I have on my classics club reading list.
Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata
Thousand Cranes, first published in serialised form between 1949 and 1951, was one of three novels cited by the Nobel Committee when they awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature to Yasunari Kawabata in 1968. , the other two being Snow Country and The Old Capital.
It’s a story of one young man’s complex feelings about women he encounters, told against the background of the Japanese tradition of the tea ceremony.
Afer his parents’ death, Kikuji Mitani, a 28-year old office worker, attends a tea ceremony at the home of his father’s former mistress. There Kikuji is introduced to a young woman, “the Inamura girl” who wears a robe decorated with a thousand cranes.
She’s being positioned as a possible marriage partner for Kikuji but the plan to pair him off with this girl is ruined when another of his father’s mistresses arrives at the gathering together with her daughter. Through a series of meetings, Kikuji questions his feelings about his father, the two former mistresses and the two younger women.
Having read another of Kawabata’s novels, I know to expect some beautifully lyrical prose and underlying themes about passion and destiny.
After the disappointments of the last two classics club spins I’m looking forward to this one.
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